Major shifts from aging cohorts to rising media time and uneven AI adoption set the stage for another unpredictable year. Here are five charts to help your business understand these changes and kick-start the new year.
Revenue gains and cost savings come into relief as haves and have-nots diverge.
Winning in AI-driven discovery means optimizing for clarity, structure, and machine readability—not just SEO.
Agentic chatbots now drive discovery and checkout—but not without retailer pushback.
Nvidia’s pivot to platform play and sovereign cloud deals made it the control layer for the AI economy in 2025.
A recent study details fraud types, prevalence, and banks’ defenses.
AI took over search, ads, and discovery in 2025 as YouTube and CTV became the new centers of gravity for consumers and marketers. Our top 20 stories of the year highlight an evolution toward an AI-first world where attention and advantage move faster than ever.
Tech titans invest in each other, accelerating AI buildouts—but the loop may snap under pressure or regulation
New data shows traditional SEO success no longer guarantees visibility inside generative AI answers. Ahrefs found that fewer than 9% of ChatGPT and Gemini citations come from URLs ranked in Google’s top 10 results—meaning more than 90% of high-ranking organic pages never appear in AI responses. Instead, LLMs lean heavily on community-driven sources like Reddit, YouTube, Wikipedia, Yelp, and TripAdvisor, dramatically reshaping early-stage discovery. With LLM usage exceeding one billion monthly users, brands that do not participate in open forums risk disappearing from AI-mediated journeys. Marketers must treat GEO as a distinct discipline, not an extension of SEO.
Capital One is reportedly exploring alternatives to its AWS cloud contract because of rising AI costs.
In 2025, Meta shifted its weight behind AI, launching an audacious hiring spree that saw it poach top researchers from OpenAI, Google, and Apple. Even as the AI push intensified, Meta’s Reality Labs experiment continued to produce eye-watering losses. Meta enters 2026 with its fortunes wrapped tightly around advertising’s adaptability, the pace of AI innovation and whether users, marketers, and regulators will tolerate the new rules of engagement it’s writing atop the world’s largest social platforms.
Smart glasses surged as carryables flopped, but product announcements outpaced actual releases.
In 2025, Apple doubled down on AI while refocusing on device, ecosystem, and design differentiation, seeking to stay ahead in a maturing smartphone market and a global regulatory maze.
On today's podcast episode, we give out our '2025 Retail Awards' for the 'Must-Visit Store of the Year', 'Glow-Up of the Year', 'AI Power Move', 'Collab of the Year', and 'Campaign of the Year'. Listen to the discussion with Vice President of Content and host Suzy Davidkhanian, Senior Analyst Blake Droesch, and Analysts Arielle Feger and Rachel Wolff.
On today’s EMARKETER Miniseries—AI-Driven Media Management—we explore the core building blocks of AI innovation, what partnering with Amazon Ads looks like in practice, and advice for leaders or teams who don’t come from technical backgrounds but need to build or use AI systems. EMARKETER Senior Director of Content Jeremy Goldman speaks with Adam Epstein, co-founder and CEO of Gigi. Listen everywhere you find podcasts, and watch on YouTube and Spotify.
The share of consumers who view generative AI as a negative disruptor in the creator economy has nearly doubled, jumping from 18% to 32% since November 2023, according to a July survey from Billion Dollar Boy and Censuswide.
Industry leaders believe 2026 will be about the evolution of shopping. Consumers have changed the way they discover products and consider purchases, whether on social media or through genAI-powered conversational searches. In the upcoming year, retailers will be leveraging data to support more relevant in-store experiences and adapt dynamically to individual shopper journeys. Here are some important ways that marketing experts see this happening.
Retailers faced a challenging year as economic factors, new technologies, and changing consumer behaviors reshaped the landscape. Here are our top five stories from this past year and what they meant to a tumultuous industry.