So This Happened…23rd April 2025
OpenAI and Shopify Could Soon be Announcing Their Partnership: In-Chat Shopping Strings Spotted on ChatGPT
Why It Matters:
While no formal announcement has been made yet, compelling evidence discovered in ChatGPT's code suggests a major partnership between OpenAI and Shopify is imminent. This potential collaboration could fundamentally reshape conversational commerce.
Code strings recently found in ChatGPT's public web bundle reveal what appears to be an in-development native purchase flow with "buy_now" functionality, price and shipping fields, product offer ratings, and most tellingly, "shopify_checkout_url" connections.
These code elements strongly indicate that OpenAI is building infrastructure to transform ChatGPT from an information tool into a complete shopping platform. This potentially this wouldn't merely be product recommendations, but a comprehensive shopping experience powered by artificial intelligence, where one could conceivably purchase items without ever leaving the conversation. We're talking purchasing at the point of inspiration without leaving a site.
The implications of this apparent partnership would be far-reaching. By integrating Shopify's robust checkout infrastructure within ChatGPT's conversational interface, OpenAI would eliminate the traditional multi-step discovery-to-purchase journey that has defined e-commerce for decades.
This is apparently happening while other tech giants (Amazon anyone?) integrate similar capabilities into their own AI offerings (see the story from early April about Amazon's AI agent shopping on third party sites). Both OpenAI and Shopify have remained tight-lipped about the collaboration, although recent earnings calls from Shopify have hinted at forthcoming "AI commerce innovations."
Meanwhile, industry analysts are predicting this could fundamentally transform how consumers discover and purchase products online. As we've been saying for absolute ages, commerce media is the future of retail, and this development proves the point rather spectacularly.
The point of inspiration becomes the point of purchase - This partnership embodies exactly what we've been championing: eliminating the gap between when a consumer discovers a product and when they can buy it. ChatGPT users who express interest in products can immediately purchase them without the traditional friction of multiple websites and checkout processes.
AI becomes the ultimate personal shopper - Unlike traditional e-commerce where one must know what they're searching for, this conversational commerce approach allows AI to understand preferences, make contextual recommendations, and facilitate purchases all in one seamless interaction—rather like having Harrods' finest personal shopper in your pocket!
Commerce media evolves beyond advertising - This leap forward transforms commerce media from mere advertisements into intelligent, conversational shopping experiences. The medium isn't simply displaying products; it's actively helping consumers find and purchase exactly what they need.
Small merchants gain AI-powered reach - Shopify's involvement means this isn't just for retail giants. Independent merchants will potentially have their products recommended by one of the world's most sophisticated AI systems, levelling the playing field in remarkable ways.
If launched, the integration could trigger a seismic shift in consumer behaviour and advertising spend. Retail media networks are projected to reach $54.9 billion in 2024, according to industry reports, and a shopping-enabled ChatGPT could potentially capture a significant portion of this growing market as brands follow consumer attention.The strategic implications are substantial.
If implemented, ChatGPT would become a full-funnel shopping assistant handling everything from product discovery to checkout, potentially making it a primary destination for consumer product searches. This positions OpenAI and Shopify at the forefront of an emerging trend, as other tech giants like Microsoft (with its Copilot Merchant Program) and Perplexity (with "Buy With Pro") are also integrating shopping into conversational AI.
Looking ahead, if ChatGPT becomes a go-to platform for product searches, it could attract significant advertising spend from brands seeking to influence purchase decisions at the point of discovery. This aligns perfectly with Shopify's internal push toward an "AI-first" culture and the growing importance of agentic commerce—where AI assistants not only provide information but actively help users complete transactions.
This potential partnership represents precisely the transformative commerce media innovation we've been forecasting— where technology doesn't simply advertise products but actively facilitates the entire shopping journey from discovery to purchase. The quaint notion of visiting separate websites to shop is looking increasingly antiquated, rather like travelling to different villages to visit specialist shopkeepers. The future is seamless, intelligent, and immediate!
Google has illegal advertising monopoly, judge rules
Why It Matters:
A US judge has ruled that Google maintains an illegal monopoly in online advertising technology — the complex digital machinery that determines which adverts appear on websites and where they're placed. Yes....really!
This represents the second antitrust case Google has lost within a year, following an earlier ruling that the company also monopolised online search. But here's the kicker - US District Judge Leonie Brinkema declared that Google had "wilfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts" enabling it to "acquire and maintain monopoly power" in the digital advertising marketplace.
Google, predictably, plans to appeal the decision, with their head of regulatory affairs insisting that "publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective." the company claims partial victory, noting that "the court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don't harm competition." Really Google?
The US case will now advance to a "remedies" phase, which could potentially lead to Alphabet being broken up - not a small consequence! - potentially forcing Google to sell off components like the Chrome browser. Meanwhile, competition authorities in other jurisdictions, including the UK, are conducting similar investigations into Google's advertising practices. This, combined with Meta's recent high-stakes antitrust trial, represents a watershed moment for the global ad tech industry.
The ruling represents a seismic shift in how governments approach digital advertising markets and tech monopolies more broadly: The digital advertising ecosystem faces reconstruction - Google's stranglehold on both the buy-side and sell-side of online advertising, plus its dominance of the exchange that connects them, has shaped how digital content is monetised for over a decade, allowing Google to capture approximately 29% of all digital spend. Any forced restructuring would fundamentally alter how publishers earn revenue and how advertisers reach audiences.
Big Tech's invincibility myth crumbles further - This decision reinforces that even the most powerful technology companies aren't beyond regulatory reach. As Professor Laura Phillips-Sawyer notes, it signals that "not only are agencies willing to prosecute but also that judges are willing to enforce the law against big tech firms."
Digital publishing revenues hang in the balance - The ruling was celebrated by Jason Kint of Digital Content Next, representing online publishers, who pointed out that Google's market power has deprived "premium publishers worldwide of critical revenue needed to sustain high-quality journalism and entertainment." The remedies phase could rebalance this financial equation. This is important as Publishers have had all margins squeezed in the past decade and seen their revenues crumble.
Publishers may regain negotiating leverage - Premium content creators like News Corp, Condé Nast, and digital-first publishers that have watched their advertising revenue steadily erode could find themselves with newfound bargaining power in a more fragmented ad tech landscape. The potential for increased competition among ad intermediaries could finally reverse the decades-long trend of publishers receiving an ever-shrinking slice of the advertising pie.
Corporate America faces new antitrust realities - This precedent will likely influence decision-making across the technology sector, as companies reassess growth strategies that might trigger similar antitrust scrutiny. The era of unchecked digital platform consolidation appears increasingly tenuous- despite the current political noise and expectation that the Trump regime would be anti regulator. Meta finds itself in increasingly similar waters, and in a critical year for big tech, this Google ruling doesn't exist in isolation. Meta faces its own antitrust challenges, with the FTC's case alleging monopolistic practices in social networking progressing through the courts. The FTC's case against Meta specifically cites how the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions eliminated viable alternatives in social media advertising. While Google dominates the open web advertising, Meta controls the closed garden of social advertising—both empires now face unprecedented scrutiny. The parallel challenges to both advertising giants suggest a coordinated regulatory approach to dismantling digital duopolies.
Smaller ad tech players sense blood in the water - This ruling creates very significant opportunities for companies like The Trade Desk, PubMatic, Magnite, and even Amazon's advertising business (though hardly need a leg up from a competitive sense). Should Google be forced to divest parts of its ad tech stack, previous mid-sized players could swiftly expand to fill the vacuum. The Trade Desk, in particular, stands perfectly positioned as the leading independent demand-side platform to capitalise on any Google breakup. Additionally, from a retailers and brand perspective, this potentially allows them to gain access to more transparent pricing and greater choice in ad tech partners.
These sorts of rulings have precedence, and will also impact both programmatic buy and sell on CTV, as well as retail media networks, so publishers in every aspect of the eco-system should keep a close eye on the outcome.
Meta Is Racing for Retail Media Budgets
AdWeek
Why It Matters:
And speaking of Meta, against the backdrop of possible forced breakup in its FTC antitrust trial, the company has started to aggressively pursue the burgeoning retail media market to diversify revenue streams.
As Mark Zuckerberg faces potential forced divestiture of Instagram and WhatsApp—platforms that generate a substantial portion of the company's $135+ billion annual revenue—the company is clearly hedging its bets by strengthening relationships with retailers and making a push into the lucrative retail media market.
The centrepiece of this strategy is Meta's marketplace API, which addresses what has historically been retail media's strongest differentiator: closed-loop attribution.
The API's ability to let both marketplace operators and individual brands know whether specific Meta ads drove actual sales represents a significant advancement in attribution capabilities. For example, in the example cited in the article, if DeWalt purchases an ad on Meta to drive sales at Home Depot, both DeWalt and Home Depot can now track whether that specific ad resulted in a purchase.
By lowering the barrier for marketplace APIs from 20,000 unique sellers to a more accessible threshold in 2024, Meta has opened this capability to emerging retail media networks, not just established giants.
This attribution enhancement directly challenges what has made retail media networks so attractive to advertisers - their ability to connect ad exposure directly to sales. While retailers have long had the advantage of first-party purchase data, Meta's move to share product-level reporting and impression logs enables similar attribution capabilities within its ecosystem, potentially keeping ad dollars that might otherwise flow to retailers' owned channels.
Meta's strategy mirrors how Google has been expanding its retail media offerings through partnerships with companies like Walmart Connect and Target's Roundel, even as it faces its own antitrust reckoning.
For both tech giants, retail media represents a potential lifeline—a growing segment of digital advertising that could continue functioning even under structural remedies that might separate their core businesses.
Meta's new multi-product carousel ads with AI-powered personalisation, which drive 21% higher incremental ROAS for omni-channel campaigns versus e-commerce-only ads, demonstrate how the company is leveraging its core technical advantages to secure its position in retail media. Meanwhile, its expanded data-sharing practices represent a significant shift for a company that has historically guarded its data closely.
What's particularly telling is the timing. As Meta works to curry favour with the Trump administration (having scrapped fact-checking services and made multiple White House visits), it's simultaneously building commercial bulwarks against potential regulatory action. The competition is also intensifying, with TikTok and Snap both ahead of Meta in the social commerce space.
For retailers and brands, this regulatory pressure on tech giants creates a potential opportunity—more favourable terms, better data access, and increased competition for their advertising dollars. However, it also raises questions about the continuation of the Meta / Google duopoly, as well as increased competition for the existing retail media networks.
Sources: YouTube TV, Amazon, WBD bidding on mini-NFL rights package for 2025
Sports Business Journal
Why It Matters:
As forecast by many, this year sees Big Tech in the US diving deeper into live sports - not games just locally in the US, but globally - with rights across multiple geographics. YouTube TV, Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon have all shown keen interest in securing the rights, with YouTube reportedly emerging as the favourite. Warner Bros. Discovery hasn't held NFL rights since TNT's partial-season package that ended in 1997!
Meanwhile, all potential rights holders and the NFL have remained steadfastly tight-lipped, declining to comment on the matter.
Premium Matchup Value: With the three-time defending AFC champion Chiefs potentially facing the Chargers in São Paulo, the broadcast value has substantially increased. For context, last year's Brazil game (Eagles-Packers) streamed exclusively on Peacock and drew 14.7 million viewers — Peacock's second-highest streaming audience ever behind only an NFL Wild Card game. They obviously think these games deliver valuable audiences.
Live sports is the last bastion of appointment viewing – it's one of the few opportunities left where audiences still come together live to share the experience on screen. This sort of communal event matters, and streamers now want that level of live engagement. The fierce competition for these rights shows that YouTube, Amazon and WBD understand what traditional broadcasters have known for decades: live sport creates unmissable moments where viewers aren't skipping adverts or multitasking—they're gloriously captive and receptive to commercial messaging.
Production Infrastructure Challenge: Unlike YouTube's current NFL Sunday Ticket arrangement (which merely retransmits CBS and FOX broadcasts), this deal would require YouTube to either "hire talent and production staff from another rights holder or build it from scratch in a short window." This represents YouTube's first foray into creating original NFL broadcast content rather than simply distributing it.
Strategic Timing: With YouTube's upfront presentation scheduled for May 14 - coinciding precisely with the NFL's schedule release window of May 13-15, this could be positioned as a centrepiece announcement at YouTube's Brandcast event, significantly elevating its appeal to advertisers.
International Market Expansion: The NFL has made its desire to appeal to international audiences very clear over the past few years, and their strategic choice not to protect divisional matchups for international games shows their commitment to growing global viewership by featuring marquee matchups abroad. YouTube's global reach makes it an ideal partner for this expansion.
Live sport becomes the ultimate commerce media catalyst, expanding commerce and brand opportunities on several levels. This bidding war exemplifies what we've been saying about premium content driving digital engagement. An NFL game in Brazil creates a perfect storm of engaged viewers primed for purchasing at precisely their moment of highest emotional connection—whether it's team merchandise, travel packages, or sponsor products.
For YouTube, securing these rights could be the catalyst for a more comprehensive sports strategy that combines subscription revenue (YouTube TV/Premium) with its robust advertising infrastructures, something that is significantly more feasible within the wider Google advertising eco-system.
A new kids’ show will come with a crypto wallet when it debuts this fall
Why It Matters:
The headline for this article is somewhat misleading - the real story here is around a new way of looking at audience engagement and monetisation opportunities for content creators. We've spoken a lot recently about the rise of the creator in "traditional" entertainment (link to previous editions), including the upfronts hosted by creators such as Mr Beast and Netflix's announcement about creator content, and the recent announcement of a new kids show, "Owen Nowhere" from We Ghosted Media, is a fascinating look at a potential further evolution in the space.
"Owen Nowhere" represents a significant evolution in how entertainment content is both created and consumed. As "traditional" entertainment models continue to fragment, content creators are exploring new models that offer deeper audience engagement and alternative monetisation streams.We Ghosted Media — founded by Chris Jammal, an assistant director for "Bob's Burgers," and Jaclynn Demas, producer of hit children's show "Peg + Cat", is teaming up with the decentralised web3 platform Lamina1, founded by "Snow Crash" author Neal Stephenson and launched in 2022 as a Layer 1 blockchain platform designed to give creators an environment to protect, control, and monetize their intellectual property. Lamina1's overarching mission, however, is to build an open metaverse.
This blockchain-based approach transforms the traditional one-way viewing experience into an interactive ecosystem where audiences can vote on future storylines, purchase digital collectibles featured in episodes, and even shape the creative direction of the series. According to recent studies, interactive content generates up to 4.5x higher engagement rates compared to passive content experiences.
What makes this particularly noteworthy is that established entertainment professionals from hit shows like "Bob's Burgers" and "Peg + Cat" are leading this experiment, suggesting mainstream creators see value in these new models, but also moves away from the traditional distribution models. The approach aligns with broader entertainment trends where the lines between content, commerce, gaming, and social experiences are increasingly blurred.
While this approach isn't without challenges. It's a very permissive parent that will allow their children access to a crypro wallet (!), and mainstream adoption of these sorts of platforms still remains low,this initiative demonstrates how some within the entertainment industry are reimagining its relationship with audiences.
Content is evolving from something merely consumed to something collaboratively created, potentially establishing new paradigms for audience participation and monetisation opportunities in entertainment that could eventually influence how all media properties engage with their fans.
