Amazon and OpenAI announced a partnership last week, but not the one everyone’s been waiting for. Amazon’s product catalog still isn’t in ChatGPT, but now its advertisers are.
Quick Backstory: Since the dawn of AI commerce, folks have debated whether Amazon would open its product catalog to ChatGPT. It’s been the biggest will they, won’t they love story of our generation. More epic than Ross and Rachel after they had a baby together but kept dating other people, and more thrilling than Ted and Robin after Ted killed his wife.
The haters said, “Never! Amazon wants customers using their own AI tools.” The lovers said, “Definitely! Amazon is smart and puts its products where shoppers are.” Both sides have legitimate reasons to justify their predictions, but so far the haters are still winning.
The new partnership between the two companies is focused exclusively on ads, so Amazon still hasn’t opened its entire raw product data feed to OpenAI, like merchants on Shopify and other platforms do. Instead, it became a reseller of OpenAI’s ad inventory, joining a partner roster that already includes Criteo, Adobe, Kargo, Pacvue, and StackAdapt.
Chris Conetta, Director of Omnichannel Supply at Amazon DSP, said:
“Conversational ads represent the fastest growing engagement opportunity for brands to reach new and existing audiences. The AI-driven ad experience is not just a vision of what’s to come, but an opportunity for advertisers to meet relevant users where they spend time today. With access to ChatGPT Ads, advertisers can now extend their campaigns further into where their customers are actively spending time in conversational chat platforms.”
The integration is not just for Amazon sellers. Any brand that advertises through Amazon DSP, which also reaches channels like Prime Video, Twitch, Fire TV, and third-party sites and apps across the open internet, can have their Amazon Ads surface through ChatGPT. For example, Delta Vacations is one of the first brands to test the integration to help users discover vacation packages.
The move makes sense for both companies. Remember, Amazon DSP is an entirely different business model than Amazon Marketplace. The former benefits from casting as wide of a net as possible across inventory partners, while the latter benefits from building a moat around its product data so that customers use Amazon’s AI search tools instead. As for OpenAI, the more partners they have selling ad inventory on their platform, the faster Sam Altman can stop stalling his IPO while waiting for his ad revenue to catch up with OpenAI’s valuation.
The pilot is open to select advertisers in the US.
