#501 – Meta Ends Credit Card Payments?! ChatGPT Beats Organic + Big Amazon MCF Update | Weekly Buzz 3/4/26
Audio version above. Video version below
We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Principal Brand Evangelist, Carrie Miller. 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.
Meta Ends Credit Card Payments for DTC Ad Accounts—Amazon Next?
https://www.ecomcrew.com/meta-ends-credit-card-payments-dtc-advertisers/
A new analysis of 94 e-commerce sites found ChatGPT referral traffic converts 31% higher than non-branded organic search (1.81% vs 1.39%), driven by stronger buyer intent from AI-assisted shoppers. While AI traffic volume is still small, it’s growing fast, making AEO/LLM optimization (structured content, FAQs, and schema) an early-mover advantage rather than a replacement for SEO.
Helium 10’s new Listing Builder AI is now available to Diamond members and is built to save major time by pulling keywords from multiple sources and generating an optimized listing with AI—complete with an SEO score and the option to match the tone/style of a listing you like. Want the full walkthrough and strategy behind it? Watch the webinar replay here: https://h10.me/listingreplay
Helium 10 Diamond members also now have a new Follow Up tool feature that lets you set a preferred time window for automated emails and review requests.
How Walmart is extending its brand advantage in the U.S. retail landscape
https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54191-how-walmart-is-extending-its-brand-advantage-in-the-us-retail-landscape
Amazon Gives Sellers an Agentic Window Into Their Business
https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2026/amazon-gives-sellers-an-agentic-window-into-their-business/
Explore, visualize, and act on your data with a new AI-powered workspace
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHRlNHOEhTUzgzQ0JTQ0s2
In episode 501 of the AM/PM Podcast and Weekly Buzz, Carrie covers:
- 00:40 – Meta Cuts Credit Card Payments for DTC Advertisers
- 03:32 – Chat GPT Ecommerce Traffic Converts Higher than Organic Search
- 06:21 – Changes to Multi-Channel Fulfillment
- 08:10 – New Feature Update: Listing Builder AI
- 12:17 – Walmart is Expanding its Brand Advantage
- 14:31 – How Historical Data Can Give You a Competitive Advantage
- 19:13 – New AI-Powered Assistant to Visualize Data
Transcript
Carrie Miller:
Meta is no longer accepting credit cards, chat GPT converts higher than organic search, and important updates to Amazon multi-channel fulfillment. This and more on this week’s episode of The Weekly Buzz. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the AM/PM podcast by Helium 10.
Carrie Miller:
I’m your host, Carrie Miller, 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 you a training tip of the week. So let’s get started and see what’s buzzing.
Carrie Miller:
All right, so let’s go ahead and get into this story about Meta, which I’m actually not very happy about as a seller. Meta is changing the way it builds direct to consumer advertising accounts. And you can see the e-com crew wrote about this and kind of, I think we’re the first to kind of acknowledge it after this email was sent.
Carrie Miller:
So basically, starting March 2nd of 2026, certain direct to customer advertisers will no longer be able to pay for ads with credit cards. Instead, affected accounts must switch to monthly invoicing with a 30-day payment window after the invoice is issued. So for many advertisers, this is gonna be not very great news, especially those who use credit cards as a way to manage cashflow or to earn rewards like cashback.
Carrie Miller:
I know a lot of us use either the American Express Business Gold, where you get four points per dollar of ad spend that you make, or there’s a Chase business where you get three points per dollar. So it’s kind of a sad, sad day for a lot of us. On high ad spends, traditional credit card rewards like the ones that I just mentioned can add up to really significant savings over a year.
Carrie Miller:
You can either get cashback, you can travel with those points, you can upgrade yourself to first class. And losing that option means many sellers may need to rethink their cashflow and how they manage their budgets. So Meta is framing this as a move that’s helping making billing more predictable and reducing payment interruptions.
Carrie Miller:
But sellers have pointed out that the practical difference isn’t just about payment method, it changes cashflow timing. So credit cards can give you a three to four week float between spending and when you actually have to pay, which helps with budgeting, especially in seasonal peaks. With monthly invoicing, you need to plan ahead to make sure you have funds available when the payment is due.
Carrie Miller:
So you have to have the whole amount at one time. This billing change isn’t unique to Meta. Other major ad platforms like Google require larger advertisers to move off cards too.
So many in the e-commerce community are watching to see whether Amazon ads might follow. And I really hope they don’t because we also use our credit cards on our Amazon account. So what this means for sellers, you need to plan your cashflow more carefully.
Invoicing means you need the budget ready when the bill arrives. Re-evaluate your payment strategy so you may lose credit card rewards and floats.
Carrie Miller:
So consider how that impacts profitability and talk to your Meta rep if you have one to understand your invoicing terms and adjust forecasting before the March 31st deadline.
So that is basically the story with Meta. And again, for all of us who use those to get those credit card points, cashback, travel rewards, sorry, it’s a sad thing. I don’t think this is for every account.
Carrie Miller:
So I’d have to see more of the details. But if we look down here, you can actually see the email here. They actually have a screenshot of it in this article. We have the link in the description. So you can see the, you know, they’re saying, oh, it’s a benefit to you, but, you know, not so much for a lot of us. So if you want to take a look at that, that whole article, it gives you some more information or you might want to contact Meta to see if this is going to affect you.
Carrie Miller:
I think this one is really interesting, especially because everyone’s kind of all talking about AEO or answer engine optimization to make sure that, you know, their sites are showing up when people are chatting in Chat GPT and asking questions about products. This article talks about a new analysis that was of 94 e-commerce sites that found that traffic coming from Chat GPT converts 31% higher than traditional non-branded organic search, which is pretty incredible. That’s pretty high.
Carrie Miller:
So in the study, Chat GPT referral traffic had about a 1.81% conversion rate compared to 1.39% for non-branded organic traffic. And the reason? Well, users coming from AI tools often show a stronger purchase intent. They’ve already asked detailed questions, compared options. So usually when they’re clicking on a site, because they’ve kind of narrowed down exactly what they’re looking for, and they’ve clicked on the site because they found what they’re ready to buy, and that’s why maybe the intent is a bit higher. Now, it’s important to note that the traffic volume from Chat GPT is still small compared to Google, but it’s growing quickly.
Carrie Miller:
And while average order value from Chat GPT traffic may be slightly lower, the higher conversion rate leads to competitive revenue per session. It goes a little bit more into why we care, and it says the data shows that AI referral traffic converts at a higher rate than traditional non-branded search traffic, but the volume remains small. So this signals emerging value, not a replacement channel.
Carrie Miller:
So this isn’t going to replace all the other marketing channels that you’ve already created. You want to kind of do all of these at once. And as this improves, the earlier you get in and understand it, the better, because you’ll be able to grow with the channel. And here’s why this matters for e-commerce sellers. So if AI-driven platforms like Chat GPT are sending higher intent traffic, and that channel is trending upward, the optimization for LLMs becomes really critical. So I think some people are like, do I put in the effort to do this now, or should I wait till later?
Carrie Miller:
But this is where you really should think about AEO, or Answer Engine Optimization. So just like brands optimized for Google SEO over the past decade, now they need to structure content, product pages, FAQs, and schema. And schema’s in the back end. So schema’s kind of confusing for a lot of people, but it’s basically where you can write direct instructions for an answer engine or an LLM, basically, so that they can kind of scan your site really quickly and find those answers. And that’s in the schema. It’s basically so that the AI models can understand, reference, and recommend those products within that schema.
Carrie Miller:
So that’s kind of what schema is. It’s really a little bit confusing. At first, I was confused about it. So it may not be a massive traffic driver yet, but if you want to keep your sales flowing as search behavior shifts towards AI assisted discovery, optimizing for AI now puts you ahead of the curve instead of playing catch up later. So really important to consider doing this now and being ahead of the curve.
Carrie Miller:
All right, next up, we have some important changes to multi-channel fulfillment, which is MCF through Amazon. So this email basically talks all about this. And Amazon basically just announced that important packaging changes for MCF, multi-channel fulfillment, and buy with prime. And they’re starting to roll out in April of 2026.
Carrie Miller:
So the two major updates are packing slips are no longer going to be included by default on MCF and buy with prime orders. And second products that are certified under Amazon’s shipped in product packaging or SIP program will now ship without an Amazon over box by default. So that means if your product qualifies, it can ship in its own packaging without the additional Amazon box.
Carrie Miller:
So these changes align with MCF and buy with prime more closely with standard FBA packaging practices and support Amazon’s broader push to reduce packaging waste. They actually are going to give you a discount for the ships in product packaging. So eligible ships in product packaging shipments will receive a per unit discount with savings ranging from a few cents for small standard items up to a dollar for bulky products.
Carrie Miller:
So if you don’t take action before April, these settings will automatically apply, meaning that no packing slips and ships in product packaging items without over boxes will just happen automatically. But however, sellers can also opt out or adjust the settings in MCF fulfillment settings and API users can configure packaging at the order level. So the bottom line is that this is both a sustainability shift and a potential cost savings opportunity, but sellers should review their ACE and eligibility and packaging strategy before April to make sure you’re prepared.
Carrie Miller:
So all sellers should have gotten this email. If you didn’t, you can probably do a quick search on the ships in product packaging and multi-channel fulfillment within seller central to find more details about this. Okay, next up, we have a new feature update, which is our new Listing Builder AI. Bradley is going to talk about this. This is absolutely incredible. It’s going to save you so much time. You’re going to be able to optimize your listings with relevant keywords. You’re going to be able to find those keywords really quickly and optimize. So if you have a ton of products and you want to, you know, continually optimize them without having to spend so much time and money, this is the feature update for you. This is one of the biggest updates that we’ve had in a long time. So definitely check this out with Bradley.
Bradley Sutton:
All right. So this week’s new feature alerts, there’s a couple, and these have actually been out for elite members for a little while, but now it’s out to dive members, both of these. All right. So the first one is in Listing Builder. We have a new eight and one Listing Builder. All right.
Bradley Sutton:
So if you go into Listing Builder, you can have your product as the seed ASIN, and then you add up to nine other products, if you want, that are your competitors. And then you can pull keywords from eight different sources, your brand analytics keywords from yours that have conversions, the brand analytics keywords of your competitors, the search career performance keywords. If this is one of your products, the top keywords for the whole niche, the opportunity keywords where maybe only one or two competitors are ranking for it.
Bradley Sutton:
The historical keywords, this is exclusive to Helium 10. You can only do this here. And then other random filters that help you to get the top organic keywords from this, maybe one or two listings, as well as the top sponsored keywords. Once you do that, you can actually build your keyword bank, star your important keywords. And then now at the very end, again, this is for diamond now was only elite before now it’s diamond. You can actually create your listing with AI.
Bradley Sutton:
And the cool thing about that is if you do it with AI, you can actually style it after maybe a listing, another listing that you like the vibe of that listing or the tone, you can actually style your listing after that. And it’s not going to copy it, but it’s just going to copy maybe the bullet point length and the overall sentiment. And you can also put an ASIN in here to make sure that, hey, optimize this listing for the Rufus questions that are asked on this listing or another listing, your competitor listings up to you.
Bradley Sutton:
And then with AI, you could actually create the whole listing and it’s going to give you an SEO score. So this was just a quick overview of it. If you want to go in depth on like what went into this tool and like how you need to think about your keyword research and, and what’s important to listening optimization, we actually did a full one hour workshop.
Bradley Sutton:
If you want to see the full workshop, go to h10.me forward slash listing replay h10.me forward slash listing replay to see the whole like one hour workshop goes a little bit more in depth. But if you’re a dive member, start using this for a platinum member use code SSP 22 upgrade and save a little bit and give this a spin, reoptimize your own listings. Another thing that was available for elite members.
Bradley Sutton:
Now it’s still in beta, but it’s open for dive members is in your followup tool for your email automation. What you can do here is you can actually set a preferred time. All right. So for example, before you could just say, Hey, wait five days after shipment, and then go ahead and, and send this request review or email out. But now you can actually say, you know what, I want this to go out. Or I want helium 10 to tell Amazon for this message to go out between 9am and 4pm pacific time, or whatever time like, like, maybe you think your product has a higher likelihood of people responding favorably to the email or opening the email a certain time of day, you can go ahead and specify that.
Bradley Sutton:
So give that a spin. And let us know what you think is in beta right now. Anyways, both of these things available now to dive members, they were available to elite and hope you guys enjoy these tools.
Carrie Miller:
Thank you so much Bradley for that Listing Builder update. I know he did mention a webinar. So if you want to go to that replay, the link is actually in our description so that you can go there pretty easily. It is jam packed with strategy on how to do this. So you definitely want to check it out.
Carrie Miller:
Okay, the next article is about Walmart. And this actual article is a lot about retail, but I think it really does relate to Amazon. You’re just eCommerce sellers in general. And I’ll explain a little bit why basically what this is saying Walmart is basically not just winning on price anymore. It’s also improving how shoppers perceive its quality. That’s really important. I think I’ll get that in a little bit.
Carrie Miller:
But according to recent YouGov data, Walmart’s brand health has strengthened over the past five years, driven largely by its strong value for money reputation. But what’s especially interesting is that perceptions of quality have also improved. While Walmart may not lead every competitor on quality, it has significantly narrowed the gap, meaning shoppers increasingly see Walmart as offering both low prices and better quality than in the past.
Carrie Miller:
There’s actually another chart here that shows about value and quality perception, which is really important. That combination is really powerful. So when consumers believe they’re getting a strong value and solid quality, it strengthens consideration, satisfaction and recommendation, which is all they’re all key drivers for brand growth.
Carrie Miller:
And this is great news for e-commerce sellers, because there’s often a perception that Walmart is only the place for ultra budget products and that higher quality brands might not fit. But as Walmart’s quality perception continues to rise, the platform becomes more attractive for premium and differentiated products. So consumers are becoming more open to finding quality on Walmart.com, not just low prices. In addition, a lot of e-commerce sellers want their products in store. So as this perception kind of increases, the in-store opportunity also increases. So for sellers who are hesitated because they think their product is too high quality for Walmart, the data suggests it might be time to reconsider.
Carrie Miller:
I really do think that this is kind of a little bit of a balance because they’re still gonna be looking for a good price. But I have noticed that a lot of products within Walmart are higher quality now, especially because a lot of third party sellers have come in. So if you can stay pretty competitive with price and achieve that quality, I think Walmart is a very good channel to be looking at, especially if you want to get into their stores, that their perceptions are growing among consumers.
Carrie Miller:
Even myself, I would have never purchased clothes before at Walmart, but I have purchased some things because the quality is definitely improving there. Okay, so next up, we have a training tip of the week with Shivali. And Shivali is going to talk about how historical data can give you a competitive advantage. So take it away, Shivali.
Shivali Patel:
Hey there, let’s talk about a strategy that you can only do with Helium 10. Say I’m recording this in January instead of June, and I’m curious about what the is going on for a particular 4th of July product. If I were to look at 4th of July decorations, I would get a number of products that are some of the best sellers here. However, are these the best sellers of products overall for 4th of July? Probably not, right? Even more so if you think about running this search in a month like January.
Shivali Patel:
Sure, many people buy 4th of July products in January, and you can absolutely find some top ranked ones on this page selling 400 a month, but that’s not really a top seller for 4th of July, is it? If I were to actually look at brand analytics using Helium 10 or via Seller Central, searching back all the way to see what the top month or top week was last year in 2024, odds are we would find it’s June 23rd to June 29th, sitting at 400,000 searches for this keyword. Meaning what?
Shivali Patel:
Meaning that I would now be looking at what the actual top product was, which as you can see, would be this product as the number one product last year. It’s barely even selling right now. Only a hundred people bought it in the 30 days, but it was selling tens of thousands of units back last June.
Shivali Patel:
So this is one scenario, which is where we could go, Hey, I know this is a seasonal product. Let me take a look at what keywords it’s ranking for right now. And what are the keywords that were driving sales to it back then? As another example, if I were to run Cerebro on the product right now, we see the product still has about 2000 keywords ranking for it. Even now it is selling. Whereas some seasonal products are not even in stock, but this one’s in stock and it’s related to 2000 keywords.
Shivali Patel:
Switching this up. I may want to see keywords for a search volume of over 1000 and where it is actively ranking between position one and maybe organic position 10 to figure out where exactly is this product getting its sales from and how many keywords are there? Zero. Look at that zero keywords. I probably would have to take this down to 500 or something to see if it’s even ranking for it. Only one keyword for Memorial day, which makes sense, right?
Shivali Patel:
Because Memorial day is before 4th of July. And with only one keyword, if I was doing my research using any other tool out there, I would find very few, highly relevant keywords that are driving sales for this product. Would that help me create my listing for 4th of July if I were creating it months in advance? No. So if I’m using another tool, I’d have to wait until 4th of July or June to at least see what the top keywords are. But watch this.
Shivali Patel:
What I can do inside of Helium 10 is hit the historical trends button and just select June of 2024. This will show me the keywords that are driving sales to this product that I know were selling great last June. I’ve got 65 keywords pulled up and right away, I can see terms like 4th of July decorations, USA decorations for party, 4th of July decor, and so on. Now here’s where it gets powerful. Even though we’re not currently in the season, I can still see what the top seasonal keywords were. Why?
Shivali Patel:
Because it’s like I’ve taken a time machine and Cerebro all the way back to last June and July. That’s just one of the use cases. Now, imagine this. There’s a product you know is a strong seller, and maybe you’ve tracked it before, or you saw it ranked really high in brand analytics, but right now, completely out of stock. Here’s an example. This product is actually the number one selling coffin shelf all year, but look, it says currently unavailable.
Shivali Patel:
If you ran Cerebro on this product right now, or used any other keyword tool, you might get nothing, no data, no keywords, right? Because Amazon isn’t showing any relevancy data when it’s out of stock. So how do we find what was driving sales? And that is where Cerebro’s historical data comes in. You can just take the same product, go back to a time when it was in stock like last October. And back then, it was ranking for over a thousand keywords.
Shivali Patel:
So let’s say you only care about keywords with a search volume of 500 or more, and where this product was ranking in the top 10. You can filter for that and boom, I’ve got 14 high converting keywords right there, which would have been invisible in any other case. And that, my friends, is the power of Historical Cerebro.
Shivali Patel:
That’s honestly the most unique feature Helium 10 offers, and it’s only available on the Diamond plan. We’ve had asked for this for years, and I really think it’s well worth over $300. It’s that valuable. So whether you are tracking seasonal trends or analyzing products that are out of stock, this feature gives you the ability to time travel and see what was working when no other tool can. So if you do not have a Diamond plan, make sure that you upgrade to it and you take advantage of this today.
Carrie Miller:
Thank you so much, Shivali, for that trading tip of the week. Definitely super helpful information on how to, you know, use that historical data. The next article we have here is actually from Amazon Seller Central, and it’s about their new AI-powered assistant, which is a play to kind of visualize data.
Carrie Miller:
And you can see that this is an announcement within Seller Central, like you usually will get. So Amazon has basically introduced a new AI-powered workspace inside Seller Central designed to make data exploration more interactive. The new Canvas experience combines chat and visual dashboards in one place so sellers can ask seller-assisted questions and generate personalized views of performance trends, inventory levels, and other key metrics.
Carrie Miller:
And the workspace updates in real time, which allows users to dig into data, explore follow-up questions, and view different perspectives on their data. So this tool is, you know, basically going to help you to kind of visualize data a little bit better. But that said, native tools inside Seller Central typically focus on Amazon-only data, and many sellers will still rely on advanced platforms like Helium 10 and other third-party tools for deeper profitability analysis, keyword research, competitive intelligence, advertising optimization, and multi-channel strategy.
Carrie Miller:
So tools like Helium 10 often provide more granular data like historical tracking and broader market visibility beyond what’s available inside of the Amazon ecosystem. To be quite frank, usually Helium 10 does a much better job of just visualizing the data that we do get from Amazon. So while this update makes Seller Central more user-friendly and AI-driven, it’s likely to complement, not replace, the more robust analytics and optimization tools serious sellers already use, such as Helium 10.
Carrie Miller:
So I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Weekly Buzz. Again, I want to let you know that if you wanted to watch the webinar that Bradley hosted with Andrew Bell about the Listing Builder and how to utilize that, the description has the link for that particular replay. So definitely check that out. But otherwise, we will see you again next week to see what’s buzzing. Bye, everyone.
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