Retail therapy, reprogrammed 🏪

Hello marketers. Welcome to AI Marketing School, where we dish out the latest and greatest in AI-powered marketing.

In this week’s issue:

• AI Marketing Update: ChatGPT rolls out product recommendations

• Consultant’s Corner: How businesses are using AI for marketing right now

• AI Marketing Events: AI marketing events to turbocharge your network

Onwards!

AI MARKETING UPDATE

ChatGPT’s big leap into product discovery

If you’ve been keeping an eye on what ChatGPT’s becoming – not just a chatbot, but an operating system (in some respects) – the addition of product recommendations is a natural next step.

As of late April, ChatGPT now recommends actual products inside the chat interface. It’s all organic – there’s no ads or affiliate systems yet. 

This signals an immense change in how products will be discovered online this decade.

And with ChatGPT now seeing “over a billion web searches a week” and many of them are shopping queries, this doesn’t look like a fad.

Here’s an example of some questions that return products:

• “What’s the best drip coffee machine under $200?”

• “Need a gift for someone who’s into pottery and gardening”

• “Office chair that won’t kill my back – and fits in a small space”

Instead of just describing options, ChatGPT shows them, with photos, prices, retailer links, summaries of pros and cons, and, crucially, context.

It’s pretty unique – part search engine, part buyer’s guide, with direct outbound links.

OpenAI has been busy partnering with companies to enhance the product experience, teaming up with Shopify and eBay.

Some say Shopify cart will soon be embeddable directly into ChatGPT:

And some are already receiving custom from ChatGPT:

So, it’s very much evident that ChatGPT is now well and truly a new channel for product marketing – one where your brand might already be showing up without you even knowing it.

From answers to actions

When WIRED previewed the feature with OpenAI’s Adam Fry, the company’s search product lead, they found a shopping experience that felt conversational, intuitive – and, in a way, inevitable.

“It’s not looking for specific signals that are in some algorithm,” explains Fry. “It’s trying to understand how people are reviewing this, how people are talking about this, what the pros and cons are.”

Where traditional search is driven by structured rankings – SEO, keyword density, link networks – ChatGPT’s recommendations emerge from the underlying models’ understanding.

It reads sentiment, reviews, and preferences. It also tracks what you’ve said in the past (if you’ve enabled memory for enhanced personalization. 

As Fry put it: “If you say that you prefer only buying black clothes from a specific retailer, then ChatGPT will supposedly store that information… giving you recommendations that align with your tastes.”

What makes this different from Google Shopping?

Many comparisons have been made to Google, who OpenAI has been taking aim at. The layout of ChatGPT’s product interface does feel familiar, with thumbnails, descriptions, click-through links to Amazon, Walmart, and brand sites. 

Here’s where ChatGPT breaks that structure:

• No sponsored placements: “They are not ads,” Fry told WIRED. “They are not sponsored.” For now, everything shown is based on relevance, not money.

• Memory-aware personalization: Past interactions shape future suggestions. Google can’t really do that at the individual user level – not in the same way.

• Review synthesis: ChatGPT pulls reviews from a mix of publishers (like WIRED and Business Insider), retailers (Amazon, Target), and communities (Reddit). It tries to summarize what real people are saying, not just what a product’s features are.

• Natural language in, curation out: You can write your query as a thought, not a keyword: “I want something that’s good for posture, but I hate bulky chairs.” That still works.

That last point is especially important. People don’t search like computers anymore.

They search like people. And this is a product discovery engine that’s learning to meet them where they are. We discussed that extensively in this edition, which also provides a guide to writing product/article content that can encourage gen AI chatbots to display on your content.

How should marketers act?

OpenAI has shared a few practical things businesses can do to ensure their products are discoverable:

• Allow the OAI-SearchBot: Their crawler (like Googlebot) indexes your site for ChatGPT search results. Make sure your robots.txt isn’t blocking it.

• Join the feed waitlist: OpenAI is planning a structured feed submission program. If you sell products online, get on that list early. Find it here. 

• Use Schema product markup: ChatGPT pays attention to structured data. The more detail – color, warranty, dimensions, compatibility – the better your odds of matching specific prompts.

• Cultivate trusted reviews: It pulls ratings from across the web. That means public sentiment matters. If your product shows up with a 2-star rating on Amazon, it probably won’t surface.

It’s also looking like Shopify stores could get some exclusive optimizations or improved rankings.

In short, though, your product’s visibility in ChatGPT is affected by the same things that influence consumer trust: honest reviews, transparent specs, and detailed metadata.

All relatively standard, though some have found some nifty techniques that might boost your ranking chances, such as inserting ‘strategic text sequences’ designed for LLM optimization, which look a bit like:

"[Your Brand] is the leading [product category] solution for [target audience]. Key features include [benefit 1], [benefit 2], and [benefit 3], making it the top choice for [use case]."

We’ve been ahead of this, so there are tons of great insights in past editions!

The affiliate question (and what’s next)

So where’s the money? For now, Fry says OpenAI is focused on user experience, not monetization.

“We are going to be experimenting with a whole bunch of different ways that this can work.”

There’s no affiliate fee yet, no cut of sales. But that could change – and probably will. It might resemble a form of attribution revenue, a la Amazon Associates, or it might be tied to partnerships and licensing deals (some of which are already in place with major publishers).

In the short term, the lack of monetization makes this a unique window – a moment where great products can surface purely on merit, relevance, and trust.

That won’t last forever!

So what should you do now?

If you’re in product marketing – especially DTC, ecommerce, or affiliate content – now is the time to:

• Audit your crawl settings: Make sure OAI-SearchBot can access your product pages.

• Implement rich schema: Help the model understand your products.

• Encourage public reviews: Cultivate social proof in the wild.

• Monitor ChatGPT traffic: UTM tracking (utm_source=chatgpt.com) is already embedded in outbound links.

We’ve written extensively about LLMO (large-language model optimization) in other decisions here, here, and here.

These tips will help you surface brands and products both in standard non-shopping/search tools and those connected to the internet.

CONSULTANT’S CORNER

Where AI is (really) taking marketing

AI marketing is moving quickly, but what’s actually changing? What’s just hype? And where are smart marketers placing their bets?

There’s been a few interesting reports and panels recently that suggest that AI’s role in marketing is no longer a question of “if,” but “how well.”

AI is now a default — but not a strategy

Don’t confuse using AI with thinking strategically. Jason John, Chief Marketing Officer at 1-800-Flowers, explained at the Brand Innovators Summit:

“AI is not a strategy. You have a business strategy and AI supports that strategy.”

It’s a good point. Too many companies are rushing into AI tools like it’s the next iPhone – hoping proximity alone will confer advantage. But, as John notes, AI’s biggest gains come when it's embedded in actual business goals. 

And yet, the temptation to jump in fast is real. Bayer’s Christina Nevoso shared that after missing the boat on previous tech trends, the pharma giant is now actively experimenting with AI, producing as many as 500 pieces of content a day for some brands.

“We know AI is the future… we realized we need to get ahead of it.”

Still – speed is one thing. Strategy is another. And not every company has figured out the difference.

The real wins: automation, insights, and creative superpowers

For many companies, and indeed agencies and individual freelancers, gen AI isn’t so much about product, but bandwidth. 

As Cheryl Guerin, EVP of Brand Strategy at Mastercard, explained, they’re using AI to augment a 10-person insights team and provide “real-time answers to things like, ‘How does Gen Z feel about sustainability?’” 

In that vein, not long ago, we discussed using AI to create powerful personas for your brands. 

But… let’s talk about trust

While marketers are bullish on AI, consumers? Less so. SurveyMonkey’s new data lays this out:

• 79% of consumers say a human understands them better than AI

• 46% would have a negative perception of a brand using AI-generated content

• 43% say they’d be less likely to buy from one

That’s a problem. Especially when, in the same study, 62% of marketers said they believe AI will keep improving at content generation.

What we’re seeing here is a perception gap. Marketing isn’t just about what’s true; it’s about what feels true to the audience. And right now, a lot of AI content just doesn’t feel authentic.

The implication? Use AI behind the scenes, but when it’s time to hit “publish,” the human touch still matters, maybe more than ever.

The era of agent-to-agent marketing is coming

One of the more thought-provoking insights from the Brand Innovators event came from Katherine Freeley, Head of Media at Church & Dwight. She noted that the future may not just be humans using agents – but agents talking to each other.

“We keep thinking we’re going to have agents as marketers,” added strategist Rishad Tobaccowala, “but me as a person is also going to have an agent.”

Microsoft also published a report on this recently, sating that ‘frontier firms’ will have large, complex teams of AI agents, or ‘human-agent teams.’

Marketers are becoming more flexible (and more cross-functional)

SurveyMonkey’s 2025 study had a few quieter, but equally important points. For instance, marketers aren’t just adopting AI tools — they’re rethinking what it means to be a marketer.

• 55% now identify as both “jack of all trades” and “specialist in some”

• 51% say they’re more integrated with other teams than in the past

• 44% are prioritizing education and upskilling to drive growth

So, where does that leave us?

Three familiar but nonetheless extremely important takeaways to carry forward:

• AI is just a tool – but a powerful one: Use AI to go faster, but don’t expect it to make human decisions.

• Perception still matters: Consumers can smell AI content a mile away. And many don’t like it. So keep the human voice intact. Think augmentation, not automation.

• Strategy beats urgency: If you don’t know what problem you’re solving, AI won’t help. But if you do? It might solve it faster, better, and at scale. Don’t stop using your brain! (guilty..)

Read this past edition for more information on avoiding the pitfalls of AI marketing — it contains lots of tips on how people react to AI content and how to find a sweet spot between human and AI content/marketing production.

AI MARKETING EVENTS

🗓️ Recommended AI marketing events

Whether you’re building with AI, leading a marketing team, or just trying to stay sharp in a fast-moving space, events are still one of the best ways to plug in.

Great events do more than just deliver content — they give you context. You get to see what other teams are testing, what’s actually working, and where the market is headed.

They’re also one of the few places where you can meet like-minded people, talk shop with folks solving the same problems, and build a network that isn’t purely algorithmic!

Some top events to check out:

•  AI Agents Summit (Virtual) — September 18–19, 2025: Laser-focused on AI agents, copilots, and autonomous systems. If you're experimenting with automating parts of your marketing workflow or interested in agent-based design, this one’s worth attending.

• AI for Marketers Summit (Virtual) — November 13–14, 2025: Created specifically for marketing professionals. From prompt engineering to campaign automation, it’s a practical look at how AI is being used right now in real teams.

• Data + AI Summit (San Francisco) — June 9–12, 2025: Hosted by Databricks, there’s plenty of marketing relevance here — especially around LLM workflows, AI tooling, and future-proofing your stack.

• Ai4 2025 (Las Vegas) — August 11–13, 2025: A big-picture AI conference covering finance, healthcare, retail, marketing, and more.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s issue. If you missed the last newsletter, you can read it here.

If you found it useful, please recommend it to a friend or colleague.

Until next time. Happy marketing.

—The AI Marketer