Hi and welcome back to another edition of our newsletter. This week, we're seeing how AI platforms plan to make money from shopping. OpenAI has put a number on Instant Checkout: 4% per transaction. That fee compares favourably to Amazon. But there are other costs merchants should weigh too.

— Kole

OpenAI will take 4% of every sale Shopify merchants complete through Instant Checkout, the feature that lets ChatGPT users buy products without leaving the chat window.

For shoppers, it’s designed to reduce friction and time. For merchants, they’re only charged when a sale happens, not on CPC or CPM, as with most digital advertising.

At 4%, OpenAI’s fee is modest by industry standards. It sits well below Amazon’s referral fees. Framed against Meta and Google ads’ cost per acquisition costs, it can look even cheaper.

Merchants still handle fulfillment, refunds, and support. But they can't auto-enroll buyers into email lists without explicit opt-in.

Without on-site upsell opportunities, automatic marketing opt-in, or behavioral data for retargeting, customers generated via ChatGPT will likely be harder to monetize beyond the first transaction.

The downsides to agentic commerce could present longer-term. Channels that start as incremental/optional often become essential once shoppers congregate there. If Instant Checkout on ChatGPT follows that arc, more commerce moves away from branded sites, where design, storytelling, and experience create differentiation.

Read more →

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This is up from 35% reported in 2024, according to data from Sensor Tower. In the U.S., users spent 46% of their Instagram time on Reels, while Reels on Facebook also grew to 29% of user activity.

New data from Similarweb shows that Threads has 141.5 million daily users on iOS and Android, about 13% more than X’s 125 million. On the web, X still dominates with roughly 145.4 million daily visits, while Threads has only 8.5 million. 

Starting next week, users will begin to see single-image, video, carousel, and catalog ads in the Threads feed. Meta claims these ads will use the same formats and layouts as regular posts, and are labeled as “sponsored.”

The agreement sets up a new majority American-owned joint venture for TikTok’s U.S. operations. ByteDance will retain just under 20% of the company, while Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX each take 15% stakes. U.S. user data and algorithms will be stored on Oracle’s cloud, and the deal is expected to close this week.

Netflix said its advertising revenue grew about 2.5 times in 2025, exceeding its earlier expectation to roughly double the business. The streaming platform ended the year with 325 million paid subscribers globally, while total revenue rose 18% year on year, driven by subscription growth, pricing changes, and ads.

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