TikTok announced a number of new tools this week for brands including updates to ads, AI, and two features worth paying attention to. Branded Buzz lets brands set campaign parameters and guidelines, with eligible TikTok One creators getting alerted to respond with video content, structured creator activation, on demand. Search Hubs, meanwhile, gives brands a controlled destination at the top of search results.

Users can now tag Etsy directly in a conversation, search for products, compare results, and click through to buy. The company is also testing a conversational search experience on its own site, built around the idea that context-driven queries are better suited to Etsy's millions of unique items

E.l.f beauty is rolling back it’s $1 price hike on all products after a lacklustre response. Who would have thought rising prices in this market would be a bad idea for sales? Everyone but E.l.f, clearly. With the CEO stating: “As we look at the state of the consumer today, we have recently seen a more pronounced decline in units.

We’ve talked about how AI traffic converts substantially better than human traffic in the past. But this week Shopify also dropped data that should make every brand rethink where they show up.

Customers arriving from AI platforms—ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude—are converting at nearly 50% higher rates than organic search traffic, spending 14% more per order. AI-referred orders grew almost 13x year-over-year in Q1 2026.
The reason? Shopify calls it "journey compression." AI collapses discovery and consideration into a single conversation. By the time someone clicks through, they've already decided. Over half of AI-referred sessions land directly on product pages — versus roughly 20% from organic search. The browsing already happened. In the chat window.

Each week we feature recent hires, showcasing top brands partnering with human brilliance to build their brand. This week’s hires include: