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Home » News » Shopify Launches an AI Tool That Runs Your Ads
Creating paid marketing ads in various channels has always been a difficult part of small business ownership. Either you hire an agency, find someone who knows what they are doing, or figure it out yourself while also running your store. Shopify wants to solve all these problems once and for all.
On June 23, 2026, Shopify introduced the Campaign Autopilot feature. It is described as an AI-powered marketing solution which comes integrated into Shopify Admin. Currently, it is in the early access version and it does what it says in the name – takes the weight of creating and running marketing campaigns for you.
Unlike most solutions, which are third-party integrations or separate applications, Campaign Autopilot is a Shopify solution which comes pre-installed in the platform. It is available from the Growth page of Shopify Admin and functions as a dedicated marketing team.
According to Shopify, merchants need only define the budget they want to spend monthly on marketing, connect marketing channels, and define guardrails regarding how to spend money in them. After this is done, Campaign Autopilot will take over and will create, monitor, manage, and optimize marketing campaigns in various channels.
You still stay in control – you can review and accept or deny the suggestions for spending made by the system, change your budget, pause marketing activities, or make other changes if you want to.
At present, Campaign Autopilot has three channels: Meta ads, which encompasses Facebook and Instagram via the Advantage+ format offered by Meta; Shop Campaigns, which places ads within the Shop app and third-party channels and is available in the US and Canada; and Shopify Messaging, which is responsible for sending out email notifications, such as abandoned cart and welcome emails.
More channels are on the way. Shopify revealed that the planned channels include ChatGPT Ads, Microsoft Advertising, and Snapchat. Microsoft Advertising is expected in July 2026.
First of all, it is important to emphasize the fact that Autopilot creates independent campaigns. Therefore, if you are already creating ads on Meta or other channels, the tool will create a parallel campaign without altering anything in your current campaign settings.
The point is that Campaign Autopilot does not create its own AI creative or invent ad content. Instead, the platform relies on your existing product catalog to develop campaigns. Your product images, titles, descriptions, and even prices will be used as building blocks.
Beyond your product data, the tool also pulls from your customer segments, their purchase history, email subscriber lists, orders, and conversion data. On top of that, the platform makes use of historical data from thousands of Shopify stores to get a better understanding of what works for similar businesses, regions, and business growth stages.
Shopify’s VP of Product for Merchant Marketing, Sachin Malhotra, explained that the ultimate goal of Autopilot is to equip merchants with the power of virtual marketing agency. This means that Campaign Autopilot can become a full-fledged alternative to marketing services provided by external agencies.
It is important to accept the fact that Shopify cannot guarantee certain results. In order for the system to understand what works and what does not for your store, some time is needed for it to figure out who responds to the ads, which channels work, and which ads resonate with your audience.
As a matter of fact, Campaign Autopilot was not released as a standalone product. It became a part of the Spring 2026 Edition, which was rolled out on June 17, 2026. As per the company, the edition featured more than 150 product updates.
The key element of the release was Sidekick, the AI assistant of Shopify. At this point, Sidekick can be used to work with any screen in the Shopify Admin both via text and voice communication. It is worth noting that Sidekick and Autopilot were designed to be complementary.
Apart from Campaign Autopilot, the company also introduced an AI sales associate that works with the questions of buyers, provides product recommendations, and answers order-related inquiries within the Shop Interface. In addition, the Spring 2026 Edition brought Rollouts that allows for conducting native A/B testing on the themes and checkout.
All these updates allow seeing what Shopify aims to reach: a platform where everything can be done with the help of AI.
Campaign Autopilot is available on all Shopify subscription plans except the Agentic plan. In order to use it, merchants need to activate payments via Shopify. Besides, staff that will use the system needs to have the Marketing staff permissions on the account.
The system is free. You will pay only for actual marketing spend that will be approved by you. This includes Meta ads spend charged by Meta directly, Shop Campaigns costs, and email cost via Shopify Messaging.
Obviously, the most appropriate candidates for using Campaign Autopilot are small businesses that lack a marketing department and have been skipping on paid ads or spending too much money on outside help. For these businesses, Autopilot will eliminate the need to waste time on setting up ads and developing abandoned cart email sequences.
Larger merchants with established paid media programs will likely keep their existing setups and treat Autopilot as an additional experiment. Shopify is not suggesting otherwise.
It is worth noting the inclusion of ChatGPT Ads among the planned channels. At this point, the company has a partnership with OpenAI through Agentic Storefronts that allows selling and advertising on ChatGPT. This way, with Autopilot, merchants will gain access to one of the fastest growing ad surfaces without the need to manage it separately.
Campaign Autopilot is still at the early access stage. It means that the platform is a monitored experiment at this point and not the fully matured product. Merchants willing to test it should consider having clear budget constraints and realistic expectations concerning the learning process. The capability is real but the control over ad spend should be retained.
Q 1: What is Shopify Campaign Autopilot?
Campaign Autopilot is an AI-based tool integrated into Shopify admin and designed to automate the creation, management, and optimization of campaigns on channels such as Meta, Shop, and email. After merchants set a budget and guardrails, the tool performs everything else while allowing merchants to remain in charge.
Q 2: Which channels does Campaign Autopilot support right now?
Right now, Autopilot works on Meta ads, Shop Campaigns, and Shopify Messaging for email. In the list of upcoming channels, there are ChatGPT Ads, Microsoft Advertising, and Snapchat. The latter will be released in July 2026.
Q 3: Will Campaign Autopilot change my existing ad campaigns?
No. Autopilot creates campaigns separately and does not interfere with the existing Meta ads, Shop campaigns, or email marketing.
Q 4: How does Campaign Autopilot decide what to run?
The Autopilot uses your store’s catalog, customer information, purchase history, and conversion rates. Also, it relies on patterns from the millions of Shopify stores’ performance to choose budgets and channels.
Q 5: Does it create AI-generated ad creative?
No. This tool uses the images and catalog you already have. Shopify claims explicitly that Autopilot does not create any creative materials for you.
Q 6: Is Campaign Autopilot free to use?
There is no fee for the tool itself. Merchants pay for their marketing spend, which they approved, including Meta ad spend (billed by Meta), Shop Campaigns cost, and Shopify Messaging cost for emails.
Q 7: Who is eligible to use Campaign Autopilot?
Autopilot can be used by merchants on all the Shopify plans except the Agentic plan. To use the tool, stores should have Shopify Payments enabled, and the personnel who will use Autopilot should have Marketing permissions in your account.
Q 8: Can merchants stay in control while using it?
Absolutely. Merchants can approve campaigns before running them, reject any recommendations, adjust the budget, and even stop the process whenever they want. This tool, according to Shopify, acts for your benefit.
Q 9: How does Campaign Autopilot work with Sidekick?
Sidekick, another AI-based feature offered by Shopify, helps merchants manage Autopilot. Merchants can ask Sidekick to help them to create a campaign, explain the performance data, or even to make changes to marketing controls without going through menu.
Q 10: Is Campaign Autopilot fully launched or still in testing?
Right now, Autopilot is in early access, which means it is available to merchants but at the early stage. Shopify advises merchants to start with a reasonable budget and expectations because the system needs some time to understand how it works.
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