NEW YORK, Nov 26 (Reuters) – Big retailers traditionally spend millions of dollars to get attention ahead of the holiday season. Now, they’re trying to get noticed by something else: AI agents.
Most of the projected $253 billion in U.S. online sales this holiday season will come through website visits or standard online searches, which favor companies that spend heavily on search engine advertising.
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But chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini are being embedded as tools with shopper-facing tools to provide product descriptions, compare prices, and make purchases directly within a larger language model, as U.S. consumers increasingly rely on AI to advise on the best fillers for Christmas gifts this holiday season.
“We’ve seen brands that used to publish three or four new blog posts or articles a month now look to publish 100 or 200 new blog posts or articles,” said Brian Stempek, CEO of generative engine optimization platform Evertune.ai. The company works with clients to make their websites discoverable by large-scale language models.
Stempek said the company charges customers, including apparel and shoe companies, “about $3,000” per month for its services.
With the biggest generative AI tools unable to advertise, companies are trying new methods, such as posting more frequently on brand blogs or writing about their products on Reddit.
Big retailers are building websites that are invisible to shoppers and intended only to be read by AI scrapers, automated data extraction tools that search the internet for information.
The scraper then feeds the information to platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini, which provide suggestions for gifts, apparel, and other holiday products.
Less traffic, more intent
Traffic from generative AI platforms to retail websites is still only a small portion of overall activity. In October, ChatGPT referrals to Amazon, Walmart, and eBay accounted for less than 1% of each site’s total traffic, according to data firm Sensor Tower. According to eBay, traffic from AI sources is a small portion of its overall traffic, but shoppers who find the link through agent AI come to the online marketplace with high intent.
Walmart did not respond to a request for comment.
But retailers clearly see an opportunity. Bed linen company Brooklinen pays social media influencers to talk about its bath towels and comforters on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, said Rachel Levy, Brooklinen’s chief operating officer. The AI scraper pulls information from the text of product reviews and audio transcripts of these posts.
Brooklinen also submitted the $199 comforter for awards from publications such as The New York Times’ Wirecutter to increase its chances of being featured in the AI agent’s response.
Gen Z, the group that uses tools like ChatGPT the most, has less purchasing power than older generations, so there is currently “very little” traffic from agent AI sources, she said.
Miami-based hair care company R+Co buys ads for Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa based on questions customers ask Rufus agents, said Dan Langer, president of R+Co.
Google recently introduced features that allow shoppers to track prices and purchase products using AI, but this feature can only be achieved if retailers share product details directly through the tech giant’s merchant center or if their products are easily found by the company’s scrapers. Lilian Rincon, Google Shopping’s vice president of product, said the company’s AI mode and Gemini chatbot consider a variety of factors, including store location and retailer quality, when recommending links to users.
Google is currently testing AI-mode ads in the US, but not the Gemini app. The company said that existing shopping campaigns and P-MAX advertising product campaigns will be displayed in AI mode through testing.
ChatGPT on Monday released additional shopping features to help users compare products and find “similar products.”
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said during an October earnings call that shoppers who use Rufus are 60% more likely to buy. Among major retailers, both Walmart and Target recently announced plans for apps that would allow people to shop directly with chatbots.
Report by Arianna McLimore. Additional reporting by Helen Reid. Editing: David Gaffen and Nick Zieminski
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