Amazon is building a shelf for brands that don't sell on Amazon. Shop Direct at 250 million links.

Plenty of food and personal care brands have built their business on their own website, a few retailers and maybe a subscription, and stayed off Amazon on purpose. The reasons are familiar: margins, pricing control, the fear of becoming a commodity listing next to a cheaper copy.

That decision assumed you had a choice. Amazon is working on taking it away.

On October 28, PYMNTS, citing The Information, reported that Amazon has grown its Shop Direct program to 250 million links, 2.5 times the count in March. Shop Direct lists products from brands that do not sell on Amazon. According to the report, Amazon has also been showing these listings more prominently, adding new brands and pulling more product detail from those listings onto its own pages. The stated goal, in PYMNTS's framing, is to keep shoppers coming to Amazon "rather than using outside personal artificial intelligence agents."

This is a think piece, so here is our view up front. Shop Direct is not a side feature. It is Amazon's main answer to AI shopping agents, and it changes the Amazon question for every brand that has stayed off the platform.

What Shop Direct actually does

The mechanics matter, so start with Amazon's own description. On its Shop Direct announcement page, Amazon says it launched the feature last year as "an AI shopping experience that shows products not currently sold in Amazon's store when customers search for items." Its stated vision is that "whenever a customer asks for a specific brand or product on Amazon, we can help them find it and buy it," even if the product is only sold somewhere else.

When a shopper sees a Shop Direct product, they get two options. They can tap Shop Direct and be sent to the merchant's website. Or, for eligible products, they can tap Buy for Me, and Amazon's agent completes the purchase on the merchant's site using the shopper's Amazon address and card. The merchant receives the customer's name and address and handles delivery, returns and service.

In March, Amazon said Shop Direct covered more than 100 million products from over 400,000 merchants, and opened a way to join through feed providers Feedonomics, Salsify and CEDCommerce, with a direct merchant feed announced as coming.

Measure	Figure	Source
Products in Shop Direct, March 2026	More than 100 million	Amazon
Merchants in Shop Direct, March 2026	More than 400,000	Amazon
Shop Direct links, October 2026	250 million	PYMNTS, citing The Information
Growth in links since March	2.5 times	PYMNTS, citing The Information
Launched	February 2025	PYMNTS

An Amazon spokesperson told The Information that "Amazon is increasingly a destination where customers can find and buy products not just from our store," and that Shop Direct products are "appearing in hundreds of millions of searches monthly."

Walls going up, doors going out

Put Shop Direct next to Amazon's other moves this fall and a pattern appears.

In September, Amazon blocked Meta's Muse agent from shopping its store. Muse users saw a message saying that "continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon's Conditions of Use." The Verge, citing GeekWire, reported Amazon's concerns that Muse did not identify itself when browsing. Amazon also sued Perplexity last year to keep its Comet browser from shopping on Amazon (The Verge reports a judge sided with Perplexity in August), and The Verge notes Amazon's order confirmation emails have become sparser since July, leaving out item names and images.

So outside agents are kept out of Amazon. Meanwhile Amazon's own agent, through Buy for Me, goes out and shops other people's websites.

That can look like a double standard, and some merchants will see it that way. We think it is better understood as a clear strategy. Amazon's advantage has always been that the search starts on Amazon. AI agents threaten that, because a shopper can start in ChatGPT, Gemini or Muse and never open the Amazon app. If the search moves to an outside agent, Amazon becomes one supplier among many in someone else's answer. Shop Direct is how Amazon tries to keep the starting point. If every product, including ones Amazon does not sell, can be found on Amazon, there is less reason to ask anyone else.

Walmart has taken the other road. Earlier this month it opened a route for outside agents to shop on behalf of customers, under its own rules. We wrote about that split in retailers picking sides on AI agents. Both companies are making the same bet from opposite directions: whoever holds the shopper's question holds the sale.

Why the question has changed for DTC brands

The old Amazon decision was about distribution. Do we want our products sold there, at what price, with which seller? A brand that said no could keep its products off the site.

Shop Direct changes the question in three ways.

Your products can be on Amazon without you selling there. Amazon's merchant page explains how to opt out, which suggests some merchants are included without ever signing up. The program has grown to hundreds of millions of links. It is worth assuming Amazon may already show some of your products, and checking.

The facts shown are only as good as the data behind them. If Amazon builds a Shop Direct listing from your site or a feed, the price, pack size and flavor it shows depend on that data being right and current. PYMNTS reports Amazon is now showing more product detail from these listings on its own site. A stale feed is no longer a back-office issue. It is a page in the biggest shopping search engine in the country with your name on it.

Amazon's agent becomes one of your customers. With Buy for Me, the order on your site is placed by Amazon's AI. Amazon says the merchant gets the customer's name and address, so the relationship is not lost. But your checkout now has to work for an agent, and your returns team will handle orders from people who never saw your site.

None of this means a DTC brand should start selling on Amazon. It means the reasons for staying off are now about margin and control of the sale, not about being invisible there.

The case for leaning in, and the case for holding back

There is a real argument for joining through a feed. McKinsey's new agentic commerce survey found that at the point of purchase, retailer assistants are used slightly more than general AI tools, 15% against 14%. It also cites Amazon's statement that Alexa for Shopping users are 60% more likely to complete a purchase and spend 40% more. If your shoppers search Amazon for your brand, a correct Shop Direct listing that sends them to your store is better than a blank result or a competitor.

There is also a real argument for caution. Every channel that shows your product is a channel where your facts can drift. Amazon controls the presentation, the placement next to rivals and the agent that buys. You get the order, but Amazon owns the moment of choice. And the shopper's habit of starting on Amazon gets a little stronger every time it works, which is exactly Amazon's goal.

Our view: most brands with real branded search on Amazon should take control of the feed rather than leave it to chance, because the cost of wrong facts is higher than the cost of being present. Brands with no meaningful Amazon demand can reasonably wait and watch. Either way, opting out should be a decision made by looking at the listings, not a default left in place.

What this says about where shopping is going

Step back from Amazon and the bigger story is about where shoppers start.

For two decades, brands optimized for a start on Google or on Amazon. Agents add more starting points: ChatGPT, Gemini, Muse, Alexa, Walmart's assistant, Shopify's new Shop.md skill. Each platform is now racing to be the place where every product can be found, because each one knows that the place where the question is asked decides the answer.

For a brand, that means the work is the same everywhere, just repeated. Your product facts need to be accurate, readable and consistent wherever an assistant may pick them up. Tip 5 on keeping facts consistent matters more each month, and tip 33 covers which agents you let shop your store.

It also means knowing what each assistant actually says about you. That is the part most teams cannot see. You can test it by hand with your top branded and category questions in each assistant, or use a tool built for it; XENA Intelligence runs shopper questions across AI assistants, and SearchPanel shows where your products appear and how they are described.

The first step is simpler than any of that. Open Amazon, search for your brand, and look. Tip 39 walks through the check.