The Information's TITV
00:31:26 · Akash Pasricha, Catherine Perloff
[00:31:26] S0: And remind me, I think they had blocked access to Muse. Is that still in effect for Amazon? [00:31:35] S5: Yeah. So I mean, there's definitely an irony here that they are blocking Muse. To our knowledge, they're still blocking OpenAI, they're still blocking Google, but then they're going ahead and scraping other websites. So it's sort of like, you know, there can be... [00:31:50] S0: I would hate for one of those websites to block Amazon from accessing them. [00:31:57] S5: Well, know, any website can opt out of this program, so they're not like forcing anyone to be in it, but you have to opt out. It's not like automatic that you don't get to choose as a retailer whether you're a part of this, and I spoke to a lot of retailers that like didn't really know they were part of it until you know they kind of started noodling around. They're like, Oh, okay, I guess we have listings from here. Which that sometimes causes some controversy, especially because sometimes Amazon has gotten some of the details wrong about what those products actually are. But yeah, I mean merchants can opt out, but it's definitely different than other things Amazon has offered where, for example, they've been offering for several years Buy with Prime, which lets rival retailers use the Prime speedy delivery and checkout on a Shopify site, say. But you have to opt into that versus this is opt out.
00:31:57 · Catherine Perloff, Akash Pasricha
[00:31:57] S5: Well, know, any website can opt out of this program, so they're not like forcing anyone to be in it, but you have to opt out. It's not like automatic that you don't get to choose as a retailer whether you're a part of this, and I spoke to a lot of retailers that like didn't really know they were part of it until you know they kind of started noodling around. They're like, Oh, okay, I guess we have listings from here. Which that sometimes causes some controversy, especially because sometimes Amazon has gotten some of the details wrong about what those products actually are. But yeah, I mean merchants can opt out, but it's definitely different than other things Amazon has offered where, for example, they've been offering for several years Buy with Prime, which lets rival retailers use the Prime speedy delivery and checkout on a Shopify site, say. But you have to opt into that versus this is opt out. [00:32:51] S0: So when you say that this is a defensive play or maybe even an offensive play against these agents, so does Amazon have its own muse or instinct like agent? Or is the experience still that I put it in the search bar, I'm sure they have some AI search stuff as well. But is there sort of an AI personal assistant that can just go and buy things directly that competes with Muse?
00:33:21 · Catherine Perloff
[00:33:21] S5: Yeah, so well, they're basically like the sort of like the way this program works is that there's like a lot of products that are available where you actually have to buy it on another site. But there's of those products that you know they're offering some they have this Buy for Me button where you it is like an agent where you can use Amazon's agent, which is mostly based on anthropic models to go and like purchase it without leaving the site. And then they also have their kind of a separate product is this Alexa for Shopping chatbot where you can ask questions about products. The shop direct buy from you listings will come up in that chatbot as answers. So if you're like, I want to buy Aloe, Yoga, leggings, Amazon doesn't sell that, but you'll see this listing for the ShopDirect. So it is a competitor in a lot of ways because A, there's an agent and B, I mean, part of the point of the shop direct listings is that it wants to sort of replicate the experience of using, you know, Muse where you can just see anything on the web from Amazon, even if like just seeing another listing, you know, isn't like maybe what we think of when we think of AI, but it's kind of like that AI like experience. And then for some products there, you know, you can actually use the agent to buy it. Now I will say I saw when I've just been, you know, browsing Amazon reporting on this story, I definitely saw many more products you could that took you outside the site than actually using an agent to let you buy it. But like that option exists. It's just more limited.
00:34:55 · Akash Pasricha, Catherine Perloff
[00:34:55] S0: How many people are using this? It's called Shop Direct feature? Do we have any stats at all? [00:35:03] S5: You know, it's, we, you know, we noticed two fifty million products being sold via this, which is a big expansion from March when there was only 100,000,000 products being sold. However, is anyone buying that? We don't really know. I talked to a lot of, you know, ecommerce consultants, retailers. They all really either weren't sure whether they were in the program or if they were in the program, weren't really able to tell if it was driving sales. And part of that is, you know, Amazon probably could have better sort of attribution infrastructure to help the retailers link the program to sales. But I think part of it is like maybe people aren't really clicking on these links. I mean, we don't exactly know. And I mean, do think though it is worth saying that like all of agentic commerce, even Muse is still like pretty niche. Most people aren't doing this right now. So, but yeah, right now it's kind of interesting to like they're expanding it. There's so many products available, but we're not seeing a ton of traction where it's gotten a lot of mindshare really from retailers that they've noticed a ton of sales from this.
00:35:03 · Catherine Perloff, Akash Pasricha
[00:35:03] S5: You know, it's, we, you know, we noticed two fifty million products being sold via this, which is a big expansion from March when there was only 100,000,000 products being sold. However, is anyone buying that? We don't really know. I talked to a lot of, you know, ecommerce consultants, retailers. They all really either weren't sure whether they were in the program or if they were in the program, weren't really able to tell if it was driving sales. And part of that is, you know, Amazon probably could have better sort of attribution infrastructure to help the retailers link the program to sales. But I think part of it is like maybe people aren't really clicking on these links. I mean, we don't exactly know. And I mean, do think though it is worth saying that like all of agentic commerce, even Muse is still like pretty niche. Most people aren't doing this right now. So, but yeah, right now it's kind of interesting to like they're expanding it. There's so many products available, but we're not seeing a ton of traction where it's gotten a lot of mindshare really from retailers that they've noticed a ton of sales from this. [00:36:07] S0: So how do the retailers feel about it though? Because you just mentioned they wish there was a little bit more attribution and they wish there was maybe some more data that they could have access to as well. But if I'm Warby Parker and I'm seeing more customers ultimately purchase on my site and they're redirected to me from Amazon, I mean, a retailer, I'm pretty happy about this, right? Or is this a double edged sword?
00:36:36 · Catherine Perloff
[00:36:36] S5: No, totally. I think some retailers I spoke to were definitely happy about this. Or they saw the potential. They were like, Amazon gets way more traffic than my Shopify site. So if Amazon can send all these people to my Shopify site, that's great. I think the con is that as we've been kind of covering at The Information Agents Shopping, it's very difficult to get all the product details right and to, you know, retail websites get updated constantly, prices get updated constantly. Sometimes you go to a retail site and they say like 50% off the whole site, but then when you actually go to the product, that's not true. So it's very hard for Amazon to always be getting right all of these details. They've made improvements to try to get this right, actually partnering with feed companies to try to sort of have merchants, you know, have the product catalog information so they can be sure that it's right. But I think the flip side of this is that, yeah, there were complaints earlier this year that Amazon was getting stuff wrong through this program. They were surfacing that were incorrect, out of stock, etc. So you don't want to confuse the customer. And then I guess there can also be issues where you might have a deal where you don't want to have certain products on Amazon, like that's your whole strategy, and then you don't want to kind of mess that up.