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So… some news out of OpenAI this week. They've given up on putting checkout directly inside ChatGPT.

The idea was that you'd find a product, buy it and never leave the chat window. ChatGPT are claiming that (in the six-month test window), people are using it to browse and research, then going elsewhere to buy. So now they're pushing purchases out to connected third-party apps instead. Their official line: "We are evolving our commerce strategy within ChatGPT to better meet merchants and users where they are." Partners like Shopify, Etsy, Walmart, and Target are still integrated, just completing the transaction elsewhere.

We get it. Real-time inventory, pricing accuracy across millions of products, sales tax compliance - it’s complicated. But of course, it has nothing to do with Amazon investing $50b in OpenAI only weeks earlier. Let’s see what other LLM’s do…

While we’re here, new research from The Navigators this week shows that 30% of Australians have used AI tools in buying decisions, and 27% are prepared to buy directly via AI tools. Maybe it’s just the Americans who weren’t ready.

Klaviyo dropped a new feature this week - Locale Aware Catalogs. It means Klaviyo will natively sync Shopify Markets data directly into the platform. It means that language, currency, regional pricing, and market-specific product URLs all pull through automatically, without the need to manage multiple catalogues or build custom logic.

Use cases include the ability to send personalised messages by language or market, create language-based segments or customise flows based on shopping location. This video is a good explainer. If you're on Shopify Markets, worth checking out.

Guys, Facebook is listening to you. No, not in that creepy way that we know they're listening to us, but as advertisers. Meta has announced they're narrowing click-through attribution to actual link clicks only. No more likes, saves, or shares counting as a "click" for conversion purposes. Those social actions now sit in a new bucket called engage-through attribution.

So the three categories going forward are: click-through (link click), engage-through (likes, saves, shares, comments), and view-through (impressions). This aligns Meta with how Google Analytics has always counted, which should make your cross-platform reporting a lot less confusing. When this rolls out, your click-through numbers will probably drop, but it's a reclassification, not a performance decline (hopefully). Also in the same update, the video engagement view threshold drops from 10 seconds to 5 seconds, which matters if you're running Reels ads. I have nothing cynical to say about this one. It's just a good update.

But… they also announced location fees starting July 1 on ads delivered into six markets - Austria and Turkey at 5%, France, Italy, and Spain at 3%, and the UK at 2%. And they acquired Moltbook - a Reddit-style social network built exclusively for AI agents to post and interact with each other. I'm back to being cynical now.

New research out this week shows influencer marketing is on track to become a $1 billion industry in Australia this year, with two-thirds of new spend being reallocated from traditional paid and digital channels. There are now nearly 7,000 influencer marketing services operating globally.

Despite all that money flowing in, a study from the Association of National Advertisers in the US found only 51% of marketers have full visibility into what they're actually paying creators, and just 25% are very satisfied with their compensation agreements. Half are using a mix of in-house and external partners to manage it, 32% leaning mostly on agencies, 16% handling it all internally.

If you're spending in this channel, it's worth making sure you actually have visibility on what you're paying and what you're getting because most people apparently don't.

Marisa Taschke runs The Lullaby Club, an Australian maternity fashion brand. When a customer filed a chargeback on a $450 order, Marisa got her Bob Katter on and decided she wouldn’t cop it. She tracked down the customer's workplace, called reception, got put through, and told her to reverse the chargeback or she’d send the police to her workplace. She even invoiced the $25 chargeback fee on top. Resolved.

Then when the video went viral, the customer called back asking her to take it down. Marisa said no. And then found out the same customer had done the same thing to another founder back in 2023. She now calls herself the Bounty Hunter of Chargebacks. It’s the superhero we need. Go get em.

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Most brands think they have a community. What they actually have is a mailing list with decent open rates.

Community is one of those words that gets thrown around so loosely that it's lost most of its meaning. This week, we went looking for the brands that have actually figured it out.

Tara McKeon from Proud Poppy, Briony Kennedy from Adorn Cosmetics, Laura Thompson and Sarah Sheridan from Clothing the Gaps, and Anastasia Lloyd-Wallis from Retail Doctor Group all had something to say about what real community looks like… and what it costs to build it.

Three things I took from this one:

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