Happy Wednesday.
Or, bon mercredi to my industry friends in Cannes. We’ll see if it makes sense for The Aisle to have a presence there this time next year. For now, I’m settling for an Mbappé pronunciation debate with my kids over a wheel of brie. I’m OK with that.
A couple of news items that caught my attention this week…
Amazon is rolling out conversational AI-powered display ads across the web—beyond Amazon’s own digital walls— that include clickable product questions, or prompts, which route shoppers into a chat with Alexa for Shopping (the AI assistant formerly known as Rufus). An Amazon exec said that 20% of people who interact with a prompt continue the conversation, and Amazon says 7 in 10 are new to the brand.
I admit this news gave me a bit of a flashback. Many years ago, I covered digital media companies and ad tech at Ad Age, and remember reporting on former AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s master plan to reinvent display ads back in the early 2010s. The ad format was called Project Devil (no, I can’t remember a good reason for the name) and featured massive, highly interactive premium display ads. Anyone remember that? Well, I’m sure Amazon ad execs would hope their new format lasts longer than Project Devil did.
Amazon ads also started showing up on ChatGPT in what could either be a short-lived test by the e-commerce giant, or an early chapter of a new long-term advertising relationship replacing the Amazon-Google one.
Lastly, the consumer tech company Glance announced a deal with Samsung to power immersive shopping across Samsung TVs, using a viewer’s selfie as a foundation for AI personalization. I’ve long been skeptical of TV commerce, or T-commerce. Though with video giants TikTok and YouTube investing in commerce initiatives, perhaps this era will be different. You may just have to deal with bigger hair, like my alter ego was sporting in the demo below, from Glance's booth at Shoptalk back in March.
Now on to the good stuff…
The Center Aisle
Wirecutter editor-in-chief Ben Frumin
Disclosure from the top: I first met Ben Frumin almost 20 years ago in graduate school, and I like him a lot. We remain good friends, even though he and his now-wife refused to come to the bar I wanted to visit on my 25th birthday because it was one whole mile away from his apartment. I caved and went to them, and obviously still hold a bit of a grudge to this day. And he still doesn’t feel bad.
But putting all of that aside, Frumin is one of my favorite thinkers and leaders in journalism today. He’s run the newsroom at Wirecutter, the New York Times’ product-review giant, since early 2019. During that time, he’s led a massive expansion of both the staff as well as what the publication covers.
Wirecutter's business model is straightforward: it recommends products, links to them, and earns a commission when readers buy. That affiliate revenue is the heart of the business model. For heavier users, there's also a standalone subscription, as well as access through the Times' premium bundle. The Times doesn't break Wirecutter's financials out separately, but the digital affiliate and licensing segment it describes as consisting primarily of Wirecutter affiliate referral revenue totaled $201 million in 2025, up 8% from the prior year.
That model is under pressure, though. AI shopping tools from OpenAI, Google, Amazon and others increasingly promise to do some of what Wirecutter does—tell you what to buy—without sending readers to Wirecutter first. Prime Day, which is happening as I write, is Wirecutter's single biggest moment of the year. It felt like the perfect time to be asking Frumin about his plans for Wirecutter to survive, and maybe even thrive, during this massive change.
There's another layer Frumin couldn't discuss: the New York Times is currently suing OpenAI and others over copyright infringement, and Wirecutter's affiliate model is at the core of the harm being alleged. His communications team said the litigation was off limits. But its shadow hangs over just about everything we talked about.
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