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10 minutes of expert insights every weekday. Your morning ritual for staying ahead in retail media.
Black Friday - Cyber Monday Halftime Report
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[00:00:00] Kiri: You've probably seen some headline numbers by now declaring that AI shopping has finally arrived. Adobe Analytics reported that AI driven traffic to US retail sites surged 805% year over [00:00:15] year on Black Friday. Salesforce tracking 1.5 billion global shoppers announced that generative AI and agents drove $14.2 billion in online sales on Black Friday alone.
[00:00:29] [00:00:30] Sensor Tower found that Amazon shopping sessions involving the Rufuss chatbot that resulted in purchases jumped 100% compared to the prior 30 days. The narrative is that AI shopping has finally arrived. The robots are here [00:00:45] and they're buying stuff, but Ian Simpson, SVP of Innovation and Strategy at Sensor Tower had a word of caution about reading too much into these figures, which I'll share later.
[00:00:56] I'm writing this Monday afternoon watching Cyber Monday. Numbers roll [00:01:00] in still far too early for conclusions, but let's look at some of the data that's flowed in so far and where it may be pointing
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[00:01:08] Kiri: first. That 805% stat might not mean what you think it does. Adobe's number, [00:01:15] 805% growth in ai. Referrals to retail sites sounds explosive.
[00:01:20] Salesforce says AI influenced $14.2 billion in Black Friday sales globally. Sensor tower reports that rufuss involved Amazon [00:01:30] sessions that resulted in purchases jumped 100% versus the prior 30 days. These numbers look huge until sensor towers. Ian Simpson asks the obvious question. Didn't chat GPT usage roughly quadruple [00:01:45] this year.
[00:01:45] If you are measuring ai referral traffic and the total addressable market of AI users grew four times, of course, referrals surged. That's not a shift in the daily shopping behavior of everyday customers. It's basic math [00:02:00] about a larger base of users. Ian Simpson unpacked three other problems with the narrative in a post on LinkedIn.
[00:02:07] First, Amazon has been blocking OpenAI for months. Those referral numbers are artificially suppressed for the [00:02:15] largest retailer in the game. Meanwhile, Walmart and Target referrals are up dramatically, but they still represent a tiny fraction of total traffic to those sites. Second revenue is up 7%, but traffic is [00:02:30] flat or down.
[00:02:31] Simpson doesn't have revenue data, but sensor tower shows overall unique visitors to retail sites are looking flat or down from last year. So either consumers bought more items or we're just [00:02:45] measuring inflation. He's betting on the latter and third Rufuss conversions are higher, but probably not for the reason Amazon wants Simpson's take.
[00:02:54] My bet is consumers are using Rufuss more as advanced search. And less as an agentic [00:03:00] shopper. Conversions do seem to be higher with Rufuss, but that could be because it's driving better search results versus radically changing the shopping experience. So people are using AI tools, but are they shopping differently or just using better search? [00:03:15] Miracle Ads is the only retail media solution designed for both one P and three P Marketplace brands. Why does that matter? Marketplace sellers [00:03:30] demand a seamless advertiser experience that still offers full funnel ad formats, and retailers need a flexible solution that allows you to scale your media business.
[00:03:41] Kiri Masters: Learn more@miracle.com. [00:03:45] That's M-I-R-A-K l.com.
[00:03:48]
[00:03:50] Kiri: Here's another thing to remember about this year's Black Friday Cyber Monday holiday, and all those new fancy AI tools that were announced in a hurry right before the big [00:04:00] event. Nobody had time to actually learn these tools. Consumers got maybe 48 to 72 hours to test these new features before the biggest shopping weekend of the year.
[00:04:10] Scott Wino has been tracking Agentic commerce announcements on his retail Gentech blog. [00:04:15] Let's look at the timing chat. GPT Shopping Research launched Monday, November 25th, four days before Black Friday. Target in chat. GPT launched Tuesday, November 26th, three days before [00:04:30] perplexity, PayPal. Instant buy launched Wednesday, November 27th, two days before Walmart on chat.
[00:04:37] GPT launched Sunday, November the 30th. Cyber Monday Eve. This is AI Shopping's [00:04:45] first real test at scale. The moment when supply and demand finally clicked like tap to pay did for mobile wallets, but we're not actually there yet. The supply arrived, but consumers barely got to try it before the shopping event was [00:05:00] underway.
[00:05:00] What we don't know yet is if conversion numbers we are seeing this weekend from genuinely new behavior or are early adopters testing shiny new features during a high intent shopping window. We'll need to see January usage numbers when [00:05:15] there's no sale. Urgency to know if behavior actually shifted.
[00:05:18] Speaker: Now let's move on to another constraint around AI enabled shopping, which I have talked about before, that retailers are blocking the future they claim to want. James Taylor, founder of ad [00:05:30] tech firm, particular audience dropped a post that captures the contradiction at the heart of retail's AI strategy.
[00:05:36] According to his analysis, 71% of CloudFlare protected sites block GPT Bot and 80% block clawed. [00:05:45] CloudFlare protects about one in five websites on the internet. Note, I'm skeptical of these exact percentages and the methodology here, but the directional point stands. The reason is straightforward economics, browser-based [00:06:00] AI agents load full pages every script, image and dynamic element that's expensive to serve at scale, especially when many of those sessions don't convert to purchases.
[00:06:13] So some retailers block [00:06:15] AI traffic to save on server costs, but here's the problem. If AI assistance can't access your product catalog, they can't recommend it. They just default to competitors who haven't blocked them. Taylor argues that retailers need to stop treating [00:06:30] AI agents like scrapers and start providing structured access through protocols like retail MCP, that would let them control and meter AI access while keeping front-end performance fast for humans.
[00:06:44] [00:06:45] Now, let's recap what actually changed this weekend. Strip away the inflated percentages. And what actually happened was more modest per Salesforce data, mobile became default. 72% of global orders and 79% of [00:07:00] US traffic came from mobile devices. Mobile wallets hit 30% of US digital orders up from 28% last year.
[00:07:09] This is real behavior change, but it's been building for years. Margins held, average selling [00:07:15] price grew 5%. Year over year, even with discounting staying flat, retailers protected their margins while consumers traded up. Customer service automation doubled Salesforce reports AG Agentic Customer [00:07:30] service Conversations surged 86% week over week with agent completed tasks like returns doubling.
[00:07:39] This is where AI is already delivering concrete value. Handling the volume spike [00:07:45] without hiring seasonal workers. Well, that's it for today. I hope you had a great Black Friday, tomorrow.
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