Hello {{first_name | there}},

What a relief!

This breaking news dropped a couple of weeks ago, but hasn't had anywhere near as much coverage as the Instant Commerce announcement last year... so let's try and fix that.

I'll start with an overview of it - then dive into some thoughts I've had about it all...

So here's what's happened...

Last year OpenAI announced the Instant Commerce tool that would enable ChatGPT to do your shopping for you.

Which led to lots of doom-mongering about how the website was now dead.

In March OpenAI announced they were dropping the buying bit, and instead focusing on product discoverability. Very well spun blog here

OpenAI are having to shift from a "we have all the cash in the world, let's do everything" strategy, to a "hmmm investors now care about the numbers so it's time to focus on the best bits" strategy.

Leading them to pull back from another of products that were unlikely to drive substantial revenue of usage in the near future.

One of those is Instant Commerce.

Neither consumers nor eCommerce stores have been fast to adopt the product.

Not least because it wasn't ever very good... either at onboarding retailers or providing the functionality consumers expect from our online sales (promo codes, shipping info etc etc etc).

(best blog I've found on all this is this one - I highly recommend having a read)

No.

Firstly, this only relates to OpenAi's strategy... not anyone else's.

Secondly, 3rd party apps will be handling the transactions instead. ChatGPT will help you find the product, then help with the checkout on another platform - cue share price jumps for Booking com (8%) and Expedia (13%).

Thirdly, who knows!! This space is moving fast.

Whilst this news doesn't mean agentic commerce is over, it does mean it's not going to happen this year.

It shows that for it to work, it will need to be done well (and OpenAI's attempt was barely a beta).

Who will make it work first? I don't think it will be Google - they've had the ability to set up a marketplace (with all that shopping feed data) for a decade+, but have sensibly stuck to the discovery lane.

I reckon it will be someone eCommerce-first rather than AI-first - so maybe Shopify themselves, or Amazon?

But I'm not going to be spending a lot of time waiting for it!

Yet again, the AI tech is following the playbook of the search engine tech.

Be great at discoverability, and monetise via ads.

So for the next year or so the average eCommerce store can ignore the ads bit, and should focus on the organic side of it all.

(want to know more about all that - check out our recent series on Keep Optimising.

Relax, the bright shiny object isn't going to kill your business this year.

AND... get on with that product data project you know you should be doing.

Keep Optimising!

Chloe

Podcast Host, Author, and now... Chief Success Strategist @ Emetko Media

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