Good afternoon,

Here’s the headlines for this week: 14 November 2025

ECOMMERCE

TikTok Shop Is Now the Size of eBay

• TikTok Shop generated an estimated $19B in global sales in Q3 2025, with $4–4.5B in the US, putting it roughly on par with eBay’s $20.1B quarterly GMV.
• Its short-video shopping format is gaining share in US ecommerce, but livestream shopping still massively underperforms China — only about 2% of US TikTok traffic goes to livestream commerce versus 50% on Douyin.
• TikTok Shop is seeing its strongest momentum in Southeast Asia, where livestream shopping fits “shopping-as-entertainment” culture and faces less competition from Amazon-style incumbents.

TECH

What does OpenAI's restructuring mean for the future of the AI industry?

• OpenAI has converted its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation, while the OpenAI Foundation keeps a 26% equity stake, Microsoft holds 27%, and the rest is owned by staff and investors.
• The new structure removes previous profit caps and opens the door to larger outside investment and a potential IPO, intensifying the capital arms race with Google, Anthropic and others.
• A massively funded nonprofit foundation (projected to be among the best-funded in the US) is tasked with channeling profits into healthcare and AI-safety initiatives — but its real influence will depend on how both boards govern.

Meta will soon use your conversations with its AI chatbot to sell you stuff

• From 16 December 2025, Meta will start using text and voice conversations with its Meta AI assistant to personalize ads and content across Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
• Users outside the UK, EU and South Korea cannot opt out, raising significant privacy and regulatory concerns about how deeply Meta can profile people via AI chats. 
• Meta says it will exclude “sensitive” topics (politics, religion, sexual orientation, health, etc.) from targeting, but is explicit that Meta AI is designed to “know a whole lot about you” to improve ad relevance.

PayPal signs deal with OpenAI to become the first payments wallet in ChatGPT

• PayPal will become the first integrated payments wallet inside ChatGPT, letting users check out with PayPal as they shop via AI “agents” and chat-based journeys. 
• The partnership uses the Agentic Commerce Protocol, aiming to take people from “chat to checkout in a few taps” across merchants on platforms like Shopify, Walmart and Etsy. 
• Investors see it as PayPal’s ticket into the AI commerce boom — PayPal’s stock jumped around 10–11% on the announcement as markets bet on new transaction volume and relevance.

'It's organized crime': TikTok Shop says it's fighting a new wave of AI scammers

• TikTok says generative AI is supercharging ecommerce fraud — bad actors are using AI to spin up fake brands, dupes and listings that trick both shoppers and moderation systems. 
• The company is responding with its own mix of AI + human moderation, including in-house detection tools and partners that verify things like pre-owned luxury goods — “we use AI to deal with AI.” 
• In the first half of 2025, TikTok Shop reports it rejected 70 million products and removed 700,000 sellers for policy violations, underlining the scale — and business risk — of AI-driven fraud on the platform.

Pinterest Turns Boards Into Your Personal Shopping Assistant

• Pinterest is overhauling boards with three new tabs: “Make it yours” (product recommendations for fashion & home), “More ideas” (related inspiration) and “All saves” (everything you’ve pinned in one place).
• New experimental features in the US and Canada, like “Styled for you” collages and “Boards made for you” curated sets, turn saved looks into shoppable outfit and trend suggestions.
• With 578M monthly users and strong revenue growth in Europe, Pinterest is clearly repositioning itself from inspiration platform to full-funnel shopping destination, shortening the path from pin to purchase.

RETAILERS

Retailers are raising prices to meet tariffs. Amazon is hiking more than others

• New US tariffs on imported goods are pushing Amazon, Walmart and Target to raise prices, but Amazon’s increases are steeper across several categories, according to DataWeave price tracking. 
• Data on 16,000 SKUs per retailer shows Target prices up 5.5% and Walmart 5.3%, while Amazon’s hikes are higher, reflecting its heavier reliance on third-party marketplace sellers hit by tariffs. 
• Retailers are using a “portfolio” pricing strategy, selectively raising prices while trying to maintain value perception — but for shoppers, tariffs are quietly eroding the benefit of online price competition.

Amazon Sues to Stop Perplexity From Using AI Tool to Buy Stuff

• Amazon has sued Perplexity AI over its Comet browser feature, alleging the AI agent secretly accesses Amazon customer accounts and disguises its automated shopping activity as human browsing. 
• The complaint frames Comet as an unauthorized “trespass,” claiming it violates Amazon’s terms, risks customer data and degrades the curated shopping experience that Amazon offers. 
• Perplexity accuses Amazon of bullying and trying to block innovation, arguing users should be free to choose AI agents that can shop on their behalf — making this a test case for how far AI shopping agents can go.

Walmart develops AI tools to help suppliers better understand customer data

• Walmart is rolling out new AI features within its Scintilla first-party data platform, giving suppliers deeper insight into how shoppers discover, compare and purchase products across channels. 
• Tools like Digital Landscapes help brands see search and browse paths, identify gaps in assortment or content, and optimize omnichannel performance based on real Walmart shopper behavior. 
• The move strengthens Walmart’s pitch that its data, not just its shelf space, is a key value to brands, and ties into the broader race to monetize retail media plus first-party insights.

Amazon CEO expects to ‘find ways’ to partner with third-party AI shopping agents in the future

• Despite aggressively blocking AI agents from scraping its site today, Amazon’s CEO has signaled that the company expects to eventually partner with compliant third-party shopping agents. 
• The likely model is controlled access via APIs and strict policies, allowing agents to compare products and build carts without compromising Amazon’s data, personalization or security. 
• This positions Amazon both as a gatekeeper and potential platform for AI commerce, alongside its own tools like Rufus and “Buy For Me,” rather than ceding the AI shopping interface entirely to startups.

Best Buy teams up with influencers and YouTubers for holiday campaigns, including ‘Hot Ones’ and ‘Binging with Babish’

• For the holidays, Best Buy is leaning heavily into creator collaborations, building campaigns with big formats like ‘Hot Ones’ and ‘Binging with Babish’ to showcase giftable tech. 
• The content is designed to fit each channel’s native style — think challenge segments, recipe builds and product cameos — with shoppable tie-ins to Best Buy offers. 
• The strategy aims to reach younger, video-native audiences who trust creators more than traditional ads, while giving Best Buy more measurable, performance-oriented awareness.

Walmart.com’s search results put ads front and center — a playbook Amazon pioneered

• Walmart has revamped Walmart.com search so that sponsored products dominate the top of results, mirroring Amazon’s ad-led search experience. 
• Its retail media business has grown to roughly $4.4B in 2024 ad revenue, contributing about one-third of operating profit, as ecommerce sales climb 26% year-over-year. 
• Analysts say consumers will tolerate this as long as ads are contextually relevant; for brands, it means more pay-to-play competition to maintain visibility on Walmart’s digital shelf.

ADVERTISING

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show

• Internal documents show Meta projected about 10% of its 2024 revenue — roughly $16B — would come from ads for scams and banned goods, with around 15 billion “higher-risk” scam ads shown per day. 
• Instead of banning all suspicious advertisers, Meta often charges them higher ad rates unless it is 95% confident they’re fraudulent, a threshold that prioritizes revenue and limits enforcement. 
• Users who click on scam ads are then more likely to be targeted with further scams due to Meta’s ad-personalization engine, raising questions about whether the company is financially incentivized to tolerate abuse.

Netflix begins dynamic ad insertion for live programming in six countries

• Netflix is testing dynamic ad insertion in live programming (e.g. WWE “Raw” and “SmackDown,” with the NFL Christmas Gameday to come) across six markets: US, UK, Canada, Germany, Brazil and Mexico. 
• The system lets Netflix swap ads in real time for different viewers during the same live event, enabling more localized and personalized campaigns for advertisers. 
• As its ad-supported plan enters year four, Netflix says it reaches over 190M monthly ad viewers, and is also piloting interactive, modular ad formats and broader programmatic partnerships for 2026.

See you next week,

The ChannelSight Team

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