U.S. and Canadian Shopify Plus merchants can now use Shopify Audiences—a tool that applies machine learning to aggregated data from across the platform—to assemble groups of prospective buyers at whom to target ads. The service is currently integrated with Facebook and Instagram; the Ottawa-headquartered firm plans to expand it to TikTok, Microsoft Advertising and other ad platforms. (The Logic)

Talking point: Shopify merchants have faced “some friction” in advertising and seen returns drop because of Apple’s April 2021 changes to cross-app tracking, Shopify president Harley Finkelstein acknowledged on an earnings call last week. Analysts have predicted the commerce platform could launch its own ad network in response. Shopify Audiences isn’t that—it’s only helping with the targeting, not serving the ads. (Insider first reported Shopify was testing the product in June 2021; the firm announced it on Tuesday as its “not-so-best-kept-secret.”) Shopify didn’t respond to The Logic’s questions about expanding access to Audiences, but one of its Twitter accounts said it doesn’t plan to expand it to non-Plus clients. That would leave the smaller and newer direct-to-consumer brands that relied on Shopify’s software and cheap Facebook and Instagram ads to grow still in need of a fix for their recent customer-acquisition challenges.