Turns out “all or virtually all” is doing a lot of heavy lifting these days.
Amazon is having a moment: Its Q2 2026 ad revenue climbed 26% to $19.8 billion, part of the first-ever $200 billion quarter. Business is very good.
But here’s the gray area: A new study found Amazon’s and Walmart’s AI assistants can spot fake “Made in USA” labels, and stay quiet, since flagging them is, per one bot, “a business calculation.”
Why we care: The marketplace polices what pays. Trust the listing less, verify origin claims yourself, and know the same loopholes shaping shopper trust apply to your own product pages.
Meanwhile, beauty found its channel: TikTok Shop notched nearly $1 billion in beauty sales last quarter, up 82% YoY, rewarding brands that treat it as retail, not a billboard.
But the playing field isn’t level. Five brands take roughly half of all indie revenue on the platform. Scaling there takes budget.
And skip the teen-targeting instinct: TikTok’s biggest US audience is millennials, not Gen Z. 36.5 million visitors aged 25–34, and its most active buyers.
Bottom line: Ecommerce is having a genuinely good moment. To prosper in it, watch the gray areas and be certain you’re hitting the right demographic.
