eCommerce Express Digest - May 2025

We’re excited to bring you the latest tech and digital marketing updates from April and it was a big one! From AI to social and analytics, the major players ramped up their feature rollouts. 

OpenAI announced a new shopping feature in ChatGPT. On the social front, Meta is officially launching ads on Threads, tapping into its 300 million monthly active users. Meanwhile, TikTok stays online a little longer but the future is not clear, Trump extending the deadline to sell to a US-based company by an additional 75 days.Over at Google, Analytics got a boost with new snapshot templates and improved attribution thanks to aggregate identifiers.

Catch up on the biggest changes and what they mean for marketers below.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT rolls out new shopping feature

OpenAI is introducing a shopping feature in ChatGPT that gives users personalised product recommendations, complete with images, descriptions, reviews, and direct links to retailers like Amazon and Walmart. Suggestions are based on user preferences and public reviews from platforms like WIRED and Reddit and are not paid ads so OpenAI does not earn a commission. Unlike Google Shopping, the results are currently organic and curated through structured data from third-party websites and product feeds. The goal is to create a more conversational, discovery-led shopping experience that could one day rival traditional search engines. 

The screenshot below, provided by OpenAI, shows the ChatGPT interface during a search for espresso machines. It features a product grid with pricing, images, descriptions, retailer names like Walmart, and “Buy Now” buttons.

We haven’t seen this in work here personally at Megantic yet – have you? We would love to know your experience if so! 

OpenAI rolls out new feature Memory with Search

OpenAI has rolled out Memory in ChatGPT. Now, when you ask ChatGPT to look something up, it can use details you’ve shared in past chats to tailor the results, whether it’s your coffee machine preference or your go-to retailers. It rewrites your prompts to be more specific and relevant.  ChatGPT search is available to all ChatGPT Free, Plus, Team, Edu, Enterprise users. This is another step for ChatGPT towards being more personal and will involve users having to opt out if they don’t want to use ‘Memory’. See below for where to locate the Search function.

Meta rolls out ads globally on Threads feed

“At the end of the day we’re a business and Threads needs to make enough money to pay for the people and servers that it takes to run the service and provide it to people for free.” – Adam Mosseri, Instagram and Threads Lead

Threads is Meta’s text-based social media app, designed as a companion to Instagram and a direct competitor to X (formerly Twitter). Launched in July 2023, Threads lets users share short text posts, images, and videos in a scrolling feed. And now Meta is officially rolling out ads on Threads, its text-based social platform, tapping into its 300 million monthly active users. After limited testing earlier this year, image-based ads will now appear globally in users’ feeds. The move confirms Meta’s confidence in Threads as a viable, monetisable platform for text-first audiences.

TikTok still online but the future remains uncertain

In a recent twist, Trump has extended the TikTok sale deadline by another 75 days, giving ByteDance more time to negotiate a U.S. buyer. For now, brands can continue marketing on the platform, which remains a major channel for reaching younger audiences. But with growing tensions between the U.S. and China, the future of TikTok is still uncertain and new rules around ads, targeting or content moderation could be on the way. 

“No one’s acting like TikTok is gone – but no one’s pretending it’s business as usual, either.”– Raul Rios, Head of strategy at independent creative agency Saylor

For brands that have built strategies around TikTok’s algorithm and culture, shifting to other platforms may mean starting from scratch with different content formats, performance metrics and audience behaviours.

New in GA4: Snapshot Templates and Smarter Attribution with Aggregate Identifiers

Google Analytics has rolled out new snapshot templates and updated its card library, making it quicker to access key insights on user behaviour, sales and marketing performance without building custom reports. It also now uses aggregate identifiers for more accurate attribution from Google Ads, even when individual data is limited. These updates make reporting faster and insights more reliable for marketers and analysts, see screenshot of new “Reports snapshot” below:

And that’s a wrap on this month’s biggest tech updates. If something major slipped under our radar or you’re keen to dive deeper, we’re all ears! Get in touch and chat with our friendly  team of Technical SEO experts.