Welcome to the 26th edition of Moburst’s Marketing Roundup. November and December brought some industry-breaking shifts to the marketing industry, from Amazon and Perplexity clashing over the future of agentic commerce, to Google formally abandoning years of Privacy Sandbox work, and Meta reshaping AI search through new licensing deals. Here are the updates that matter and how they’ll shape growth in 2026.
The AI Shopping Wars Heat Up
Amazon Sues Perplexity Over AI Shopping Agents
Amazon recently filed a federal lawsuit against Perplexity AI, marking the first major legal battle over “agentic commerce.” The lawsuit targets Perplexity’s Comet browser, which uses AI agents to autonomously search, compare, and purchase products on behalf of users—without identifying itself as a bot.
Amazon’s complaint alleges that Perplexity “covertly accessed private Amazon customer accounts” and “disguised automated activity as human browsing,” violating Amazon’s Terms of Service and computer fraud statutes. Amazon is claiming this degrades the shopping experience and poses security risks to customer data.
Perplexity fired back in a blog post, calling the lawsuit “bullying” and arguing that AI agents acting on behalf of users should have the same rights as human shoppers.
Why This Matters for Marketers:
- This case will set precedent for how AI agents interact with e-commerce platforms
- If AI agents bypass ads and sponsored placements, Amazon’s $47B ad business faces disruption
- Brands must prepare for a future where AI makes purchasing decisions
- Product data quality becomes the new ad currency when AI agents compare across platforms
Amazon Rufus Gets 50+ Upgrades: Auto-Buying, Memory & More
Amazon isn’t just playing defense. On November 18, 2025, Amazon announced over 50 technical upgrades to Rufus, its AI shopping assistant. Key new features include:
- Account Memory: Rufus now understands individual shopping patterns and preferences
- Auto-Buy: Users can set price alerts and have Rufus automatically purchase when targets are hit (with 24-hour cancellation windows)
- Price Tracking: Display 30-day and 90-day historical pricing data
- Buy for Me: Rufus can purchase from third-party websites when products aren’t available on Amazon
- Help Me Decide: AI-powered guidance when shoppers feel overwhelmed by choices
The numbers are staggering: according to Fortune, 250 million customers have used Rufus in 2025, with monthly active users up 149% and interactions climbing 210%. Customers who engage with Rufus are 60% more likely to complete a purchase. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy revealed Rufus is on track to generate over $10 billion in incremental annualized sales.
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Platforms Are Rewriting the Rules of Personalization and Privacy
Meta’s New EU Ad Choice Model Is Coming
Meta will soon let EU users opt into lighter personalization for ads, in order to comply with the Digital Markets Act. For performance marketers this introduces another layer of fragmentation in signal quality and audience size. Treat EU as a distinct testing ground, refresh creative more aggressively, and double down on server-side tracking and modeled conversions to offset signal loss.
Why it matters: expect more volatility in performance and attribution for EU traffic, especially for interest-based and broad targeting. Brands should segment EU performance, watch CPMs carefully, and invest more in creative and first party data for resilience.
Google Officially Retires Privacy Sandbox
Google has recently announced it is retiring the Privacy Sandbox initiative—the once-flagship project aimed at replacing third-party cookies with privacy-preserving ad technologies.
What’s Being Retired:
- Attribution Reporting API (Chrome and Android)
- Topics API (Chrome and Android)
- Protected Audience API (Chrome and Android)
- SDK Runtime
- IP Protection
- On-Device Personalization
- Private Aggregation
- Protected App Signals
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) simultaneously released Google from its Privacy Sandbox-related commitments, ending nearly five years of regulatory oversight.
This marks the end of a project that never achieved widespread adoption.
Anthony Chavez, VP of Privacy Sandbox, cited “low levels of adoption” as the primary reason. This makes sense, as after years of complexity and shifting regulatory demands, the project never gained traction. Major ad networks like Meta, Google, and Snap remained on SKAN rather than adopting newer standards.
What’s Staying:
- CHIPS (Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State)
- Third-party cookies in Chrome (users can choose to block them)
- Incognito mode third-party cookie blocking
Takeaway:
For brands who invested in Privacy Sandbox integration: the APIs will be phased out following Chrome and Android processes. Focus your digital marketing strategy on existing attribution methods, which remain the standard.
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Ecosystem Expansions and AI-Driven Discovery
Apple Introduces App Store Mini Apps Partner Program
Apple introduced a new Mini Apps Partner Program designed to formalize and accelerate the use of mini apps inside iOS. Mini apps are lightweight, web-based experiences (HTML5, JS) embedded within a host app, similar to WeChat mini programs.
Key points:
- Apple now offers a reduced 15 percent commission for qualifying in mini app transactions.
- To qualify, host apps must adopt new compliance rails including the Declared Age Range API and Advanced Commerce API, which Apple uses to enforce safety, age suitability, and validated purchase flows.
- Apple is positioning this as an expansion of the App Store model to support developers who want more flexible, modular customer experiences without shipping full native updates.
Why this matters for brands and marketers:
- Mini apps give brands a way to deploy fast onboarding flows, loyalty programs, seasonal campaigns, and lite gameplay or commerce experiences without building a full native feature.
- This is Apple’s quiet move toward super app behaviors after years of resisting them.
- Host apps with large distribution (commerce, fintech, mobility, marketplaces) may quickly become premium surfaces where brands can activate embedded experiences through partnerships.
This is an early ecosystem shift worth monitoring as Apple shapes what “allowed” web functionality looks like inside the App Store.
Meta’s Major AI Licensing Deals With CNN, Fox, USA Today, and More
Meta announced a series of new licensing agreements that allow its Meta AI assistant to use content from CNN, Fox News, USA Today, People, The Daily Caller, The Washington Examiner, and France’s Le Monde.
As more users rely on Meta AI for product research, brand lookups, and purchase guidance, your brand’s visibility inside AI answers becomes a competitive surface. Content accuracy, schema markup, and high authority press coverage may start influencing how AI references your brand.
We can expect Meta to open the door to sponsored AI results or branded knowledge panels in 2026 as this model matures.
Google Opens Waze Inventory to Performance Max
Google expanded Performance Max to include Waze inventory for store-driven campaigns. Advertisers can now place branded pins, Promoted Places, and navigation ads directly in PMax without managing a separate Waze campaign.
Why it matters:
- Brands with physical locations get real-world intent targeting at the exact moment users are navigating.
- PMax reporting now surfaces channel-level performance, giving teams clearer transparency into which surfaces (Search, Maps, YouTube, Waze) are actually driving value.
- This strengthens PMax as Google’s catch-all entry point for multi-surface reach.
Stay tuned for our next roundup. For more marketing insights, visit the Moburst blog or explore our full range of digital marketing services.
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