Amazon is using ChatGPT as an advertising channel to promote Prime Day, its biggest shopping event of the year. A search for "best deal on Apple 11-inch iPad" surfaced a sponsored Prime Day ad directing shoppers to Amazon's sale (Modern Retail). OpenAI began selling sponsored placements in ChatGPT earlier this year, with advertisers including Williams Sonoma, Bed Bath and Beyond, and The Knot (Modern Retail). According to independent e-commerce analyst Juozas Kaziukėnas, Amazon's move represents a test as companies experiment with ChatGPT's advertising offerings.
For commerce practitioners, Amazon's willingness to advertise on ChatGPT underscores a critical shift: AI chatbots are becoming recognized acquisition channels. Kaziukėnas noted that advertisers are eager to test new platforms before prices increase, viewing early adoption as an opportunity to "acquire users more cheaply than through other alternatives" (Modern Retail). Retailers are increasingly paying attention to AI platforms as potential sources of shoppers, with Shopify rolling out new analytics tools to help merchants measure traffic and sales from AI services such as ChatGPT (Modern Retail).
Amazon's move is notable given its broader caution about third-party AI agents accessing its marketplace. The company continues to block around 100 bots from accessing its site, including ChatGPT, according to a Modern Retail review of Amazon's robots.txt file (Modern Retail). However, Amazon has simultaneously invested heavily in OpenAI, signing a $38 billion AWS deal in November and committing a $50 billion investment in February (Modern Retail). A stronger signal of ChatGPT's long-term value to Amazon would be advertising individual products rather than broad Prime Day campaigns, Kaziukėnas suggested.