Top 5 Seller Reads this Week: Issue #248

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Top 5 this week

1. Seller Updates: Partial Refunds and Alexa+ Arrives

“Amazon’s new Partial Refunds can cut return costs but refunds still count toward your return rate. Since there’s no inventory reimbursement, track abuse risk and “frequently returned” signals before scaling. Use the Returns & Recovery dashboard to spot repeat issues (e.g., sizing, compatibility) and fix listings before they trigger more returns. Alexa+: optimize your product data for natural language and think strategically about how AI can drive both traffic and conversion.” ~Vanessa Cox

2. Buy it in ChatGPT: Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol

“The continued push towards “agentic commerce” continues, but it’s important to separate the signal from the noise here. While the tech is promising, and OpenAI clearly wants to make itself central to AI shopping, it’s yet to be seen how consumer habits will change. My advice for sellers is still to treat this as an interesting experiment for now, not a directive to overhaul your strategy. Adoption rate and lead flow over the next year will really show us how much the market is actually moving here.” ~Nikko Patten

3. First Amazon conquered retail. Now it’s quietly building a $35B business reshaping corporate operations.

“If your catalog, pricing, and ops aren’t B2B-ready, procurement teams will route spend elsewhere. Procurement-grade requirements: structured catalogs, repeatable bundles, clean invoicing, and measurable savings. Ship the ops first; the orders follow. On a longer team: as Amazon pushes deeper into B2B, Walmart, Costco, and category incumbents won’t sit still. Defend margin with SLAs, reliable fulfillment, and value-added bundles – not just lower price.” ~Mak Bidikar

4. Maximize Campaign Performance Across Amazon DSP Inventory

“Amazon DSP becomes “easier” every day. That said, easier to use doesn’t mean better performance. Every company cherry picks positive case studies. That said, DSP is the most quickly moving segment of Amazon Advertising. If you’re not testing the new enhancements, you’re behind the curve. Amazon is making constant DSP improvements. Hire DSP Prime, or hire a DSP expert that has deep full funnel analysis capabilities. Balance your spend across the Big 3: Awareness, Competition, Retargeting. Anyone who is ONLY retargeting isn’t using DSP correctly.” ~Clayton Atchison

5. ChatGPT is Now 20% of Walmart’s Referral Traffic – While Amazon Wards Off AI Shopping Agents

“ChatGPT now drives 20% of Walmart’s referral traffic, signaling a major shift in how shoppers discover products. Meanwhile, Amazon is blocking AI agents from crawling its listings. As AI-driven discovery grows, sellers must adapt: optimize for agent visibility on open platforms and double down on internal signals where access is restricted.” ~Vanessa Hung