#561 - New AI Features for TikTok Shop & Amazon Opportunity Explorer Update | Weekly Buzz 10/8/26

Tik Tok AI powered updates, meta protocols for agentic commerce, and new ways to find and launch products on Amazon. This and more on today's episode of the weekly buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the AM podcast by Helium 10. 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, Tik Tok 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. All righty, let's go ahead and get into the first piece of news, and that is that there are a lot of new Tik Tok shop AI updates. Okay, so if you look in this article, they actually have um put a bunch of different updates all in one. It says Tik Tok is building new agentic commerce shopping experiences that support easy product discovery and frictionless transactions on the platform starting with buy direct and shopping assistant. So to help fuel these experiences, they are building with trusted commerce platforms and payment providers including Salesforce, Shopify, Shop Laza, Stripe, and more. So, I'm kind of not super clear on exactly how this works, but it seems like it has something to do with maybe people can buy on Tik Tok shop, but it would be through your Shopify store. Um, so buy direct, it says a little bit further information here. You can see that it says buy direct is a seamless in-app checkout solution that allows users to make purchases directly from a brand without leaving Tik Tok. So, that is probably what it is. you know, Shopify, Shop Laza, Stripe, Salesforce, wherever it is coming from that you can actually buy through your website, but on TikTok, which is really cool. It says the solution simplifies the purchase journey, allowing users to make purchases directly from the for you feed with just one click. And as we know, the more clicks somebody has to do, the more you're going to lose them. So, this is awesome because we know that Tik Tok shop does a really good job at closing with that one click. And then the next thing is shopping assistant. So, that's right below here. It says, "Shopping assistant is a conversational AI agent that guides users through their shopping journey. It understands context, remembers user needs, and finds the right products just for them faster." So, it's built into several Tik Tok touch points. Shopping assistant provides real-time AI powered shopping guidance like product details, shipping, sizing, availability, and all that. So, it's kind of like, you know, an actual like an AI agent, which is really cool. And then this next one, I think, is pretty cool for anyone who needs leads in their business. And this could be really anyone like you know insurance people potentially you know anyone who would need leads that in their business real estate agents things like that. They are also doing agentic leads an AI agent for lead generation that via AI guided conversations enables businesses to capture qualify and convert high intent actionable consumer prospects. The solution will be available across multiple services including lead agent in Tik Tok direct messages and lead agent in lead form on advertiser owned websites. So that's pretty cool for anyone who is collecting leads on Tik Tok shop. And then this next point here it says that they are also expanding their ads network. So basically saying that Tik Tok is giving brands new ways to connect with audiences through storytelling creators and culture driving performance beyond the core Tik Tok experience. We are excited to announce and that's we as in Tik Tok. says, "Tik Tok is excited to announce the Tik Tok ad network to US advertisers, enabling them to seamlessly expand their campaign beyond Tik Tok and reach audiences across a premier network of nearly 400,000 apps worldwide. Fully integrated into Tik Tok ads manager, TTN has builtin brand safety and placement controls to help brands safety extend campaigns, connect with the right audiences, and drive measurable business outcomes. So that's pretty cool to see that they're, you know, expanding their reach and their network um across apps. So more opportunities for brands to get their products in front of consumers. And then they also are building an MCP for partners where they can build, you know, AI agents and a bunch of different tools. And they're also expanding AI automated uh capabilities within like their campaigns, creative selection, GM, GMV Max, and all of that. So there's a lot of updates. If you want to reference this article, it's down in the description of this podcast or YouTube video, wherever you're watching or listening. Um, so you can click and read more information if you wanted more information on this, but a lot of a lot of updates for Tik Tok. Okay, next up we have Meta. Okay, so a few weeks ago I announced that Meta's, it's called Muse is their agent, was basically blocked by Amazon. And so a lot of people were kind of wondering what would happen with that and if more sites would block it. And right now it's actually really good opportunity for Shopify cuz that agent is able to go and read a lot of things on Shopify. But now Meta is saying that they've discussed protocols for agentic commerce. And if we scroll into the article, it says um Meta is developing a new protocol for businesses that will offer more insights into how Muse agents interact with business websites. The move is designed to ensure that more providers allow Muse to engage with their sites. So really this has a lot of to do with safety of the site and you know vulnerabilities and overloading the system. So, you know, maybe one person can click multiple times into a site, but if there's AI agents going in there thousands and thousands of times, they can crash an actual site. So, Meta is basically saying they're going to put in protocols to prevent this kind of thing with their agent. Says Meta hopes its protocol will counter all of the concerns people have by empowering websites to create their own bots and control measures that can communicate with Muse agents to ensure everything works well together. So, that's kind of the protocol that they have come up with so that they can prevent all these issues. I'm sure they'll have to kind of keep iterating on this protocol as issues might come up. But for now, I think that is good that they have some protocols and parameters so that people are not going to be blocking it and people can, you know, consumers can actually use the these agents. And I know I think Bradley said he's already using Muse agent for a bunch of different things. So, um, really interesting stuff there and definitely changing the way that we do a lot of things in our lives with these agentic shoppers. They're basically doing stuff for us. So, um, we'll keep you updated on this, um, as we get more information. And next up, we have our new feature of the week with Bradley. Um, so I'm going to go ahead and pass it over to Bradley, who has a new feature alert for our Helium 10 super agent. So, take it away, Bradley. >> All right, so a few new features today spanning our agent, MCP, even mobile app. Let me hop into it. You can now upload images and files to our agent in Helium 10. Like, for example, maybe I just want to take a screenshot of a campaign performance. I could the screenshot could be from seller central. It could be from a search term report. It could be from helium 10 right here. So let me just take a screenshot of this and then I will go ahead and add it here to the helium agent. And then I can say analyze this campaign and tell me what's working and not. This is just, you know, an example. I I could have taking a screenshot of cerebro results. I could take a, you know, take a screenshot of my P&L, my profits and loss. Pretty much the point here is that I'm going to be able to now upload images or even files. Um, you know, one use case of this is maybe I don't have Helium 10 ads yet. Uh, to get a taste of what you can do, you can go the tedious way and download some search term reports from seller central and upload those search term reports and ask our agent to do the analysis. So, let's take a look. It went ahead and gave me a whole bunch of results here. Oh, just one little screenshot. Look at this. It's telling me who which ones are the top performers, uh which keywords uh are not doing well, which ones there's not enough information. All of this data right here just from one tiny screenshot of a Helium 10 ad. So guys, uh make sure you're using the Helium 10 agent, especially those of you who use up your claw tokens or you use up your MCP calls, switch over to the Helium 10 agent. Um you can ask it anything and now you can add images and even files to get feedback. Next up, uh, one feature for our MCP, I'm not going to show it on the screen here because it's just like a prompt that you can use. Uh, you can now do budget and placement rules in the MCP. So, if I'm using Claw, Chat, GPT, etc. I do have Helium 10 ads connected to my account. What I can do is say something like, hey, raise my daily budget 20% when a campaign's a cost is under target over the last 30 days total, right? You know, like for example, that would have been good for recent prime big deal days. That's when your budget might go out. And so maybe I could have set a rule and says, "Hey, create a rule where you raise my daily budget by 30%." If my budget starts, you know, to run out and if my 30-day a cost is below 30 or 40% or whatever like that. All right, so pretty cool rule. It it can work across all your campaigns or a set number of campaigns. Uh, a new thing you can also do is control your placements. So, for example, you have a campaign, you can say, "Hey, for my coffin shelf campaign, um, add 30% for top of search on my best campaigns." Uh, I could say for the coffin shelf or on any coffin shelf where I'm under or any coffin shelf campaign I'm under 40% a cost, you know, uh, increase top of search uh, placement modifier by 15%. Right? So, that's uh, again something new you can uh, now do in the MCP. Last up, for those who use the Helium 10 mobile app, this is something everybody should download. Apple uh store, is that called the Apple Store? I think it's called Apple Store. Google Play Store. You now have a lot of new widgets in the mobile app. For example, seller pulse. This is like a realtime feed of what are your orders today. All right. So, you if you're the kind of people want to see how how your orders are doing, you can select the time uh or select the date like today or the last few days and you'll be able to see what's going on with your orders. Like a lot of you know um you know like hey by by noon I usually have $1,000 worth of sales and if I have 2,000 or if I have 200 it might make you take action because you know something's wrong or something's going crazy, right? Well guys instead of logging into seller central or logging into Helium 10 desktop you can now do that from the mobile app. So, seller pulse is new. We also updated, I believe this might be only for the diamond plans, but all of the uh P&L, you know, so that's something profit and loss that we added to Helium 10 profits. Now, that's available in the mobile app as well, as well as advertising widgets. I can see what's my highest a cost campaigns, uh, etc. And also another cool thing is the latest orders. All right, so I can see order by order what is going on in my mobile app. So, just definitely something you guys uh should be using. Again, make sure to go to Apple Store, Google Play Store, type in Helium 10, download the app. It's free of charge for those of you who already have Helium 10 connected to your uh account or log into your account from there and you'll be able to see near realtime data on these things. All right, that's it for the new feature alerts this week. Back to you, Carrie. >> Thank you so much, Bradley. All right, so let's keep going with the news. This next piece of information is from seller central and it's basically about launching new products with confidence. And I think that's this is something that I've actually been thinking about in my own Amazon business. I have an Amazon business with my dad and we've been talking about expansion of products. And so this is actually a new tool that you can utilize to find new opportunities and it's within product opportunity explorer. So you can see here that it's saying that they have new enhancements to product opportunity explorer and a new product launch plan in seller central to help you find your next product. So you can validate demand before you spend a dollar and launch with a proven plan. So sellers who use the opportunity explorer before launch see two times higher sales in their first 90 days. So that's pretty pretty good stats right there. So new product launches accounted for 16% of all third party US sales last year. And so this is something that can help you with your growth plan if you are expanding and adding more products. Um so this is it gives a little bit of information about how this helps you to get it right. So first of all, it helps you validate your product ideas. So it's saying right here, validate your product ideas before launch. So now available in opportunity explorer. You can bring your own product idea and test it against real customer purchase signals. Describe the product and price point you're considering and see how it compares to top products in the category. Then adjust product for features or characteristics and rerun the analysis until you land on a product you're confident in. all before you spend any money on manufacturing, which is really good news because I've actually done that before where it's had some products that worked really well and some that maybe didn't. And the next thing it says, get product opportunities directly delivered to you. So, in the coming months, Opportunity Explorer will start surfacing product ideas to you directly mapped out with the features customers want and recommended price point based on what shoppers are already searching for. And then the last thing is that you can launch with a personalized plan. So, it says, "You'll soon have access to a first 90 days product launch plan in Seller Central, informed by what's working for the top 10 items in your actual category." So, once your new product is buyable, the plan will populate tailored recommendations for listing quality, fulfillment, and advertising pre-populated with the right keywords and available incentives like FBA, new selection, fee wavers. Sellers who follow key recommendations are five times more likely to achieve at least 10 sales in 30 days. Um, so to get started, you just have to go to product opportunity explorer and you can kind of take a look at all these things there. All right, next up we have a strategy of the week with Bradley and it's all about Tik Tok ads. So take it away, Bradley. >> How to manage your Tik Tok advertising in an efficient way. Those of you who sell on Tik Tok shop, you might be thinking, why would I need a tool to run my GMV Max ads? Because Tik Tok shop is nothing like Amazon PPC where there's just so many different negative matching and and bid rules and all these like millions of things and triggers that you can do. With with Tik Tok, you don't have much flexibility. But guess what guys, with Helium 10, you actually can uh take advantage of some of this flexibility. So, in Helium 10 ads for Tik Tok, uh, of course, you can see all of your your data and and different things and and you actually see different data points that you don't see in Tik Tok such as a cost and things like that. But what you can do is you can actually set rules like did you know that you can like try and add if you have a manual campaign that you're adding videos at a time, you can actually set up a rule instead of having to check, hey, are there any videos out there that are that that are getting traction? You can actually go and say, "Hey, if there is a video that gets this much views or this many clicks or this much gross revenue, you know what? Add the video to this campaign." You could do the opposite where you could say, "Hey, if there is a video in this campaign and it starts getting really terrible clicks and no sales or really terrible rorowaz, you know what? Remove it from the campaign." That's another rule you can set uh where you can automate that. uh you can set rules where you can be like hey if my inventory for this product goes to this level turn off my ads pause it you know because you don't want to be spending money sending traffic to products where you don't even have enough inventory all right so there is a lot of things that you have flexibility that you can do that would be almost impossible to do in Tik Tok seller center but by using Helium 10 Tik Tok ads you can automate this and this is just the beginning so so guys whatever you want for automation make sure to let us know but if you are selling on Tik Tok shop. Connect your token to Helium. It costs no extra money to connect it. Start using Tik Tok ads and start saving yourself time, money, and making yourself money by stopping the bleed on these uh videos that are that are bleeding you dry. Or on the flip side, get extra money by adding videos to campaign that are performing well organically. >> Thank you so much for that strategy of the week, Bradley. And let's go ahead and get into the final article of the day, and that is about Walmart. So Walmart is actually, this article says they open the door to retail ad dollars for podcast and streaming audio. So Walmart is teaming up with with Spotify. And I know a lot of us listen to Spotify. Well, tons of people listen to Spotify every day. Basically, Walmart's teaming up with Spotify to connect streaming audio and podcast advertisers. And it says it right here, as you can see, Walmart is teaming with Spotify to connect streaming audio and podcast advertising campaigns to purchases made at the retailers more than 4,600 US stores. The deal is another step toward making audio part of the same automated advertising marketplace that brands increasingly use to buy connected TV, digital, and display ads. This agreement makes Spotify advertising inventory available through Walmart's demand side platform or DSP, which advertisers use to buy digital media. And that means brands already using Walmart's advertising technology can now add Spotify music and podcast audiences to their campaigns without having to establish a separate buying relationship. So it also says, you know, the bigger development may be what happens after an ad runs. So Walmart will allow advertisers to use customer data to target Spotify listeners and then measure whether those campaigns lead to sales at a Walmart store. And it gives an example here. And it says, for example, a prepackaged food company could use Walmart's data to target consumers who buy products in its category, reach those shoppers with audio ads while they listen to Spotify, and subsequently measure whether the campaign helped generate purchases at Walmart. So that's pretty big news. A great partnership there and expansion for advertising for Walmart. So, I know a lot of this is really going to have a lot more to do with bigger brands who are doing DSP and Walmart, but something to just keep in mind that it's available out there. Um, but that is all that I have today for this episode of the weekly buzz. We look forward to seeing you again next week to see what's buzzing. Bye, everyone.