Global e-commerce competition has entered a “technological deep water zone”, and cross-border e-commerce giants are using tools such as AI (artificial intelligence) and live broadcast to further compete and seize market share.
On April 22, Amazon Advertising released a number of AI marketing tools including advertising agents and creative agents at the unBoxed annual summit.
At the same time, Amazon Advertising has further made it clear that it will deepen its brand overseas route and accelerate the deployment of global live broadcast business. So far, it has covered the United States, Canada, five European countries, India and Japan.
“The value of AI in the e-commerce industry is not only to improve execution efficiency, but also to liberate teams from tedious operations and shift to more core strategic thinking.” After the meeting, Yang Tong, vice president of Amazon China and head of Amazon Advertising China and South Korea’s major customer development, said that in the past, small and medium-sized Chinese brands were limited by high creative costs, difficult localization, and complex cross-market operations. It was difficult to compete with large international brands, but with the implementation of AI tools, this situation is expected to improve.
In fact, the current war on the cross-border business of major e-commerce giants has spread from the original “low price” to “branding overseas.” Jing Shi, president of AliExpress, Alibaba’s cross-border e-commerce platform, recently bluntly stated that cross-border e-commerce has moved from “packaging overseas” to a new era of “brand overseas”.
Jingshi clearly pointed out that AliExpress will create a new home for Chinese brands to go overseas.
For Amazon Advertising, facing competition from China’s overseas platforms such as ByteDance’s TikTok and AliExpress, the focus of the game is no longer superficial competition in terms of traffic and price, but the deep-seated capability competition that can help Chinese overseas companies gain global visibility.
At a time when live streaming e-commerce has become a global trend, Chinese and foreign markets are showing completely different development paths.
Yang Tong said that China’s live streaming e-commerce has been deeply integrated into entertainment and consumption scenarios, and users are accustomed to completing transactions in a closed loop of “entertainment planting-instant ordering”.
Domestic live broadcasts are highly focused on the bottom of the marketing funnel, with “strong promotion” and “buy, buy, buy” as the core, and pursue short-term, fast and instant conversions.
However, the boundaries of overseas consumer scenarios are clear, work, life, entertainment and consumption are clearly separated, and shopping decisions are more rational.
“In North America and other markets around the world, live broadcast is not just a sales channel, but an important carrier of brand building.” Yang Tong emphasized that overseas live broadcast focuses more on education and value transmission, covering the entire marketing funnel from awareness, consideration to conversion, and is especially suitable for long-term consideration cycle categories such as 3C and home appliances.
He said that consumers will repeatedly compare and understand products and brands in depth, and the attribution cycle can last for several months, and finally complete the purchase because of trust in the brand.
The success of giants such as Apple and IBM proves that the brand itself is the core asset, and only long-term investment can form user loyalty and repurchase power.
Yang Tong pointed out that Amazon Live is not a simple copy of the social platform model, but a differentiated route based on Amazon’s own trust ecosystem and shopping mentality.
Amazon Live Broadcast pays more attention to brand story delivery and product value education, covering the complete marketing funnel. It is especially suitable for long-term consideration cycle categories such as 3C and home appliances. Consumers will complete the conversion after fully understanding the information, so the attribution cycle is longer, but the user quality and conversion rate are also better.
At present, Amazon Live has expanded to key markets such as Canada, the five EU countries, and Japan, and user acceptance continues to increase.
Unlike domestic live broadcasts, Amazon live broadcasts are deeply embedded in a complete service system such as mall fulfillment and customer service. It is not an independent traffic play, but a part of the entire consumer experience.
In response to the market concern about “the live streaming threshold is too high and it is difficult for small and medium-sized sellers to participate”, Yang Tong clearly responded that small and medium-sized enterprises have always been the core subjects of the Amazon ecosystem and are also the key service targets of platform innovation.
“Although Amazon live broadcast is not a ‘must-have option’ for sellers, it can play a key role as part of all-region marketing. Brands can combine live broadcast with search advertising, display advertising, celebrity marketing, etc. to achieve a more balanced global layout.” He also mentioned,
A large number of cross-border hits and innovative products come from small and medium-sized enterprises, which have strong supply chain advantages and product innovation. Amazon uses AI tools to simplify operational processes and lower the threshold for content production and delivery, allowing small and medium-sized brands to build brand awareness through content scenarios and achieve sustainable growth.
Although Amazon is trying to find a differentiated path, the diversion and competitive pressure from China’s cross-border e-commerce platforms cannot be underestimated.
ByteDance’s overseas revenue will grow by nearly 50% in 2025, far exceeding the domestic growth rate of about 20%.
Among them, TikTok Shop’s GMV (gross merchandise transaction) growth rate in 2025 is close to 70% year-on-year.
In addition, AliExpress continues to anchor brand upgrades.
In September 2025, AliExpress launched the “Super Brand Overseas Plan”, claiming to use half the cost of brands on Amazon to achieve higher transactions.
The move is seen as a head-on challenge to Amazon for mid- to high-end brands.
In April this year, AliExpress further announced a new goal of helping 2,000 Chinese brands double their overseas expansion by 2026.
For a long time, the separation of brand advertising and performance advertising has been a core problem plaguing the global marketing industry.
Especially for cross-border brands, weak awareness in overseas markets, long delivery links, and opaque data often lead to huge budget investments but difficulty in measuring true commercial value, and prominent problems of marketing waste and inefficiency.
Yang Tong said: “Brands and effects have always been independent of each other. It is very difficult to effectively connect the two, which means huge waste and inefficiency. Amazon’s advantage is that we have a complete end-to-end view of the consumer journey and can efficiently connect the entire link from brand awareness, user consideration to final conversion.”
AI capabilities have become one of the key chips in Amazon’s differentiated advertising competition.
Yang Tong introduced that Amazon has launched a series of lightweight, highly easy-to-use AI tools based on trillions of first-party shopping and entertainment data, combined with technical infrastructure such as Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), to accurately adapt to the current situation of China’s large number of founder-led small and medium-sized cross-border brands with streamlined teams.
Among them, Ads Agent uses natural language interaction to implement audience segmentation and delivery suggestions; Brand+ and Performance+ focus on brand exposure and downstream conversion respectively, automating the execution of full-stream advertising activities; Creative Agent covers the entire creative process, from script writing, image generation to multi-language dubbing, in one stop.
Now, with the support of AI tools, start-up brands can quickly generate creative content adapted to different markets around the world, accurately understand regional consumer preferences, and achieve more scientific effect measurement.
This not only lowers the technical and financial thresholds for cross-border marketing, but also transforms “product-efficiency integration” from an industry slogan into a practical business capability.
AI tools further help brands quickly adapt to the culture, language and consumption habits of different markets, achieving localized creativity and precise reach.
Amazon is not the only one who sees the dividend opportunities of AI technology.
Chinese cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba are also continuing to promote the implementation of AI in the foreign trade industry.
As early as February 2025, Alibaba International announced that Accio, its first AI search engine for global B2B (business-to-business e-commerce) buyers, was connected to the most advanced inference models such as DeepSeek, and officially launched in-depth research, business exploration and other functions.
Previously, the AI tool “Business Assistant” launched by Alibaba International Station for Chinese foreign trade merchants has also been fully integrated into the inference model.
This battle for the main battlefield for brands to go overseas represents a profound change in the development logic of the cross-border e-commerce industry – the “involution” of low prices is no longer sustainable, brand power has become the core competitiveness, and the demand of Chinese brands to go overseas is becoming the key to the competition among major platforms.
The branding showdown between Amazon and AliExpress will also reshape the competitive landscape of global cross-border e-commerce.
