• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, July 8, 2025

Amazon Prime Day 2025 officially kicked off Tuesday and runs through Friday. The ecommerce sale applies to more than 35 categories like apparel, beauty, and home.

Amazon's AI assistant Rufus aims to benefit shoppers -- but are they ready for this type of advice as trustworthy content becomes a major stumbling block? i

I's not just on Amazon, but across the web. Prime Day seemed like the perfect time to market an assistant capable of searching through a massive inventory of products.

In May, Amazon Web Services revealed that its computer infrastructure handles "millions of queries per minute and [generates] billions of tokens in real-time” through Rufus. 

AI is intended to make searches faster and more complete, despite turbulence marked by declining consumer confidence, economic uncertainty, and the impact of Google updates, according to a report released Tuesday by mrge, which supports ecommerce.

More than 80% of respondents to mrge's survey expressed a positive outlook for the remainder of the year, marking a new record.

Mrge connects more than 5,500 publishers, 80,000 advertisers, and 200 networks across more than 160 countries.

The advertising platform released a commerce report today showing trends for the first half of 2025.

Between June 5 and June 24, 2025, about 90 participants took part in the survey, including publishers, advertisers, networks or technology providers, and agencies.

Google's platform updates continue to pose a risk for advertising, according to the report, with 35.6% saying they see more than 10% of their business at risk, and 8.9% fearing a loss of more than half of it. 

Respondents also noted that trust and authentic partnerships have become increasingly valuable in an increasingly AI-driven world.

Some 90% of respondents estimate they will use AI as a supporting tool or an active contributor in their work within the next 12 to 18 months.

Dave Reed, CEO of mrge, believes the findings demonstrate the ecommerce "thrives under pressure and during times of change."

"In the age of AI, the appetite for reinvention is growing, especially around authentic partnerships, more quality, and an emphasis on trustworthy content," he said.

Post-cookie attribution models is the top industry trend in commerce advertising with AI a close second, followed by personalization. 

Still, concerns remain around the potential loss of creativity, editorial quality, and jobs.

While AI adoption is rising, the data suggests that today's hype level "is widely overblown," according to the report.

Fundamentals like trust and authenticity still matter, with 73.8% of industry participants in the survey said readers’ trust is either extremely important or very important to success in commerce advertising.

More than 62% of participants report that commerce advertising generates more than 20% of their total sales. And more than 60% of companies have increased investments in partnerships. These partnerships are viewed as top growth opportunities, and expanding the partner base ranked second.