Amazon brand owners, we're 3 weeks out from Accelerate and I'm all ears on the n
By Dbolzmann · September 2, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Amazon brand owners, we're 3 weeks out from Accelerate and I'm all ears on the news coming out.
Amazon usually starts leaking things in the weeks before that conference.
Here's the latest news to hit my feed: Amazon joined YouTube's Shopping affiliate program on August 27.
US creators can now tag Amazon products directly inside Shorts, long form videos and livestreams. No more sending people to a link in the description.
There's also an auto-tagging option that scans a creator's recent uploads and tags eligible Amazon products for them.
As my wise friend Vanessa Hung pointed out, perhaps this a response to TikTok Shop?
MY HOT TAKE: Amazon can obviously see the sales coming from Tiktok and is using that to validate the YT move.
What I'm sure about: → Social shopping is not going away. → Influencers drive purchase behavior. → Brands are investing heavily in creators and seeing it work.
What I'm not sure about: → Whether YouTube is where that happens.
I'll be honest, I don't use YouTube Shorts anywhere close to how much I use TikTok. It's hard for me to picture my own buying behavior getting driven there. BUT I'm only one data point so I'd love to be wrong on this one.
Anything Amazon does to help brands drive traffic from social, track that traffic, and pay creators for it is a step forward.
Which brings me to the part I actually care about. The tracking.
Here's everything that's public so far:
→ Creators see clicks and estimated revenue in YouTube Studio.
→ Google's own help page says creators CANNOT see which video or product drove an Amazon purchase.
→ There's no report on the brand side either.
→ No commission rate has been published anywhere. Not by YouTube, not by Amazon.
So it's easier than ever for a creator to sell your product, and right now there's no way to know which video did it. That's a huge blind spot that needs to be solved for.
If you're running creator campaigns today, how are you tracking them? Hopefully we get more clarity on this at Amazon Accelerate in a few weeks.