Emerging data highlights ChatGPT’s increasing role in directing traffic to e-commerce sites, though its overall market share remains minor.
A recent analysis by mobile app insights provider Apptopia reveals that ChatGPT referrals to retail mobile applications saw a 28% year-over-year increase during the Black Friday holiday shopping period, from Thanksgiving Day through Sunday.
However, ChatGPT’s utility might be bolstering e-commerce behemoths like Amazon and Walmart more than smaller retailers. This year, Amazon’s proportion of ChatGPT referrals climbed to 54%, up from 40.5% in the previous year. Concurrently, Walmart’s share rose from 2.7% last year to 14.9%.
Apptopia’s U.S. panel collected this data, which is based on observed mobile consumer activity. As it is not first-party data, the figures provided are estimates. For this particular analysis, a referral session was defined as a retail mobile app session immediately following (within 30 seconds) a ChatGPT session.
Despite the notable surge compared to last year, AI chatbot engagement for discovering e-commerce deals still constitutes a tiny fraction of the overall referral landscape, Apptopia observed. On Black Friday last year, ChatGPT’s referrals to e-commerce apps represented only 0.64% of all ChatGPT sessions, a figure that increased to just 0.82% this year.
In this context, a referral session occurred when ChatGPT either offered a shopping suggestion or the user directly clicked a link from their chat session, leading them to a retail application.
Apptopia isn’t the sole entity examining AI’s influence on e-commerce during the bustling holiday shopping period. Adobe also reported this week that AI-generated traffic to U.S. retail websites (measured by shoppers clicking links) escalated by 805% year-over-year on Black Friday, and individuals directed to retail sites via AI chatbots were 38% more inclined to make a purchase.
Furthermore, Adobe indicated that AI traffic to U.S. retail sites on Cyber Monday jumped by 670%. For the holiday shopping season thus far (November 1 to December 1), AI traffic has increased by 760%, according to their data.