As AI continues to impact how people discover and transact online, we’re tracking the developments that affect the way we and our clients do business. Find the latest roundup of AI Insights below (nb. content correct at time of publication 14/10/2025, but this is a rapidly evolving field!). This issue covers ads being rolled out in AI Overviews, concerns around the impact of AI on the economy and planet, and the release of OpenAI’s ‘Instant Checkout’ facility and its potential impact on ecommerce.
AI Overview Ads
Whilst the Competition and Markets Authority may have Google firmly in their sights over the monopoly and fairness of its search and ad practices, Google continues its quest to dominate. Ads in AI Overviews (AIO) will be rolled out beyond American home-turf to selected English-speaking markets this quarter. A move which could significantly impact brands visibility and engagement. If your business is not yet optimised for AI Overviews then this is an opportunity not to be missed, or else your business might be. We’re working with our clients across a number of for AIO optimisation techniques, including increasing brand mentions and product links wherever possible.
An AI economic blindspot?
AI continues to be front-of-mind as we career headlong into the future, but the International Monetary Fund and Bank of England have concerns. Is there a degree of “financial engineering” occurring with AI companies currently being overvalued? And will the bubble soon burst? Early AI entrepreneur Jerry Kaplan shared his views at a panel discussion in Silicon Valley where he stated, “When [the bubble] breaks, it’s going to be really bad, and not just for people in AI … It’s going to drag down the rest of the economy.”
There is hard empirical evidence that backs this standpoint, with Gartner estimating global spending on AI, reaching an enormous $1.5tn (£1.1tn) before the end of the year, and AI-related enterprises accounting for 80% of the huge American stock market gains this year. Beyond the financial impact, there are concerns around that of the physical infrastructure being built to satisfy the insatiable appetite for AI and how that could be creating an ecological disaster of its own.
Many are concerned about deals such being undertaken in the space which seem to indicate a degree of “circular financing”. Chipmaker Nvidia has a stake in CoreWeave, which supplies OpenAI with some of its infrastructure needs. Meanwhile, OpenAI has made a $100bn deal with Nvidia, before then announcing they planned to purchase billions of dollars of equipment from their rival AMD (positioning OpenAI as one of AMD’s largest shareholders). OpenAI themselves have attracted investment from Microsoft, Oracle and SoftBank. Interestingly, while OpenAI has experienced rapid revenue growth, it has never turned a profit!
Checkout Open(AI)
OpenAI has now launched ‘Instant Checkout’ where ChatGPT Pro, Plus and Free logged-in users can buy ‘in conversation’ from U.S Etsy sellers. OpenAI partnered with fintech company Stripe to develop their open source ‘Agentic Commerce Protocol’ which powers both ChatGPT subscriptions and now the ‘Instant Checkout’ feature. The Protocol gives developers a standard to enable in-chat checkout and the scope to integrate it more widely. Perplexity introduced a similar feature last year and Microsoft has enabled merchants to create in-chat storefronts through the Copilot Merchant Program.
As consumers grow increasingly accustomed to frictionless conversational experiences, OpenAI’s next move is an integration with Shopify. This will connect them with 1 million merchants and potentially give them the power to control product selection and call their cut. Between this and the impact of the discovery process moving away from the traditional gatekeepers of Google and Amazon, the next evolution of ecommerce could be upon us. Where once the journey was “drive traffic → convert” we’re now looking at a single seamless “conversational conversion” process.
The market certainly seems confident of the potential of ‘conversational commerce’. Following the announcement, shares of Etsy closed up nearly 16% and Shopify’s stock more than 6%. Smart brands are tracking developments and investing in optimisation for conversational shopping and we’re looking at new optimisation levers and measurement methods .
If you’d value a conversation around the latest developments and the potential impact on your organisation then we’d love to speak to you.