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The Amazon logo displayed on a smartphone and a PC screen.
Pavlo Gonchar | LightRocket via Getty Images

Search for “toothpaste” on Amazon, and the top of the web page will show you a mix of popular brands like Colgate, Crest and Sensodyne. Try a separate search for “deodorant” and you’ll first see products from Secret, Dove and Native.

Look a little closer, though, and you’ll notice that those listings are advertisements with the “sponsored” label affixed to them. Amazon is generating hefty revenue from the top consumer brands because getting valuable placement on the biggest e-commerce site comes with a rising price tag.

“There’s fewer organic search results on the page, so that increasingly means the only way to get on the page is to buy your way on there,” said Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at advertising firm Publicis.

For consumers looking for toothpaste on Amazon, getting to unpaid results requires two full swipes up on the mobile app.

An example of a mobile search for “toothpaste” on Amazon shows a sponsored brand ad at the top of results.

Until recently, Amazon put two or three sponsored products at the top of search results. Now, there may be as many as six sponsored products that appear ahead of any organic results, with more promotions elsewhere on the page, said Juozas Kaziukenas, who runs e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse.

The number of ads that appear differs depending on the exact search term and other factors such as whether users are shopping on desktop, mobile or in the Amazon app, Amazon says.

While Amazon doesn’t break out advertising revenue, ads account for the majority of the company’s “other” sales. That category was the fastest-growing part of Amazon’s overall business in the second quarter, with revenue soaring 87% from a year earlier to more than $7.9 billion.

In 2018, Amazon leapfrogged Microsoft to become the third-largest ad platform in the U.S., trailing only Google and Facebook. Amazon is capitalizing on its market control, knowing that its website or app is where many consumers begin their online shopping journey.

Kaziukenas said Amazon and founder Jeff Bezos have completely transformed from being anti-advertising. It’s become such a lucrative business that ads “have replaced most of the functionality on the site,” he said.

An Amazon spokesperson said there are no dedicated ad slots within search results, meaning that a user may see one ad, multiple ads or none at all. The company said advertising is an optional service for brands and sellers, but that using it can improve visibility of their products.

“Like all retailers, we design our store to help customers easily find and discover the right brands and products, and sponsored ads is one of the many ways we do this,” the spokesperson said in an email. “In all cases we work back from the most useful customer experience and the relevance of the results surfaced, regardless of how they’re presented to the shopper.”

Big consumer products makers aren’t the only ones taking up the most valuable virtual real estate. Amazon is also populating search results with its own products. For example, a search for “shampoo” pulls up a promotion for a bottle of Amazon brand Solimo before ads for products from Pantene, Nexxus, L’Oreal and others.

Sponsored product ads accounted for roughly 73% of retailers’ ad spend on Amazon in the second quarter, according to digital marketing agency Merkle. Last year, Amazon began replacing product recommendations in listings with product ads.

Amazon has also added new ad formats like video ads and sponsored brands posts, which feature a single brand and several product listings in a banner at the top of the page.

Ad prices going up

For brand owners, the price of doing business on Amazon is surging as the company expands its dominance in online commerce.

The cost per click for Amazon search advertising was $1.27 in August, up from 86 cents a year ago, according to a survey of more than 300 Amazon sellers conducted by Canopy Management, an agency that helps manage businesses on Amazon.

Companies that don’t pay the toll are finding their listings buried in search results. At the same time, sellers are paying more overall to Amazon for things like transaction fees and fulfillment services.

“It’s not uncommon now for brands to be spending 50% or more of their product price on various fees to be selling on Amazon,” Kaziukenas said.

Competition has also intensified as a result of the rise of Amazon aggregators, venture-backed companies that are raising big money from outside investors to acquire independent sellers. Some smaller sellers are concerned they may not be able to compete against deep-pocketed aggregators, which are bringing “massive budgets to be spent on Amazon, also in the form of advertising,” Kaziukenas said.

“They’re going from competing against other, smaller sellers to now competing against massive and well-funded sellers,” he said.

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OpenAI temporarily blocked from using ‘Cameo’ after trademark lawsuit

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OpenAI temporarily blocked from using 'Cameo' after trademark lawsuit

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

OpenAI will not be allowed use the word “cameo” to name any products or features in its Sora app for a month after a federal judge placed a temporary restraining order for the term on the AI startup.

U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee granted a temporary restraining order on Monday, blocking OpenAI from using the “cameo” mark or similar words like “Kameo” or “CameoVideo” for any function related to Sora, the company’s AI-generated video app.

“We disagree with the complaint’s assertion that anyone can claim exclusive ownership over the word ‘cameo’, and we look forward to continuing to make our case to the court,” an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC.

Lee granted the order after OpenAI was sued in October by Cameo, a platform that allows users to purchase personalized videos from celebrities. Cameo filed a trademark lawsuit against the artificial intelligence company following the launch of Sora’s “Cameo” feature, which allowed users to generate characters of themselves or others and insert them into videos.

“We are gratified by the court’s decision, which recognizes the need to protect consumers from the confusion that OpenAI has created by using the Cameo trademark,” Cameo CEO Steven Galanis said in a statement. “While the court’s order is temporary, we hope that OpenAI will agree to stop using our mark permanently to avoid any further harm to the public or Cameo.”

The order is set to expire on Dec. 22, and a hearing for whether the halt should be made permanent is scheduled for Dec. 19.

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OpenAI announces shopping research tool in latest e-commerce push

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OpenAI announces shopping research tool in latest e-commerce push

Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025.

Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images

OpenAI announced a new tool called “shopping research” on Monday, right as consumers will be ramping up spending ahead of the holiday season.

The startup said the tool is designed for ChatGPT users who are looking for detailed, well-researched shopping guides. The guides include top products, key differences between the products and the latest information from retailers, according to a blog.

Users will be able to tailor their guides based on their budget, what features they care about and who they are shopping for. OpenAI said it will take a couple of minutes to generate answers with shopping research, so users who are looking for simple answers like a price check can still rely on a regular ChatGPT response.

When users submit prompts to ChatGPT that say things like, “Find the quietest cordless stick vacuum for a small apartment,” or “I need a gift for my four year old niece who loves art,” they will see the shopping research tool pop up automatically, OpenAI said. The tool can also be accessed from the menu.

OpenAI has been pushing deeper into e-commerce in recent months. The company introduced a feature called Instant Checkout in September that allows users to make purchases directly from eligible merchants through ChatGPT.

Shopping research users will be able to make purchases with Instant Checkout in the future, OpenAI said on Monday.

OpenAI said its shopping research results are organic and based on publicly available retail websites, and that it will not share users’ chats with retailers. It’s possible that shopping research will make mistakes around product availability and pricing, the company said.

Shopping research is rolling out to OpenAI’s Free, Go, Plus and Pro users who are logged in to ChatGPT.

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Tesla fans told by Dutch safety regulator to stop pressuring agency on ‘FSD Supervised’

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Tesla fans told by Dutch safety regulator to stop pressuring agency on 'FSD Supervised'

A Tesla logo outside the company’s Tilburg Factory and Delivery Center.

Karol Serewis | Getty Images

Tesla is trying to get its “FSD Supervised” technology approved for use in the Netherlands. But Dutch regulators are telling Tesla fans to stop pressuring safety authority RDW on the matter, and that their efforts will have “no influence” on the ultimate decision.

The RDW issued a statement on Monday directed at those who have been sending messages to try and get the agency to clear Tesla’s premium partially automated driving system, marketed in the U.S. as the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) option. It’s not yet available for use in the Netherlands or Europe broadly.

“We thank everyone who has already done so and would like to ask everyone not to contact us about this,” the agency said. “It takes up unnecessary time for our customer service. Moreover, this will have no influence on whether or not the planning is met. Road safety is the RDW’s top priority: admission is only possible once the safety of the system has been convincingly demonstrated.”

The regulator said it will make a decision only after Elon Musk’s company shows that the technology meets the country’s stringent vehicle safety standards. The RDW has booked a schedule allowing Tesla to demonstrate its systems, and said it could decide on authorization as early as February.

Last week, Tesla posted on X encouraging its followers to contact RDW to express their wishes to have the systems approved.

The post claimed, “RDW has committed to granting Netherlands National approval in February 2026,” adding a message to “please contact them via link below to express your excitement & thank them for making this happen as soon as possible.” Tesla said other EU countries could then follow suit.

The RDW corrected Tesla on Monday, saying in a statement on its official website, that such approval is not guaranteed and had not been promised.

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the U.S., the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into Tesla’s FSD-equipped vehicles in October following reports of widespread traffic violations tied to use of the systems.

The cars Tesla sells today, even with FSD Supervised engaged, require a human driver ready to brake or steer at any time.

For years, Musk has promised that Tesla customers would soon be able to turn their existing electric vehicles into robotaxis, capable of generating income for owners while they sleep or go on vacation, with a simple software update.

That hasn’t happened yet, and Tesla has since informed owners that future upgrades will require new hardware as well as software releases.

Tesla is testing a Robotaxi-brand ride-hailing service in Texas and elsewhere, but it includes human safety drivers or supervisors on board who either conduct the drives or manually intervene as needed. Musk has said the company aims to remove human driers in Austin, Texas, by the end of 2025.

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