AI assistants now offer shopping and advertising features, and store owners are being encouraged to connect their catalogs and start spending. We have helped run some of the early tests. Our advice is to separate two things that are being sold as one.
Listing your products is worth doing
Publishing your catalog to an AI assistant works much like a product feed for a shopping search engine: a structured list of what you sell, with prices, images and stock. If someone asks the assistant about something you carry, your products can appear in the answer. It usually uses the same feed you already send to shopping and advertising channels, so the cost is the setup.
Paid placement has not earned its cost for product sales
In the tests we have seen, paid placements inside AI assistants have not paid for themselves for businesses selling products. The apps that connect stores to these ad platforms are also very new. We have run into faults that took time to diagnose and had nothing to do with the store.
How to test without wasting money
- Connect the catalog first. That is the part with no downside.
- If you test ads, set a small fixed budget and an end date before you start.
- Decide in advance what result would justify continuing, measured in orders in your own store, not in the platform’s report.
- Keep your existing feed and tracking as they are. Do not rebuild something stable around a tool that is a few weeks old.
- Put a date in the calendar a few months out to try again. These products change quickly.
None of this is an argument against the channel. It is an argument for being present now and spending later, when there is evidence.
Related service: AI integration.