This year's Cyber Week will be a true test of how retailers have incorporated AI into their shopping experience.

Some 69% of US consumers plan to use AI while shopping this holiday season, according to Impact. Finding deals, comparing prices, and summarizing promotions tied as the top use cases. Shoppers also plan to use AI for product recommendations, review summaries, and local inventory checks.

That places AI at the center of Cyber Week’s defining challenge: Retailers need to stand out during a flood of promotions while proving that their offers deliver real value.

AI adds another visibility layer

Marketers are increasingly wondering where AI platforms get the information they use to recommend products to consumers.

“It’s not just about whether consumers are spending time or where they’re spending money. You also need to consider where these LLMs are sourcing recommendations,” said our analyst Blake Droesch at EMARKETER's Future of Digital Summit.

EMARKETER’s AI Visibility Index reveals how sharply that source mix can differ. While brand websites can influence recommendations across major LLMs, LLM information sources can vary. For instance, ChatGPT pulls from a mix of retailers and publishers, while Gemini relies more heavily on publishers across many consumer categories. Those patterns can also shift as models change.

That creates a potential blind spot for marketers. A brand can reach shoppers across search, social media, and retail media but still fail to appear when an AI assistant creates the shortlist. During Cyber Week, that could leave even a competitive promotion out of the comparison before the shopper visits a product page.

AI visibility does not replace search, retail media, or social. It gives retailers another place where they need to be visible, but they cannot approach it like another media channel.

Retailers have limited control over what an AI assistant recommends. What they can control is whether those systems have clear, accurate information to work with. That means keeping product details consistent on their own sites and retail partner sites, while recognizing that publisher coverage can also shape what AI platforms say about a brand.

Rather than creating content specifically for LLMs, retailers should make useful product information easy to find wherever those models are already looking.

Retailers need the right content

AI could help shoppers cut through Cyber Week’s flurry of sale banners, countdown clocks, and promotional emails. Consumers can ask an AI assistant to compare offers, explain the differences between products, and find the deal that suits a specific need.“One myth when it comes to AI is that retailers need more content so they can be discoverable,” said David MacDonald, executive vice president and head of commerce at Razorfish. “But the solution to discoverability isn’t more content. It’s the right content.”

Value messaging and product benefits have to be clear so that machines can accurately interpret benefits, according to MacDonald. That standard leaves almost no wiggle room for fuzzy sales language. An AI assistant will have an easier time evaluating an offer when it can find the current price, promotion dates, product benefits, shipping terms, return policy, and availability. If a retailer’s site lists one price while a retail partner shows another, the system may struggle to determine which information to trust.

Clear product information also helps AI move beyond identifying the largest markdown. A shopper may care more about delivery speed, product quality, or whether an item suits a particular recipient. Retailers that explain those differences give AI more useful reasons to recommend their products.

Review Cyber Week pages from the perspective of someone making a direct comparison. Can a shopper, or an AI assistant, quickly tell what the product costs, why it is useful, who it is for, and what conditions apply to the deal? Retailers should fix gaps and contradictions before producing another round of promotional copy.

Measurement must follow influence, not just clicks

“AI will have the most tangible impact in product discovery and consideration,” MacDonald said. However, AI’s role may be difficult to spot in a standard sales report. A shopper could use an AI assistant to compare televisions, then open a retailer’s app or buy the selected model in a store. The final sale would show little evidence that AI helped make the decision.

MacDonald recommends starting with two measures. AI search visibility rate tracks the share of relevant prompts in which a brand appears. Citation rate tracks how often an AI platform points to or recommends the brand’s content or products.

Neither metric proves that AI caused a sale. They do show whether a retailer appears when shoppers use AI to narrow their options. That matters because a product cannot win the final purchase if it never makes the shortlist.

Do not force AI into a last-click measurement model. Track visibility and citations alongside site traffic, branded searches, product views, and sales. Marketers can then look for patterns between stronger AI visibility and changes in shopper activity. No single metric will settle the question, but relying only on clicks will miss much of AI’s influence.

While AI AI may not handle the transaction during this year's Cyber Week, it could still decide which deals shoppers bother to examine.

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.