Amazon's shopping agent now takes orders by text. Here's how CPG brands make the short list

On Friday, November 6, Amazon started letting a small, invite-only group of U.S. customers text Alexa for Shopping. The shopper sends a message, the agent searches, compares and texts back a few options, then buys with the shopper’s approval. Amazon says millions more customers get access in the coming weeks.

Read Amazon’s own examples and you are reading a CPG shopping list: dog food, paper towels, “reorder the laundry detergent I bought last month,” eggs, bacon, pancake mix and maple syrup in 30 minutes, oat milk on the grocery list. That is our category. And a text thread has far less room than a search results page.

What did Amazon launch on November 6?#

Customers who accept the invite link a phone number and get a contact called “Alexa Shopping.” From there they can hand off a to-do list, text a photo of a recipe to fill a cart, set up a weekly grocery order, reorder past purchases, track prices or check on a package. The agent remembers stated preferences. Amazon’s examples include “only show me organic options,” “give me nutritional information whenever I ask about food” and telling it you only want vegan products.

Amazon says more than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months, and the number using its agentic features has grown more than eight times since the start of the year. Through Shop Direct, the agent can also surface products from stores outside Amazon, the program Amazon opened to self-serve feeds on November 4 (we covered that in our AI Mode and Shopping feed post).

Where do ads show up in the text thread?#

Amazon’s announcement does not mention ads. Digiday does. It reports that when the agent texts back a set of options, a Sponsored Product can be one of them, that Amazon is not charging advertisers for those placements yet, and that purchases the agent completes on its own stay ad-free. Digiday describes the reply as having “room for a handful of products at most.”

That fits Amazon Ads’ own rules for the assistant. Existing sponsored ads campaigns are automatically eligible to serve in Alexa for Shopping with no extra setup. Amazon Ads says nearly 20% of shoppers who interact with a Sponsored Brands prompt keep talking about that brand, and adding prompts to a Sponsored Brands ad drove a 6% increase in conversions. Branded Conversations, where a brand supplies guidance like which cleanser suits oily skin, is due in the U.S. in January 2027 and will be marked Sponsored.

Two things follow for a CPG team. First, a free placement is a free test. If your Sponsored Products campaigns are live on hero SKUs, you may already be showing up in texts without paying for it. Second, the auto-buy and reorder path is ad-free, so the brand that wins the first purchase keeps the repeat one. For detergent, dog food and paper towels, that first purchase is the whole game.

The money question is bigger than one placement. Reuters reported on November 4 that Amazon and Walmart hold a combined 88% of an estimated $74.4 billion in U.S. retail media spending (Emarketer projection), and that Amazon’s third-quarter ad revenue grew 11%, its slowest pace in nearly four years per LSEG data. Flywheel’s Amie Owen told Reuters, “We are not recommending that clients fundamentally shift their retail media budgets overnight.” We agree. Keep the budget, but stop treating the product page as the only thing it buys. For context on how much of Amazon’s business ads already are, see our Amazon revenue mix report.

What decides which products Alexa for Shopping recommends?#

Amazon has not published a ranking method. The best outside data we have is a vendor test from eStore Brands, published September 29. It asked Amazon’s assistant the same 50 shopper questions every hour for 261 hours in two UK categories, coffee machines and sunscreen. That produced 11,000 answers, 71,000 recommendation slots and just over 1,000 products from 286 brands. It is the UK store, two categories and one vendor’s method, so treat it as directional for the U.S.

The concentration is the headline. A typical question drew from about 94 products, yet 67% of all slots went to just 50 of them, and 65% of products never appeared once. An average answer showed six products, against 30 to 60 on a regular results page. A text reply is unlikely to show more.

Attributes were the strongest content signal. Products with no structured attributes filled in did not appear at all. Visibility rose sharply from zero to four completed attributes, and products with seven to nine took most of the slots. Specific fields mattered for specific questions: age range for kids’ sunscreen, recommended uses, scent name and skin tone. Only 43% of sun protection listings had eight or more attributes filled, against 80% for coffee machines. Personal care is behind.

Best seller rank still counts. Products in the top 10% of rank had a 90% likelihood of appearing, and a suppressed Buy Box made a product far less likely to show. Whether first party or third party held the Buy Box made no detectable difference. Reviews mattered less than people assume: the assistant recommended 52 products rated under four stars, some at 2.9.

How should a CPG brand get ready for text orders?#

Start with the 20 SKUs that drive most of your Amazon revenue. Score each one honestly.

Most of this is old Amazon hygiene with a bigger penalty. On a results page, a thin listing ranks lower. In a six-product answer or a text reply, it disappears. We would put the attribute work ahead of any new creative, because creative does not travel into a text message. Structured facts do.

Our take#

Amazon is moving its shopping agent into the most personal channel on a phone, and its examples are household staples. That favors brands that are already the default, because reorders go to what was bought last. Challengers have one window, the discovery reply, and it holds a handful of products. Fill the attributes, protect rank and the Buy Box, and measure your share of answers the way you measure share of shelf. More on that loop in our household reorder post and the glossary.

Want to see which of your SKUs AI shopping agents name, and who wins when you are missing? Run a free audit or book a demo. Or see how SearchPanel tracks AI visibility per product.