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Jassy: Third-Party AI Shopping Agents Like Meta's Muse Not Yet a Threat to Amazon Ads
On Amazon's earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy said shopping through third-party AI agents is still no more convenient than going straight to a retailer. According to CNBC, such agentic shopping has not yet reached the scale needed to meaningfully affect Amazon's advertising business.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy addressed concerns that personal AI agents buying on users' behalf could bypass sponsored listings in the store. In his view, few customers shop this way for now, and the experience is not yet good. The comments came alongside Amazon's results for the third quarter of 2026.
What Jassy said
According to CNBC, Jassy said few customers shop this way today. He added that the experience is "still not great nor more convenient than coming to a retailer directly to research or one-click order there." CNBC's account indicates he expects little to no impact on Amazon's advertising business.
The remarks concerned agents such as Meta's Muse. After Muse launched, concern emerged that personal AI agents would buy on Amazon on users' behalf, skipping paid placements in search results, which could weaken the company's advertising business.
Ads miss expectations
Advertising is a high-margin revenue stream for Amazon, and its performance, together with the online stores segment, weighed on how the quarter was received. CNBC reports that the ad result fell short of forecasts, as Alphabet's did earlier.
Amazon pointed to "timing anomalies": the shift of Prime Day into the second quarter in most countries, the timing of NBA games on Prime Video, and changes to its search engine marketing programs in the third quarter of last year. The company expects advertising revenue growth to return to the high teens in the fourth quarter.
CNBC's assessment
Jeff Marks of the CNBC Investing Club notes that the scenario in which agents bypass ads may still materialize in the future. In Marks's view, however, agentic shopping has yet to gain enough traction to meaningfully affect advertising.
This is the company chief's assessment, not an independent measurement. In the excerpts cited, Jassy gave no data on how many people buy through third-party agents.
What it means for the market
For Polish sellers and marketers, it is a signal that the ad-funded model in online stores is holding for now, but the question of agents buying on customers' behalf remains open. Much depends on whether such tools become more convenient than ordinary shopping.
