ChatGPT referrals to retailers’ apps increased 28% year-over-year, says report

New information reveals ChatGPT’s rising affect as a referrer to e-commerce web sites, but additionally how small its slice of this market is at present.

In response to a brand new evaluation by cell app insights supplier Apptopia, ChatGPT referrals to retailer cell apps elevated 28% year-over-year over the Black Friday vacation buying weekend, working from Thanksgiving Day on Thursday by Sunday.

Nevertheless, using ChatGPT will not be benefiting smaller retailers as a lot because it’s serving to to additional entrench the e-commerce giants, Amazon and Walmart. This 12 months, Amazon’s share of ChatGPT referrals grew to 54%, up from 40.5% in 2024. Walmart’s share, in the meantime, elevated from 2.7% final 12 months to now 14.9%.

The information was collected by Apptopia’s U.S. panel, which is predicated on noticed client exercise on cell units. Because it’s not first-party information, its figures are solely estimates. For this evaluation, the agency outlined a referral session as a retail cell app session that immediately adopted (inside 30 seconds) a ChatGPT session.

Regardless of the large leap from 2024, customers’ use of AI chatbots to seek out e-commerce offers continues to be a small sliver of the general referral market, Apptopia famous. Final 12 months, ChatGPT’s referrals to e-commerce apps had been solely 0.64% of all ChatGPT periods on Black Friday, and that determine solely grew to 0.82% this 12 months.

On this case, a referral session was anytime ChatGPT both gave the searcher a buying thought or the consumer clicked a hyperlink immediately from their chat session that introduced them to the retail app.

Apptopia isn’t the one agency digging into how AI is impacting e-commerce in the course of the busy vacation buying season. Adobe additionally reported this week that AI visitors to U.S. retail websites (measured by customers clicking on a hyperlink) elevated by 805% year-over-year on Black Friday, and people who landed on a retail website from an AI chatbot had been 38% extra prone to make a purchase order.

As well as, Adobe stated that AI visitors to U.S. retail websites on Cyber Monday elevated by 670%. Within the vacation buying season up to now (Nov. 1 to Dec. 1), AI visitors is up 760%, it famous.