Amazon’s new “Shop Direct Merchant Workspace” features now have a direct AI connection from the merchant’s store to Alexa for Shopping and Amazon.
Shop Directlaunched last year, but as of this week the Merchant Workspace in the program offers a free, self-service online portal that allows third-party retailers to sync their own ecommerce websites directlywith Amazon’s search engine and Alexa for Shopping.
Merchants, typically small, buy their own ad media. Now they can connect the feed through Feedonomics, Salsify, CEDCommerce, andVersaFeed to help get their products discovered by customers.
Products submitted through Shop Direct may serve up in relevant search results on Amazon’s website and app, as well as in Alexafor Shopping results. Amazon will notify the seller as the consumer leaves its platform before directing them to the merchant’s website when shopping through the Shop Direct option.
For mediabuyers, specifically those managing direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, performance marketing, and retail media networks, this announcement changes the strategy for product discovery and ad spendallocation.
Capital One Shopping Research as of October 2026 states in their annual retail tracker 52% of all consumersstart their online product searches directly on Amazon.
More than 310 million global consumers shop on Amazon at least once a year from about 2 million active selling partners with shops onthe platform, according to the research.
Media buyers can now position their off-Amazon products directly in front of active shoppers.
The exact mechanics of the Shop Direct MerchantWorkspace change the fundamental strategy for media buyers through the connection and typically accepts the same product catalog merchants use for Google Shopping.
While media buyers typicallyhave workarounds, when they run ads on a standard Amazon product page, they cannot see the user data, making it difficult to attribute the data to sales.
While the Shop Direct MerchantWorkspace does not give merchants access to Amazon’s internal shopper data, it does change things by sending the customer directly to the merchant’s checkout.
