March 6th-March 12th // Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

OpenAI is killing Instant Checkout. Don't dance on the grave of agentic shopping yet.
Sources: The Drum, The Information, Digiday
March 6th-9th

Summary: OpenAI is backing away from Instant Checkout, a feature that let users buy products without leaving ChatGPT. Instead, OpenAI will route purchases back to retailer apps or websites, after realizing that users were researching products in ChatGPT but not buying them 🔒. Some argue this move isn't the death of agentic shopping, which is working in places like China via Alibaba. OpenAI will now focus on its ChatGPT ads, and on making product search and discovery better in ChatGPT, which could have consequences for commerce media and the search ad market🔒. 

Opinion: Part of the reason this hasn’t “worked” yet is because retailers are (understandably) making it hard for OpenAI. Even a company as large and well-funded as OpenAI needs to focus sometimes and not waste too much energy on hard things.

OpenAI is playing a cat-and-mouse game with retailers. They would love to own the end-to-end buying process (it would open up soooooo many monetization opportunities!), but if retailers don’t play ball, they can’t. Retailers don’t want to play ball, because they want to keep their customer relationship, their data, and their commerce media business. They don’t want to have to pay yet another player (in addition to search engines and affiliates and Amazon), a ‘toll’ to generate sales for them. Right now, retailers don’t have to play ball with OpenAI, because most people still prefer to shop and checkout outside of an LLM. So OpenAI is hitting the pause button on Instant Checkout.

But as more people use ChatGPT for product discovery and their shopping journey, OpenAI will gain leverage. Eventually, retailers will have to play ball, or risk losing sales. So now it’s on OpenAI to grow their user base and offer great, native shopping experiences in order to gain said leverage. AI is such an obvious fit for end-to-end shopping; we believe OpenAI (or whichever LLMs “win”) will ultimately get there…

U of Digital’s Myles Younger and Tom Riordan ran a live session on agentic commerce this week at Marketecture Live in New York City. Download the full slide deck here!

Microsoft Launches Copilot Cowork, Powered by Anthropic

What It Does: Microsoft has integrated the tech behind Claude Cowork into 365 Copilot. Copilot Cowork handles multi-step work tasks on your behalf like rescheduling meetings, building meeting prep decks, researching companies, and drafting launch plans by pulling information from your emails, files, and calendar. It runs in Microsoft's cloud environment, so companies retain control over data access and permissions. It's currently in testing, with broader availability expected later this month.

Quick Take: One of Microsoft's selling points over standalone Claude Cowork is enterprise security; Claude Cowork runs locally on a device, which makes many large companies uncomfortable 🔒 . By running Copilot Cowork in a controlled cloud environment, Microsoft turns a liability into a differentiator. The move also signals that Microsoft is hedging its OpenAI dependency.

Amazon's Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands prompts available soon

What It Does: The prompts automatically surface relevant product information to shoppers at key moments in their shopping journey on Amazon by pulling information from product detail pages, brand stores, and campaign data. They're automatically enabled in existing sponsored products campaigns with no setup required, and will be billed as part of clients' existing CPC bidding once out of beta. The prompts will be generally available in the US on March 25th. 

Quick Take: This is Amazon using its first-party data advantage to anticipate shopper questions before they bounce. The advertiser opt-out set up is noteworthy; sponsored prompts are on by default, which means advertisers who aren't paying attention will start getting charged for them on a CPC basis starting March 25th.

Seedtag introduces Liz Agent for AI-powered media planning

What It Does: Seedtag's new agentic AI platform lets brands and agencies plan and activate ad campaigns using natural conversation. It uses Seedtag's neuro-contextual data, which maps real-time user interest and intent across the open web, to generate audience insights, competitive analysis, and creative recommendations. Strategies built through Liz can be activated directly across Seedtag's global inventory without leaving the platform.

Quick Take: We’re seeing a lot of ad platforms introduce end-to-end campaign capabilities leveraging AI. Right now it’s a cool trick and creates some efficiency for buyers. But, pretty soon, every platform will offer this. So what will differentiate one from the other? It’ll be the same stuff it’s always been: unique data, unique reach, high quality inventory, and ultimately, performance.

FreeWheel launches AI agent infrastructure for video ads 

What It Does: FreeWheel's tech lets buyer and seller AI agents communicate and transact without requiring integrations for every platform. It monitors deal performance, tracks spend and inventory quality, and handles routine decisions in real time. PMG is the first agency partner piloting it, connecting the infrastructure directly to its marketing operating system to optimize streaming campaigns.

Quick Take: Most AI in ad tech right now is an LLM slapped on an existing workflow. FreeWheel is building infrastructure that lets buy-side and sell-side AI agents talk to each other directly, without custom integrations. This is a smart, strategic move, especially for a CTV ad server that controls a lot of premium inventory and would benefit from democratizing decisioning.

Perion's AI agent Outmax now available for TikTok

What It Does: Perion's Outmax AI agent optimizes ad campaigns against outcomes rather than TikTok's default platform KPIs. Early results show up to 25% better media performance compared to running campaigns without it. Outmax is already available for YouTube and Meta.

Quick Take: Cool product. But how did they come up with this name?

The Setup: Wyndham operates 8,300+ hotels across 95 countries. Its franchise model requires Wyndham to keep costs low and revenue high for both the company and individual hotel owners. 

The AI Solution: Wyndham assembled its AI infrastructure through existing SaaS relationships with companies like Salesforce and Canary Technologies, and connections to Google and ChatGPT. Offerfit's AI uses Wyndham Guest 360 loyalty and CRM data to send personalized emails to drive repeat stays and direct bookings. Wyndham connected its room inventory directly to Google AI Mode and ChatGPT so guests searching through AI assistants get a direct link to book on the brand site. AI agents are used to upsell guests on add-ons like early check-in and late checkout. About 350 AI agents handle guest calls, while an AI-powered Wi-Fi portal increases on-property loyalty enrollments. AI agents also automate the review and approval of brand standards.

The Results:

• 28% of incoming calls handled entirely by AI agents

• 30-50% reduction in average call handle times

• 94% reduction in time to review brand standards changes

• Increased on-property loyalty enrollments more than 4x

• One hotel generates over $10K/month from AI upsell opportunities

• +400 basis points YoY growth in overall guest satisfaction in Q4

Why This Matters: Wyndham is using AI to connect loyalty data, personalized outreach, and direct booking into one valuable loop. 

Your Action: Wyndham built a direct booking channel inside the tools guests already use to plan trips. You can do the same, the audit takes under an hour.

Open ChatGPT and Google AI Mode. Search your brand name and top products. Note what comes back: Is the information current? Does it pull from your actual site or a third-party source?

If results are missing or outdated, there are two likely culprits: broken schema markup on your site (run your key pages through Google's Rich Results Test) or a stale product feed in Google Merchant Center. Fix those first. For ChatGPT specifically, it pulls product data from Bing's index, so a clean Bing Webmaster Tools setup is the key.

The Trade Desk is testing AI campaign creation with Claude 🔒 - CEO Jeff Green said the demand-side platform is running a closed beta that lets advertisers build programmatic campaigns through Claude. It’s about time.

OpenAI plans to launch its Sora video tool in ChatGPT - Sora, currently a standalone app, would give ChatGPT's hundreds of millions of users access to AI video generation without switching platforms.

Claude and Manus both released connectors for Meta Ads 🔒 - An AI startup that helps advertisers agentically manage their Meta campaigns became obsolete after Claude and Manus released native Meta Ads connectors.

Horizon Media cut 50 roles in an AI-driven restructuring 🔒 - The independent agency is eliminating positions across departments while hiring for 100+ new roles focused on data, technology, and AI. 

Publicis buys content optimizer AdgeAi - AdgeAi's platform uses AI to analyze engagement and conversion data to identify which creative elements drive performance.

AI-assisted coding errors contributed to at least one Amazon site outage - Amazon is now requiring additional human review of AI-assisted code before it goes into production.

Judge bans Perplexity shopping agent from Amazon - The court ruled Perplexity likely violated a federal anti-hacking law by disguising its Comet browser as Google Chrome to shop on Amazon without the retailer's authorization.

Meta buys Moltbook, a viral social network for AI agents - Moltbook is a Reddit-style social network for AI agents that lets them connect with one another and coordinate tasks on behalf of their human owners. And talk sh*t about humans and scheme to overthrow them.

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