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Amazonโs shopping agent just started taking orders by text. The replies can carry ads.
Invite-only U.S. rollout of Alexa for Shopping by text went live November 6, 2026, with a wider open planned over coming weeks.
When Alexa texts back product options, a Sponsored Product can sit in that short list. Those placements are free to advertisers during the test.
Purchases the agent completes on its own stay ad-free.
Amazon says more than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping in the past year, and agentic-feature use is up more than eightfold since January.
Threads can move across the Amazon app, site, and Alexa devices, and Shop Direct can pull products from stores beyond Amazon.
Are your Amazon Sponsored Products ready for a text-thread suggestion slot?
Google just added three more places where AI ads get a visible label on the creative itself.
Campaigns that target California, South Korea, or Vietnam now show an on-ad AI overlay when assets are marked AI-created or AI-edited.
The same rule already covered the European Union, India, and New York.
Everywhere else, the disclosure still lives in My Ad Center under "How this ad was made."
Google may also label assets itself when required by law or when fully automated creative features build the ad, and those labels cannot be overwritten.
Holiday creatives aimed at CA, KR, or VN need an Asset library AI-label pass before they go live.
Have you checked the AI label column on assets in those geos yet?
Google just confirmed a Merchant Center outage that also hits Feeds and the Merchant API.
An active incident on Google's Merchant Center status page started at 04:30 UTC on November 6, 2026.
Impacted products: Merchant API, Merchant Center, and Feeds.
As of the 10:26 UTC update, Google is still investigating and has not posted a fix time.
Merchant Center forum reports describe endless loading and missing account data.
If feed uploads, diagnostics, or the UI look stuck today, check the status page before debugging your own feed.
Is your Shopping or product feed showing stale prices or availability right now?
Moving your store to BigCommerce? Protect your Google rankings before cutover, not after.
Here's how we run the SEO side of a BigCommerce migration:
A full URL audit before cutover.
A 1:1 redirect map, with every redirect validated.
Canonical structure matched.
Search Console monitored daily for 30 days after launch.
Products, customers and order history moved from Shopify, Magento or WooCommerce, and every app in your stack mapped to a BigCommerce native feature, marketplace app, or custom build.
Is your redirect map built before your launch date?
Shopify can now flag which of your barcodes are real GTINs.
Shopify Admin now checks barcodes against the GS1 registry, the organization that issues GTINs.
Add a new barcode that is registered with GS1 and Shopify marks it as GTIN for you.
Saved Custom barcodes that look like GTINs get a suggestion you can accept or dismiss.
In the products and inventory bulk editors, you can accept or dismiss every suggestion at once.
Shopify says it never changes a saved barcode unless you accept the suggestion.
Have you reviewed your Custom barcodes before your holiday feed push?
Google Ads may have switched on a PMax video setting you never chose.
Performance Max has a new "Sourced videos" setting under Asset optimization.
It is on by default for new campaigns. Google says it may also have been turned on in some existing campaigns during a recent platform update.
Google AI crawls your approved sources (social media platforms, your landing page, your linked YouTube channel) and can add up to 10 videos per asset group.
Sourced videos are uploaded to a Google-owned YouTube channel branded with your logo and business name.
It needs a daily budget above $5 and is rolling out in stages.
Have you opened Asset optimization in your PMax campaigns this week?
Google just opened a way to put your own app inside Google Search and Gemini.
Google launched a preview of its Connected Apps Platform today.
You build once, using a cloud-hosted MCP server or Android MCP with the AppFunctions APIs.
You register, test and submit the app in the Google Connected Console, and choose Search, the Gemini app, or both.
Once live, you can track traffic, latency and error rates.
Access opens in phases. Google says it has launched more than 50 Connected Apps across Search and Gemini so far.
Would your store's search, stock and booking actions work inside an AI answer?
Shopify just gave merchants a way to check if AI shopping agents can see their store.
Shopify's Fall '26 Edition went live today, its 10th.
A new admin view shows whether your store is eligible for Shopify Catalog, with links to fixes.
ChatGPT, Copilot, Meta, Instinct and other AI agents get product information from Shopify Catalog.
A new Knowledge base page (Sales channels > Agentic) lets you review and publish the facts agents get: return windows, shipping destinations, gift services.
Shopify drafts those facts from your storefront. Nothing reaches an agent without your sign-off.
Have you checked your Catalog eligibility yet?
One click. Still your money. Googleโs AI Max experiment can simplify setup for eligible accounts. Define success and verify measurement first. Save this 44-second explainer. #GoogleAds