#488 – New AI Universal Commerce Protocol & Amazon Superstores Coming? | Weekly Buzz 1/16/26
Audio version above. Video version below
We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s VP of Education and Strategy, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.
Google announces a new protocol to facilitate commerce using AI agents
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/11/google-announces-a-new-protocol-to-facilitate-commerce-using-ai-agents/
Walmart’s head of AI reveals the key difference between its shopping deals with Google Gemini and ChatGPT
https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-ai-head-reveals-difference-in-gemini-and-chatgpt-shopping-2026-1
New Feature Alert: Helium 10 Ads is testing rank-based bid automation. Elite/Diamond users can auto-adjust bids using Share of Voice metrics when organic or sponsored rank changes, reducing manual checks and optimizing ad spend.
TikTok Adds More AI-Powered Tools To Assist TikTok Shop Merchants
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-adds-more-ai-powered-tools-to-assist-tiktok-shop-merchants/809789/
Strategy of the Week: Helium 10 Inventory Heatmaps show where FBA inventory and sales are located. They help sellers avoid poor conversion from slow shipping, decide when to reopen listings, and optimize restocks by tracking inventory and sales distribution.
Amazon takes on Walmart with new store concept
https://www.grocerydive.com/news/amazon-big-box-store-plans-walmart-grocery/809423/
In episode 488 of the AM/PM Podcast and Weekly Buzz, Bradley talks about:
- 00:00 – Introduction
- 01:05 – Universal Commerce Protocol
- 04:21 – Walmart x Gemini
- 08:54 – Keyword Rank PPC Rules
- 12:49 – AI TikTok Seller Tools
- 14:33 – Inventory Heat Maps
- 17:58 – Amazon Superstore?
Transcript
Bradley Sutton:
Is there a new universal order for AI e-commerce that doesn’t include Amazon? Imagine being able to set your PPC bids based on your keyword rank. Will you be able to have your product soon in an Amazon brick-and-mortar superstore? These stories and more on today’s Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.
Bradley Sutton:
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the AMPM Podcast by Gilean 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the goings-on in the Amazon TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We let you know what new features Helium 10 has, and we also give a training tip of the week.
Bradley Sutton:
So let’s get started and see what’s buzzing. All right, guys, it’s actually a little bit slow of a week again here in news. Sometimes no news is good news, right? You know, no fee increases or no Amazon warehouses burning down, but there are a couple things that could have some short and long-term effects for you sellers. So let’s go ahead and hop into the news.
Bradley Sutton:
The first article is from TechCrunch. Now, this is interesting. I picked TechCrunch, but literally every major outlet out there was talking about this. And TechCrunch called it, Google announces a new protocol to facilitate e-commerce using AI agents. Now, this is interesting because it’s kind of been a free-for-all, right? Lately, as far as what’s going on or going to happen for e-commerce when it comes to AI agents.
Bradley Sutton:
But now they’re trying to like, you know, see, hey, can we all get on the same page? Have like a United Nations of AI here. So basically this article starts out, says, Google announced Sunday a new open standard called the Universal Commerce Protocol, UCP. Fancy little title here.
Bradley Sutton:
And it says it’s for AI agent-based shopping at the National Retail Federation Conference. And it says this standard, and notice the platforms that it has, and namely which ones it doesn’t have, says this standard develop with companies like Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart. Let’s, no Amazon, right? Let’s agents work across different parts of the customer buying process, including discovery and post-purchase support.
Bradley Sutton:
The core idea is that the standard could facilitate these various parts of the process instead of requiring connections with different agents. Article keeps on going, saying that the company said they’re soon going to use this UCP for eligible Google product listings in AI mode. And then the Gemini apps are going to be able to let shoppers check out directly, only based in the US, while they’re researching a product.
Bradley Sutton:
They’ll be able to use Google Wallet, Google Pay, and eventually even PayPal. Now, this is interesting because, first of all, as you know, we’ve been reporting on this for months, Amazon has been like the one guy out there who doesn’t want to play ball, like a lot of these other platforms, Shopify, Etsy, Walmart, et cetera. When it comes to AI, they actively blocked AI from manipulating the website and trying to block the ones who are trying to shop.
Bradley Sutton:
Eventually, Amazon’s going to have to make a decision, especially if all the other platforms kind of join together and they’re all going to be using a lot of these protocols and AI agents. I can’t imagine Amazon forever just not being in the same game as everybody else. So this is something to be looking out for.
Bradley Sutton:
This is changing every week, it seems. This is a brand new thing. Not a lot of people yet are using AI to just shop and then check out and pay and everything. Probably a very, very small percentage of people are doing that. It takes trust. Just like in the early days of credit cards being used online, a lot of people were like, oh, I don’t feel comfortable using my credit card.
Bradley Sutton:
So there’s people out there like, oh, I don’t feel comfortable just giving my credit card to Gemini or ChatGPT and allowing them to check out. But this is just going to keep going up, all right? Shopping with agents is something that’s going to be adopted by more and more people. So even though not many people are using it now, this is something you need to be thinking about and being ready to pivot in case Amazon does make a move. Well, what is that going to mean for our sellers? We better start being ready to make those changes, right?
Bradley Sutton:
Now, interestingly enough, we had reported before that Walmart even made a deal with OpenAI, ChatGPT for agentic shopping. So some people are wondering, well, what does this have to do? How does this differ than this Gemini thing? And so that’s the exact article here that Business Insider brought out in this article entitled, Walmart’s Head of AI Reveals the Key Difference Between Its Shopping Deals with Google Gemini and ChatGPT, all right? It’s not going to be the same thing. Now, it says here in this article, while both services promise to allow customers to find products and complete transactions in a more conversational and automated way, Walmart’s Head of AI said that the way Gemini handles transactions is actually more seamless even than ChatGPT.
Bradley Sutton:
He said that, hey, we’re essentially having their AI agent, Gemini, partner with our AI agent. I’m not sure. Is that the one that’s called Sparky? Maybe, maybe, maybe not. It says, but basically, it’s going to partner with Walmart’s AI to create a unified shopping journey. It says, imagine it like a window inside of Gemini where our Walmart’s shopping agent kicks in and helps you complete the purchase. So it’s like you’re never even going onto the Walmart website.
Bradley Sutton:
Technically, you’re kind of viewing it inside of Gemini. With Gemini, he said, Walmart’s going to be able to link a customer’s chat session with their existing Walmart profile and shopping sessions where Gemini wasn’t involved. Now, this part is key and kind of like similar to what I’ve been talking about here in the past.
Bradley Sutton:
It says, he expects agentic shopping to help Walmart capture more sales from people who didn’t set out intending to make a purchase. He said this new approach could enable an almost seamless transaction when a person enlists a chat bot to help solve a problem. And I’ve talked about this kind of like in the context of Amazon’s Rufus.
Bradley Sutton:
If you know what you’re going to buy, right, still the number one way and like, I don’t know, 99% of people, what they’re currently doing is they look for that keyword on Amazon and they buy it, right? Like you’re not going to chat GPT. I know I need a 10 day pill case for my supplements or something. If I know the exact keyword for, I know exactly the product or even the brand name, I’m going directly to Amazon, not having a conversation with chat GPT, trying to convince myself I don’t need this product.
Bradley Sutton:
But a lot of times, I don’t know, half the time, whatever, you might need something, you might not know exactly what you need. Like, hey, I’m traveling to Japan. I need to prepare for the cold weather. What does that mean? Does that mean a thick jacket? Does that mean thermal underwear? In those situations where you have no idea what you’re supposed to be buying, that’s where historically maybe you went to Google and just like Google things, start reading blogs. And then all of a sudden, chat GPT, you would start asking chat GPT those questions. Then you’d figure out what you’d see.
Bradley Sutton:
Oh, I need a insulated wool jacket. And then now you go to Amazon again with the keyword, kind of skipping Rufus. But then for Rufus, it’s like Amazon wants you to do all that research in Rufus itself. Forget about Google. Forget about chat GPT. Ask Rufus what you need for this.
Bradley Sutton:
And then we’ll show you the products that you need. And so that’s kind of like Walmart here is talking about not like, oh, hey, if you want to buy something on Walmart, you know what it is. You’re looking for this exact, you know, top baseball card, you know, deck retail deck from Walmart.
Bradley Sutton:
You know, you’re not going to Gemini first and trying to talk about it and then try and purchase it there. No, you’re still probably just going to go directly to Walmart and get it. But it, you know, this Walmart wants you to like discover products that maybe you weren’t even looking to shop.
Bradley Sutton:
You’re just like researching something, right? Talking to Gemini, talking to chat GPT. Hey, what do I need for you? Or what’s the weather like? During this month. Oh, it’s really cold. Oh, by the way, would you like to, you know, look at some, some coats, you know, this I’m kind of oversimplifying it, but this is what we need to prepare for when I talk about getting prepared for a future where more people are discovering what they need. And then instead of, you know, going to a platform and just typing in a keyword, maybe there are in some situations, they might go ahead and buy something right there based on a recommendation by AI. So kind of interesting what’s going on with Walmart, what’s going on on Amazon. We should definitely be on the watch.
Bradley Sutton:
Now, speaking of Amazon and especially Amazon advertising, Helium 10 obviously has had a tool for advertising for years called Helium 10 ads. And for me, the number one thing that I wish ads had all this time, and the number one thing that customers ask for is, Hey, Helium 10 has an amazing keyword tracker, right? Where I can see where I’m ranking organically, where I’m ranking and sponsored.
Bradley Sutton:
I would love to be able to make rules for my bids based on or sponsored or organic rank. In other words, like, Hey, all of it, you know, I want to be in the top three or four sponsored positions on Amazon for the certain keyword for my product. And I usually am. But if all of a sudden my rank starts dropping a five, six, seven, eight, you know, pushing me to page two, I want to know about this so I can increase my bid on Amazon and my campaign and maybe get my top three position back. Well, that’s kind of been a pipe dream for years, but guess what, guys? We took the first steps. It’s in beta now for elite members.
Bradley Sutton:
I think some diamond members might have it. So what I want you guys to do, those of you who have Helium 10 ads, if you have a diamond or elite, I know elite has access to this. A lot of diamond customers might already by now to go into the rules and automation. And then what you’re going to want to do is you’re going to want to go into the share of voice section. All right. You’re going to hit this rule.
Bradley Sutton:
And now this allows you to create a rule based on certain metrics. Now, for now, it’s going off of our share of voice to a lot of you don’t even realize we have a share of voice tool, kind of like tracks how you’re doing on page one for all your placements. So you have to be tracking keywords and your products in share of voice currently to use this. We’re probably going to change this soon. This is like, I almost don’t want to say beta. This is like an alpha launch mode right now.
Bradley Sutton:
But basically, I’m going to be able to say, hey, for my ASIN share of voice, if my organic position on average over like five days or six days is like greater than or equal to 10. In other words, I drop out of the first 10. And at the same time, maybe my keyword performance like my ACOS or my PPC orders or my spend or whatever is under a certain amount.
Bradley Sutton:
Then, you know, go ahead and increase or decrease my bid. So like this has so many applications, like let’s say my organic rank starts going down, right? Well, what do you want to do? Hey, I need to go push advertising. Let me go ahead and increase my bid so I can maybe get my rank back if my sponsor rank goes down.
Bradley Sutton:
What if I’m already position one or two in organic or sponsored? And I’m like, you know what? I wonder if I roll back my bid a little bit. Can I maintain staying up there and not have to pay so much? So then maybe I might have a rule that says, hey, if my average sponsored rank is one and I don’t care if I’m one through three, take my bid back by 10 cents or 15 cents and until, you know, it’s drops like four and then it’ll increase again. So like all this stuff, it’s not like new, you know, like you’re probably doing that manually and you’re using keyword tracker and then you’d go back two days from now and check where you’re ranking and then you change your bid again.
Bradley Sutton:
But imagine a world now soon, guys, you can automate this all based on your keyword rank. So again, if you want to play with this now, you’re going to need to, first of all, have a PLM 10 elite or maybe diamond account for some of you. And you need to be using Helium 10 ads and you have to be using our share of voice tool.
Bradley Sutton:
But again, I’m trying to work with a team to try and, you know, get that to be based off of our keyword tracker instead of the share voice, because most of you use that. So really exciting times, guys. One of the most exciting things, probably the most exciting thing for me for Helium 10 ads in like three, four years. So really cool stuff. Look forward to being able to control your advertising based on your keyword rank.
Bradley Sutton:
Switching platforms now talking about TikTok shop. Here’s an article from social media today entitled TikTok adds more AI powered tools to assist TikTok shop merchants. All right. So there’s a lot of interesting AI things that you can try out. For example, one of the things mentioned is says TikTok’s rolling out access to its new AI fashion video maker, which will be able to generate high quality videos that showcase your product within minutes. Says using this process, shop sellers will be able to upload still images of their products, and then TikTok system will be able to convert them into AI video clips that includes voiceovers. It will have music, et cetera.
Bradley Sutton:
It’s been actually testing this even with human models that you could like have say stuff, and they can use your voice, but have like a different face or body. It’s like kind of crazy what the kind of things that it’s talking about here. So make sure to check out this article to see some of the new features that TikTok shop has for sellers.
Bradley Sutton:
Guys, if you’re not on TikTok shop, go to h10.me forward slash TT start h10.me forward slash TT start. It’ll help you set up your very first TikTok account. That’s going to give you some like special bonuses since you’re signing up through Helium 10.
Bradley Sutton:
We don’t get any money from that, but it’s just like something that will help you with getting some access to special customer service. And then just migrate your listings with Helium 10’s listing converter from Amazon to TikTok in seconds, or at most maybe a minute. You’ll have all your Amazon listings on TikTok shop, and then it’s off to the races. Go into TikTok shop. Start using these AI tools. Use Helium 10’s AI tools. Guys, there is money you are leaving on the table if you’re not on TikTok shop yet.
Bradley Sutton:
Next up, we’ve got our strategy of the week. When you’ve launched a new product, do you ever have it closed because you want to wait until the inventory distributes around the country more? How do you know where your inventory is in Amazon’s warehouses? How do you know if your sales are being isolated to a certain region or your inventory is? Well, Carrie’s going to show you a strategy how to find that out.
Carrie Miller:
Inventory heat maps is a tool exclusive to Helium 10 that can help you to see your inventory and your sales distribution. Now, why is this important and how can it help you make money? Well, it’s kind of a reverse way of making money. When we run out of stock, launch a new product, or run low on inventory while we’re waiting for more to arrive, something happens to our listings.
Carrie Miller:
So you probably know this. Let’s say, for example, we send in 500 units to Amazon. Now, do all 500 become active right away? No, and sometimes only two or three units get checked into inventory initially. So what does this mean? It means that those few units are usually located near the warehouse where you sent the Amazon FBA shipment. Let’s say, for example, if you send it to Oakland in California. So when those 5, 20, or even 50 units go live, they’re only available in that region.
Carrie Miller:
So now imagine there’s a shopper in Florida that’s searching for your product. Say, for example, we have our coffin shelf. Because this inventory is still in California, Amazon shows a horrible shipping estimate. So it might actually take three days, but Amazon will say it’ll arrive in two weeks. And that actually is going to kill your conversion rate. Now, why is that? It’s because when someone adds it to their cart and they see it’s two-week, maybe three-week delivery time, they’re going to not want to wait.
Carrie Miller:
And they’re just going to go and find another coffin shelf to buy instead. So what is the solution? Usually, it’s better to keep your listings closed for about a week until the inventory spreads out across the country. And here is the way that you can manage this.
Carrie Miller:
Now, what we’re going to do is you’re going to go into Helium 10, and you’re going to go into the Profits tool under Heatmaps. And it’s under this icon right here. And once you’re in there, you can choose the product that you want to take a look at.
Carrie Miller:
And you can see, basically, which FBA warehouses have units for that product across the US. So you can see we have our coffin shelf here. And if you wanted to change the product, do that here. But you can see where our coffin shelf is actually located and how many units. You can go back in time. If you want to go to a different day, you can go back and see historically where all of your inventory is actually located.
Carrie Miller:
So say you see, OK, hey, all of my inventory is really well dispersed throughout the country, then that’s probably a good time to actually make your listings live again. Another use for the heatmaps is you can actually analyze your sales performance by city, county, or state. So if we go up here to this top toggle right here, we can click on the sales map.
Carrie Miller:
Maybe you notice your coffin shelf or whatever your product is hasn’t had any sales in certain parts of the country like Montana or North Dakota. That might tell you that you need to send more inventory to Amazon so they can spread it out across the country a little bit more widely. So for example, we’ve got only one spot here.
Carrie Miller:
So we might want to send in more inventory to really disperse this throughout the country. And then you can check your heatmaps again after you restock. And as long as you’re not incurring a ton of storage fees, then you can see whether Amazon is distributing your inventory more broadly. And that’s another powerful way to use heatmaps. So make sure you’re taking advantage of heatmaps to just monitor where your inventory is and where your sales are.
Bradley Sutton:
Thank you very much, Carrie. Next up, or last up, actually, on our list of news for today is from Grocery Dive. Not often on the Weekly Buzz do we talk about Grocery Dive, right? But this article is entitled, Amazon Takes on Walmart with New Store Concept. It says there’s going to be approximately 225,000 square foot store that Amazon is planning near Chicago that will sell groceries alongside general merchandise.
Bradley Sutton:
All right. So it’s basically like Amazon is having like a Walmart or Costco or Target, right? And it’s actually even bigger than Walmart’s Superstore. And it says, Amazon spokesperson said that the planned store is in a new concept that we think customers will be excited about.
Bradley Sutton:
Now, as we know, Amazon has tried different formats of brick and mortar stores, usually not with a lot of success. You know, like what was it called? Fresh and easy or something like that. But what does this have to do with e-commerce? The reason I’m bringing this article up is what if this takes off and now all of a sudden Amazon starts opening up these stores across the country? That means a number of things.
Bradley Sutton:
It means more distribution centers. It means being closer to customers. Remember, that’s the one thing that Walmart beats Amazon on is its proximity to customers for its last mile delivery, right? There’s more Walmart stores than Amazon distribution channels.
Bradley Sutton:
So this could kind of bridge that gap and make delivery even more crazy. By the way, I live in the middle of nowhere, not the complete middle of nowhere, but like in North San Diego County in a semi-rural area, I ordered something today and it got to me in one hour and 20 minutes. That’s insane.
Bradley Sutton:
But this would make it even more. And then the other thing that could be potential is what if Amazon develops like a hundred, 300, 400, 500 stores in the next few years, if this is successful, well, guess where it’s going to get a lot of products. It’s not going to be a 200,000 square foot store filled with Amazon basic stuff.
Bradley Sutton:
There’s going to be a lot of Amazon sellers, products, and brands in there. Who knows? Go to the kit or go to the home and kitchen aisle in this new store. You might see some coffin shelves in there or something.
Bradley Sutton:
This could be a chance for us to get our products into brick and mortar for some of us. Kind of exciting. I’m not going to hold my breath on the success of this too much just because Amazon has not had any success with brick and mortar so far, but this is something new and something different.
Bradley Sutton:
So you never know what might happen. All right, guys. Thank you very much for tuning in. Make sure to tune in next week to see what’s buzzing.
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