In the first half of 2026, China's private enterprises recorded RMB 14.53 trillion in import and export trade, up 17% year-on-year (General Administration of Customs data）. Against the backdrop of continued growth in cross-border e-commerce, Amazon Ads recently released its "Five Major Trends in AI Adoption Among China's Cross-Border SME Advertisers" report, revealing how AI is reshaping the path SMB brands take to expand overseas.
I. AI Is Transforming How Cross-Border E-Commerce Operates
According to the report, Chinese cross-border SME advertisers operate across an average of four overseas marketplaces, and AI has already permeated core functions such as ad optimization, creative generation, and cross-site management. In Q1 2026, the volume of creative assets generated by SME advertisers using Amazon Ads' AI creative tools grew by more than 140% year-on-year. Among marketers using AI, 79% said AI has made streaming TV advertising a viable option for them (Amazon Ads Insights, via Marketing Success).
AI is no longer a tool reserved for large brands—small and medium-sized sellers are now using it to drive end-to-end efficiency gains, from creative production through to ad delivery.
II. AI-Driven Cross-Border E-Commerce Depends on Data Support
AI-powered ad optimization relies fundamentally on high-quality data input. Analyzing competitor pricing, monitoring promotional activity, and tracking consumer review trends all require continuous data collection from multiple regions worldwide. This process faces challenges including anti-scraping mechanisms, regional access restrictions, and the risk of IP blocking under high-frequency request loads. When AI systems need to retrieve multi-site data in real time, the stability of the network channel directly affects the quality of decision-making.
III. How Proxy Networks Support AI-Driven Cross-Border E-Commerce
Take dynamic residential proxies as an example: 9HTTP offers over 90 million genuine residential IPs covering 200+ countries and regions, with support for country- and city-level targeting, billing by GB, and traffic that never expires. These characteristics align well with the data collection needs of AI-driven cross-border e-commerce:
Global data collection: Residential IPs from different geographic locations enable the retrieval of pricing, inventory, and promotional information across various marketplaces, providing reliable competitor data for AI-driven ad optimization.
Support for high-frequency requests: Automatic IP rotation distributes request load, enabling large-scale, sustained data collection that meets the real-time data demands of AI systems.
Reduced risk of detection: Genuine residential IPs are far less likely to be flagged or blocked than data center IPs, helping maintain the stability of ongoing data collection.
For multi-site account management, 9HTTP's long-term ISP proxies offer a static IP solution, assigning a dedicated IP to each store to maintain session isolation and reduce the risk of account association across multiple accounts.
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IV. From Data to Decisions: The Synergy Between AI and Proxy Networks
Two cases in the report are worth highlighting: brand AAJK used AI video creative tools to lift CTR above 1% while reducing ACOS to 14%; and seller JOGDRC leveraged AI-driven multi-site promotion to achieve a ROAS exceeding 5.2 across different countries (Amazon Ads Insights, via Marketing Success).
Behind these results lies AI's rapid processing of vast volumes of market data. A stable data collection channel is the starting point of the AI decision-making chain. As cross-border e-commerce increasingly relies on AI to optimize advertising and operations, the importance of proxy networks as core data infrastructure is rising in step.
Learn more: 9HTTP