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What a week to be a checkout developer. As we know from last week, OpenAI killed Instant Checkout. This week, they replaced it with enhanced product discovery via the Agentic Commerce Protocol. Shopify merchants now sit inside ChatGPT, but when someone buys, they're pushed to the merchant's own store via in-app browser. Harley explains it in his video and does a good job of pretending he’s just as excited as when the full checkout was agentic.

Meanwhile, Google's UCP update added multi-item carts, real-time catalogue access, and identity linking for loyalty. And Gap became the first major fashion brand to commit to full native checkout within Google Gemini. I’m sure the Google announcements were just coincidental timing.

Then, Walmart handed everyone the only hard data no one really thinks is worth the press release: conversion inside ChatGPT was one-third of what they got when users clicked out to their own site. Their EVP called the experience "unsatisfying." I’d call it “early”. There are no winners or losers yet. This thing's barely in diapers.

The marketers probably fell asleep halfway through the checkout article above, but there have been some big releases for them this week as well.

Google dropped a bunch of new capabilities just in time for this week's industry conferences. The Ads AI Advisor agent sits inside your Google Ads account to answer queries, generate reports, troubleshoot campaign issues, and surface new ideas. This guide on how to use Analytics AI Advisor is worth bookmarking if you want to get more out of your Google campaigns. Reddit announced a new Shopify integration designed to automatically surface the right products to the right user in context on the platform. And Meta announced they're aggregating customer reviews and providing an AI summary in their shopping experience (similar to what Amazon already does).

But perhaps the greatest technological advancement of the year? Instagram now lets you reorder carousel images after publishing. Forget AI-schm-AI. Carousels are the future.

Two stories this week that every Australian retailer should read together. The JB Hi-Fi extended warranty class action covers purchases between 2011 and 2023. If you, like me, got an unexpected text this month that looked like a scam, it probably wasn't. The allegation is that extended warranties were sold with little or no value beyond rights customers already held for free under Australian Consumer Law. The downside… There are 8 million of us in this class action. No one is leaving with more than a HiSense TV.

Meanwhile, PhotobookShop paid $40K in ACCC penalties after instructing influencers, in writing, not to mention that the products were free, sponsored, or that PhotobookShop had contacted them. On 107 occasions. They also edited a creator's review to cut the parts where she called their AI tool "a bit fiddly" and "a bit confusing." Very, very dodgy. Kind of like Photoshop. I mean PhotobookShop. I'm confused.

Walmart secured two AI pricing patents this year, part of nearly 50 US patents they've quietly banked in 2026. One automates markdown pricing using demand data and price elasticity. The second is a demand-forecasting engine that ingests purchase history, payment methods, and customer IDs to recommend prices. They call out session data, items added to cart, ads viewed, ads clicked, User ID and more to determine a price. Walmart says both patents are "unrelated to dynamic pricing." Incestuous cousins might be more accurate.

Walmart are rolling out electronic shelf labels to all 4,600 US stores by year's end. Lawmakers in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota are already moving to ban algorithmic grocery pricing. Coles and Woolworths have refused to rule dynamic pricing out when asked directly. Coming to a shelf near you soon. You'll need a position soon.

Amazon acquired Rivr, a Zurich-based startup that builds wheel-legged robots capable of climbing stairs. The CEO calls it "a dog on roller skates." If you can strap a couch and a flatpack to that thing and have it delivered, I'd have acquired it myself at an undisclosed sum. Meanwhile, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff got excited about a package sorting robot this week. I feel sorry for it. Surely it gets picked on at robot school.

Amazon, to their credit, aren't fully giving up on humans. They just went and recruited the biggest human they could find: Australian NFL star Jordan Mailata, now serving as Amazon Australia's official Packaging Reduction Officer. Funny video.

And before you go, very special announcement: there is now an avocado scanner that tells you if your avo is ripe without squeezing it. This is where all Australian R&D should be going. There is also a Global Avocado Summit in November in Santiago, Chile. Who’s keen?

A few things worth knowing from the ATC partners this week, and I wanted to give them their own space so they didn't fall into my snarky comments above:

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Most brands don't decide to become discount-dependent. They just do it once, it works, and then they do it again.

And slowly, without really deciding to, they've taught their customers something: that the regular price isn't real. Once you've done that, it's almost impossible to undo. It becomes the tax you pay for staying visible in a market where everyone else is running the same tactics.

The brands that hold full price aren't doing it just on principle. They've just made different decisions, earlier, about what kind of customers they want. Dani Pearce has run Merry People for 12 years without a single discount. Not a rule she's white-knuckling through. It's become one of the things her customers actually respect her for.

Examples from this Playbook

👢 Dani Pearce at Merry People deliberately made the policy visible. It's on the product page. No waiting for a sale, no gaming the calendar. And there's a bonus: Merry People's peak season runs from March to July, which means peak acquisition spend occurs when ad costs are lowest.

👑 Simon Beard from Culture Kings called it out plainly: you're trading down to a more disloyal customer while burning a loyal one. Sales buyers behave differently. The moment the discount ends, they're gone.

👖 James Bartle built Outland Denim on one of the most powerful brand missions in Australian fashion. But the mission doesn't close the sale. When someone tries on jeans, they're asking: do these fit, do they feel like quality, do they look good? Strip away the story, and your product still has to win on its own.

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