How AI is Transforming Amazon Marketing

Like everything in ecommerce, if you want to understand the future—just look at Amazon. Some powerful signals came out of this year’s Prime Day (or should I say Prime Week?) that are worth your attention. Yes, it was the first time Prime Day stretched across 4 days. Yes, online spend hit over $24B, and yes, mobile dominated. But what really caught my eye? AI traffic surged by 3,200–3,300% YoY. 🤯 Consumers came through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Amazon’s own assistants to discover deals. AI is no longer the sidekick—it’s becoming the new front door to ecommerce. 🛍️ Amazon’s “Buy for Me” tool—an agentic AI shopper—let users buy products from other brands directly through Amazon. That’s a big shift in shopping behavior. 🧠 “Rufus,” Amazon’s AI assistant, was tested at scale—and it’s working. One thing to note: its main data source is customer reviews ⭐ . Not just any reviews. Authentic, rich, detailed reviews. “I love it” won’t cut it anymore. As someone who has spent the last decade building in UGC, this feels like a big unlock. Content is no longer just for social proof—it’s fuel for the AI engines driving discovery and conversion. If Prime Week worked for Amazon… maybe it’s time to rethink how we approach BFCM this year. Four days. Continuous momentum. Always-on discovery. What else stood out to you from Prime Day 2025?

Yesterday, in the flood of mind-blowing, benchmark-setting, GPU-melting AI announcements, it was easy to overlook the quiet little beta announcement coming out of Amazon - one that focuses less on the tech and more on the consumer, asking a question as old as innovation itself: “Cool tech bro, how do you monetize that tho?” Enter: Interest AI. ✨ Amazon’s new LLM-powered assistant, now in beta, lives inside the shopping app. It’s trained not on the open internet - but on YOU. What you’ve browsed, bought, returned, reviewed, streamed at 2 a.m., and forgotten in your cart. Ask it: “What’s a good beginner camera?” Get: “Here’s one based on your budget, your previous purchases, and your mild obsession with aesthetically pleasing home decor.” It doesn’t just answer questions. It answers your questions. Personalized, contextual, and commercial from the jump. But here’s the real play: Interest AI doesn’t just respond to intent - it generates it. It constantly scans Amazon’s massive, ever-expanding catalog to surface new items tied to your passions - travel, fitness, cooking, your cat’s wardrobe. It transforms how you discover, not just how you shop. It's not just a smarter search bar - it's a predictive, personalized discovery engine at scale. Interest AI not sexy. It won’t pass a Bar exam. But it might get you to click “Add to Cart.” And that, of course, is the point. Amazon isn’t chasing AGI. It’s chasing 💰 CLV (customer lifetime value) 💰 . While others build general-purpose LLMs, Amazon builds contextual commerce machines. This could quietly become one of the most monetizable use cases of LLMs we’ve seen to date. And it leans into Amazon’s real edge: first-party data, not foundational models. While the market experiments with AI co-pilots, Amazon just strapped a personalized sales engine to the world's biggest mall.

Could 2025 Be the Year Amazon SEO Becomes Obsolete? E-commerce evolves rapidly, and Amazon is no exception. While traditional SERP (Search Engine Results Page) discovery isn’t disappearing overnight, Amazon's AI tool, Rufus, is reshaping how customers discover products. If your brand hasn’t started building its foundation for AI-driven discovery, 2025 is the year to get ahead. Why This Matters Historically, product discovery on Amazon has been driven by keywords, pricing, and badges. Amazon's A9 shows the products that sold the most units based on what you searched. But Rufus changes the game by recommending products based on customer shopping preferences. For categories like Beauty, Apparel, Consumer Electronics, Kitchenware, and many more this could mean a shift away from low-cost, high-volume products dominating search results. Think about how many times you’ve purchased an item on Amazon, only to regret it because it didn’t last. Rufus has the potential to prioritize higher-quality options, creating a better experience for customers and leveling the playing field for premium brands to be discovered. What Brands Should Do Now 1. Audit Current Performance Test how Rufus responds to questions about your product to identify areas for improvement. 2. Analyze Customer Data Use reviews to understand your customers’ language and most common questions. 3. Optimize Content Structure Reorganize your listings to answer customer questions clearly, and ensure backend details are comprehensive. Key Takeaway Success with Rufus goes beyond good content—it requires content structured for AI comprehension. By understanding how Rufus currently represents your product and refining your listings to address customer needs at every stage, your brand can position itself for long-term success in Amazon's AI-driven future. Is your brand ready for the next wave of Amazon discovery? Let’s discuss. #AmazonSeller #Ecommerce #AmazonRufus #AIOptimization #DigitalMarketing

This morning at Amazon Accelerate the focus was firmly on AI. One thing I like about Amazon’s approach is that the use of AI is extremely practical and is squarely linked to improving the customer and seller experience. All too often AI is talked about in very nebulous ways, without proper consideration of the applications. Also, Amazon has been using some form of AI, especially machine learning, for over 25 years. This isn't new for them; but they're embracing the advances. Here are some things I learned… 🤖 Amazon is launching an AI-powered seller assistant called Amelia. It is designed to help sellers across all aspects of their selling journey. Amelia will also help sellers assess performance and recommend improvements. 📋 Producing listings and content is very time consuming for sellers. AI tools are helping to speed and simplify the process; and its making listing more effective by helping sellers identify keywords and search terms that customers use. 👀 Product titles will no longer be static but will be personalized based on individual users and what they’ve searched for. The example was used that if you search for pink aviator sunglasses, AI will ensure that for relevant listings the word pink is included in the title. 🎥 AI tools are already in place to help sellers create images. This is now being extended to video. With one click, sellers can provide a static image of their product, and it will be turned into a relevant video. Video has better conversion rates for selling. ⭐️ Last year, customers left 125 million reviews on Amazon. That’s too much information to sift through manually. AI is helping buyers and sellers by quickly summarizing and pulling out key trends and points from all reviews. 📉 There are a stack of AI tools helping sellers make more sense of various analytics within their businesses. This helps them make more informed decisions and to better forecast the impacts of decisions like advertising more. 👩🏽⚖️ AI is helping sellers to ensure they are compliant with rules and regulations. 📺 Outside of AI, Amazon’s ads now reach 275 million people per month in the US across all channels. #retail #retailnews #AmazonAccelerate #Amazon #AI #ecommerce

The next wave of eCommerce isn’t a channel shift—it’s a mindset shift It’s not about adding more SKUs. It’s about deploying agents to do the work for you. And Amazon just showed us what that future looks like. Here’s the quiet rollout everyone should be watching: Amazon’s “Buy for Me” feature just launched. No commission. No inventory risk. No need to leave the app. Just AI agents shopping on your behalf—across Amazon and 3P sites. This isn’t a feature drop. It’s a signal: The shopping journey no longer ends with Amazon—it starts with Amazon’s agent. Let’s break it down for the kids in the back.. The Old Way of Thinking Consumers browse → compare → check out. Retailers fight for the last click. The New Playbook AI agents collapse that path. They find, compare, and transact for the user. Amazon is becoming the AI operating system for commerce—not just the store. Why it matters: (3) 1️⃣ AI is the new interface – It’s not just ChatGPT. It’s commerce. 2️⃣ This expands reach without SKU risk – Amazon grows without holding inventory. 3️⃣ It positions Amazon as the most valuable first step – Because the agent starts there. What I’d do if I were a brand: (3) → Design (A/B test) your PDPs and product content for AI agents, not humans. → Don’t obsess over last-click. Obsess over first-query. → Rethink what “distribution” means in a world where AI does the browsing. This is the beginning of agentic commerce. It’s early 2025 (April). We’re just getting started. Ways to reach us: Pattern® (eCommerce accelerator) The CPG View (podcast) The Retail eCommerce Club (community) The eFramework (eCommerce MBA) Subscribe to The Retail Media View: 👇🏼 https://lnkd.in/etsfcm-S #amazon #aiagents #ecommerce #retailmedia #digitaltransformation #cpg #shoppinginnovation #retailtech #pattern #retailecommerceclub

Amazon ads released 137 product updates in 2024. We've found that they all ladder up into three major buckets. 1️⃣ AI-powered automation More machine learning tools are coming, including dynamic audience segmentation, AI-powered creative, smart bidding, smart targeting, smart budgeting, intelligence performance summaries and more. These updates are designed to take manual guesswork out of campaign management, but the big question is: How much control will advertisers need to tradeoff in order to engage? And at what point will this innovation obviate the need to pay 3P ad tech providers 1% of spend? 2️⃣ More robust measurement Amazon is opening the floodgates for multi-touch attribution and omni-channel measurement with AMC, partnerships with credit card companies for broader view into sales performance and the amazon ad tag for easy integration with DTC sales. There is so much to unlock here but the big question is: How much of this measurement will inform better marketing dollar allocation or better creative that can drive real performance gains? If I've learned anything in the last 20 years of eCommerce is that you can waste a lot of time on attribution with little to show for it. 3️⃣ New formats + more premium content New ad placements are rolling out across Prime Video, Fire TV, CTV partners, Alexa, and Amazon’s physical stores. As more premium inventory (think Hulu) becomes addressable with Amazon shopping data for targeting and measurement and more innovation comes out (think personalized in-store advertising at Whole Foods), the key questions will be - where does this all fit in to a broader media plan? are the rates cost-efficient? and can these solutions truly scale? The key takeaway: Amazon’s ad ecosystem is becoming smarter, more trackable, and more omnichannel. If your media strategy is still focused exclusively on what is happening on Amazon - your are missing out. If you don't have specialized resources that are highly flexible and technically adept, you are likely leaving opportunity on the table. #AmazonAds #RetailMedia #Ecommerce

Amazon's ad ecosystem is about to make traditional retail media strategies completely irrelevant. Here's what you need to know. 🔹 AI is doing more than optimizing bids. It’s shaping entire campaigns in real time, learning from what’s working (and what’s not) faster than most teams can react. If you're still manually tweaking ads, it's time to rethink. 🔹 Video is officially center stage. With Prime Video opening up ad inventory and shoppable content becoming the norm, the lines between entertainment and ecommerce are disappearing fast. 🔹 Retail media is growing up. Amazon is giving brands better tools to advertise directly where customers shop. Think: smarter placements, sharper targeting, and more insight into what’s actually driving sales. 🔹 Creative is getting an AI upgrade. Tools like Amazon’s Creative Studio are helping teams spin up content that’s dynamic, personalized, and insanely scalable. It’s more than flashy visuals, every ad has to feel relevant. To me, the big takeaway is this: success on Amazon isn’t about playing defense anymore. The brands that win will be the ones who experiment boldly, embrace automation, and stay curious. #AmazonAds #RetailMedia #AIinMarketing #VideoAdvertising #MarketingStrategy #EcommerceInnovation

Not all AI agents are created equal. This week I ran a simple test: I asked ChatGPT and Amazon Rufus the same question: "Why isn’t this product selling on Amazon?" (I wont give the ASIN because that's not fair but if you DM me I'll tell you) Here’s what happened: - Rufus gave me this: "Some customers like the flavor variety and protein content. Some customers don’t like the price, taste, or texture." Basically... a glorified book report. - ChatGPT gave me this: Diagnosed brand awareness issues. Flagged bad images and weak keyword targeting. Called out high price relative to trust. Exposed the 3.8-star rating problem (vs. 4.2+ category norms). Noted missing promotions, Subscribe & Save, A+ content. Even explained review aggregation and its impact on shopper psychology. Basically... a mini Amazon consultant. The lesson? Information ≠ Insight. Summarizing reviews ≠ Solving problems. AI isn’t powerful because it repeats what’s there. AI is powerful when it connects dots and tells you what to fix. The winners in the next wave of commerce won’t just be "using AI." They'll be the ones who know how to demand better outputs and act faster than their competitors. Humans with AI > Humans with reports. #ecommerce #amazon #chatgpt #rufus #artificialintelligence #growthmindset #productmarketing #futureofwork