Shoppers are no longer typing rigid keywords and sifting through endless grids. They are conversing with AI assistants, watching auto generated product videos, and expecting answers, not results. That behavior change is accelerating in 2025, where AI doesn’t just influence discovery, it drives it. Industry outlooks point to a cautious holiday season in the U.S., with buyers leaning into value and assistance from AI powered recommendations and agent experiences expected to contribute meaningfully to spend. The brands that win this cycle will pair compelling creative with agile, AI driven optimization loops that react in hours, not weeks.
From keywords to conversations: the new discovery layer
Amazon’s generative AI shopping assistant gives customers a natural way to ask product questions, compare options, and summarize reviews inside the shopping experience. This conversational layer reframes how you structure content. Instead of stuffing keywords, smart brands answer the questions shoppers actually ask, in the tone and order an assistant prefers to surface. If you are new to shaping content that AI can interpret and reuse, start with our deep dive on the evolution of AI in retail and how language models reshape merchandising, then layer in tactical guidance on applying generative techniques to listings. Explore our guides on the evolution of AI in ecommerce and generative AI’s role in retail, and learn exactly how to use ChatGPT for listing optimization to align with conversational search.
Read next on XENA: The Evolution of AI in E-Commerce, Generative AI in E-commerce: A Catalyst for Revolutionary Change, and How to Use ChatGPT for Amazon Listing Optimization.
Video becomes table stakes, because AI makes it effortless
High motion product videos once required studios, scripts, and time. In 2025, AI video tools can transform static images and existing footage into ad ready video units tailored for Sponsored formats, complete with motion, text, and music in minutes. This democratizes creative quality and compresses testing cycles. The practical takeaway is simple. Treat video as a default asset on your most important product detail pages and ad groups, and iterate weekly. Pair those creative iterations with structured experiments in titles, images, and A+ content to feed what conversational shopping surfaces. Our playbook on A+ Content in 2025 shows how creative and structure influence conversion right now.
Read next on XENA: Amazon A+ Content in 2025: The New Rules for Higher Conversions.
Retail media grows up, measurement follows
Retail media continues to outpace broader digital ad growth, propelled by first-party data and closed loop attribution. Budgets are consolidating around placements that show direct sales impact, shifting planning from quarterly to rolling, signal-driven decisions. Success now hinges on how fast teams can allocate spend, reshape audiences, and refresh creatives as demand signals change across marketplaces.
What “good” looks like in 2025: hourly feedback, not monthly reports
The new operating model is a continuous loop. Creative is generated and versioned quickly. Listings answer real questions with crisp, structured copy. Ads distribute those ideas across high intent surfaces. Measurement feeds back within hours to decide which versions scale and which retire.
This is where XENA shines. XENA Foresight projects demand shifts and inventory risk so you can plan bids, budgets, and catalog moves before the market moves. XENA BrandVoice turns that foresight into AI-authored, channel ready content that’s tailored to how assistants and shoppers read pages. Xenalytics unifies the performance view and helps you see impact by keyword, placement, and creative version. With XENA’s hourly optimization engine inside XENA 360, bids, budgets, and negatives adjust in near real time, keeping you efficient when competition spikes and opportunistic when rivals go dark. Discover the products here: XENA Foresight and XENA BrandVoice.
If you want a primer on using AI across the stack, our guides on AI applications in e-commerce and five game changing AI use cases are a solid starting point. They show how to apply AI to content, merchandising, and retention, not just ads. Explore AI in E-commerce: Applications & Use Cases and 5 Ways AI Fuels E-Commerce Innovation.
Blueprint: connect conversational discovery to conversion
Start by mapping the questions shoppers ask a conversational assistant to the building blocks of your product detail page. Anticipate comparisons, materials, compatibility, and trade offs. Structure your bullets and A+ modules to resolve those questions succinctly. Use video to demonstrate the answers that text cannot convey, especially sizing and use-in-context.
Once the content exists, deploy ads as distribution for those answers. Sponsored Products captures bottom funnel intent; Sponsored Brands video brings your explainer into the results; product targeting and category targeting surround near-substitutes to intercept consideration. As performance data accrues, let XENA’s hourly optimization adjust bids and budgets to the versions with the best assisted conversion, not just last-click sales.
For deeper context on how Amazon now evaluates trust and performance when awarding the Buy Box, study our latest framework and align your operational playbook with fulfillment consistency, review velocity, and demand signals, not just price. Read: The Hidden Triggers Behind Amazon’s Buy Box in 2025.
Guardrails when AI writes your content
Generative tools can accelerate listing creation, but guardrails matter. Keep your unique value proposition, claims substantiation, and brand voice consistent. Validate that AI generated attributes and compatibility details are accurate, and monitor policy compliance. If you’re weighing how far to lean into automation, our perspective on AI generated content risks and opportunities outlines a pragmatic, brand safe approach you can adopt today. Read: AI-Generated Content on Amazon: Opportunity or Risk for Sellers in 2025.
Amazon’s own seller features are moving in the same direction, offering generative capabilities designed to simplify listing maintenance and refreshes. Keeping your catalog synchronized with these capabilities will reduce manual lift and align your pages with how Amazon prefers to parse content today.
A practical 30-60-90 you can start now
In the first thirty days, reauthor your top five listings to answer conversational questions directly, publish at least one AI generated video per hero SKU, and activate structured experiments on titles and images. Over the next thirty, route all creative and bid decisions through a single hourly optimization loop with XENA, retiring underperforming variants quickly and scaling those with demonstrated assisted conversion. By day ninety, your catalog should show tighter message consistency, better creative coverage, and a measurable uplift in conversion efficiency across retail media placements.
The bottom line
AI has shifted from advantage to expectation. The winners of 2025 will not be those with the most tools, but those with the tightest feedback loops between shopper questions, creative answers, and hourly optimization. If you want that loop without adding headcount, XENA’s stack was built for this exact moment. Book a session and we’ll map your path from conversational discovery to profitable growth.
