Forty percent of US adults have used AI as a shopping assistant in the past year, per a study by PayPal—and 77% of past or potential AI shoppers plan to use it while holiday shopping this year. Younger consumers are driving the change. Sixty-one percent of Gen Zers and 57% of millennials have used AI to assist with a purchase in the past year. The holiday season’s cheer has been dimmed. We lowered our forecast for November-December sales growth to 1.3% in light of tariffs and economic uncertainty. For merchants to compete amid that slowing spend, adopting AI is critical. To score the most volume from ecommerce-led sales, merchants need to make sure their partnerships with AI platforms prioritize mobile-first ecommerce: Mobile commerce will propel over 56.5% of holiday ecommerce sales, per retail mcommerce holiday forecast.

AI will soon redefine how people find information. As search engines and generative AI engines converge, the next wave of discovery is emerging—and marketers who invest in AI optimization now will secure an early advantage.

As Google’s Chrome and DuckDuckGo integrate AI tools into their browsers, Perplexity has launched its own, built with agentic AI capabilities from the ground up—Comet. When perusing products, Comet can take complex natural-language requests and surf review sites, listicles, and news articles to find top options. For users looking for an AI-first experience, Comet is a promising entry that blends active assistance with traditional web functions. However, given Perplexity’s recent scaleback on advertiser initiatives, AI search may not be the next frontier for ad formats. Continuing investments in traditional search options like Google Search is crucial to ensuring visibility.

Perplexity is taking a step back from its advertising initiatives amid struggles to monetize AI search. Marketers should pause planned investments in AI search until search ads are measurable and proven to be effective. AI adoption may be growing, but there remains no clear evidence that ad formats in AI search provide returns.

A Yext analysis of 6.8 million citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity found that 86% of AI-generated answers rely on brand-managed content—from official websites and listings to reviews. First-party sites led with 44% of citations, followed by listings (42%) and reviews (8%). The findings suggest AI models increasingly trust structured, authoritative data over publisher or community sources. But fewer users click through—only 8% from AI summaries versus 15% from standard search—indicating that generative platforms are capturing more engagement directly. To stay discoverable, marketers must pair clean, structured first-party data with strong social visibility as AI search reshapes traffic flows.

Perplexity dropped the $200 monthly fee for its AI-native Comet browser, making it free worldwide but with rate limits. The change follows Google Chrome hitting a record 73.7% share of desktop browsing in September, per StatCounter. Comet can summarize webpages, pull key details, and wade through links on a user’s behalf. Chrome remains the must-buy channel, but ChatGPT’s mobile stickiness and Comet’s positioning prove that audiences may increasingly flow through alternative gateways. The brands that experiment early across these varied environments will be better prepared when consumer behavior tilts away from legacy browsers.

AI chatbots most often use health media sources like Mayo Clinic and Healthline in answering consumer health-related questions, according to an Outcomes Rocket study. There’s an opportunity for marketers to grow chatbot attention with quality content. Create credible and user-friendly content and avoid overly complex or jargony material to appeal to the way chatbots are constructing answers. Cater to the preference for recent data and summarized content by updating content frequently and offering condensed takes at the top of posts.

PayPal’s Honey browser extension will start recommending products based on users’ conversations with chatbots, per a press release. Relying on the Honey browser extension rather than striking individual partnerships with each major AI platform is a far more expedient pathway to broaden Honey’s reach across AI-based shopping. And by keeping the selection and checkout processes squarely in the province of the user, Honey gets to reap the benefits of the rise in AI-enabled product discovery without the associated risks of agentic commerce.

Anthropic’s Claude AI is taking on competitors in a multimillion dollar ad campaign. The “Keep Thinking” campaign positions Claude as “the AI for problem solvers” and marks Anthropic’s first foray into brand marketing. The campaign is a necessary start to help Claude gain market share and boost its comparatively small user base, but it’s only the first step in a long journey ahead for Anthropic.

Google and PayPal ink multiyear partnership for commerce solution with a focus on agentic AI, per a press release. Google and PayPal’s surprising partnership reflects the ongoing scramble to secure the best positioning in the Wild West of AI development. All players want to have an early mover advantage; that can incentivize unlikely partnerships to avoid falling behind rapidly evolving technology.

Affiliate marketing publishers benefited from jittery consumers buying to get ahead of tariff-induced price increases. But consumers’ increasing reliance on genAI for shopping help has alarmed affiliate publishers and advertisers.

AI is rewriting the rules of digital media, advertising, and commerce at breakneck speed. Here’s what players in the digital realm can do to stay relevant.

Ad tech company PubMatic filed a lawsuit Monday against Google for alleged anticompetitive and monopolistic actions in the digital advertising ecosystem. The lawsuit claimed Google took illegal actions that impacted PubMatic and harmed its ability to grow revenues. PubMatic’s lawsuit underscores that structural shifts in ad tech could eventually reshape how advertisers access and value Google’s search inventory and digital ad offerings.

The news: PayPal and Venmo users can receive early access to Perplexity’s new browser, Comet, with a free 12-month trial of Perplexity Pro. Our take: Big Tech is betting that agentic commerce is the future of shopping, but consumers aren’t on board yet: Nearly 70% of US adults are not interested in AI-powered shopping assistants, per a September 2024 EMARKETER and CivicScience survey. While jostling for future positioning in the market, PayPal, Venmo, and Perplexity need to convince consumers that agentic commerce is a desirable payment option, lest they repeat a metaverse investment flop.

A federal court stopped short of ordering Google to divest Chrome, instead requiring it to end exclusive search contracts and share some index data with competitors. Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling allows Google to keep paying Apple for default placement but bans exclusivity that kept rivals sidelined. Alphabet shares rose 8% after hours, while Apple gained 4%. Google faces six years of oversight but avoids a structural breakup sought by the DOJ. The bigger challenge looms outside the courtroom: AI tools, Reddit, and TikTok are increasingly siphoning queries, while Google’s top-result clickthrough rates continue to slide.

AI search engine Perplexity is facing potential ad business struggles with the departure of its head of advertising Taz Patel. The departure comes as Perplexity eyes new avenues for growth and is faced with legal pressures, per Adweek. Patel’s departure signals a deeper issue with AI search ad monetization, reflecting advertiser hesitation to spend without proven formats, measurement, and ROI, even as AI adoption grows.

The news: Perplexity added a standalone subscription tier for its Comet agentic AI browser that will fund a $42.5 million publisher revenue-sharing program. Comet Plus costs $5 per month and gives users access to “premium content from a group of trusted publishers and journalists.” The browser is included in Perplexity Pro and Max subscriptions. Our take: Brands should actively monitor how their content is used across AI platforms and consider usage-based deals for fair compensation, especially if content is regularly surfaced by AI tools. They should also examine the real revenue potential of partnerships like Comet Plus and scrutinize audience size, payout structures, and long-term sustainability before committing.

Retailers have built lucrative revenue streams from retail media networks (RMNs), leveraging on-site ad inventory and first-party transaction data. As the potential grows for consumers to shop through AI agents instead of retailer sites or apps, those data streams and ad surfaces are at risk.

AI shopping assistants are reshaping product discovery and threatening retail media’s search-driven model. RMNs and advertisers need to adjust strategies to protect their market position and seize the opportunity to turn disruption into growth.

The news: Despite consumers’ rising use of AI agents for search, shopping, and discovery, brands are falling behind on generative engine optimization (GEO) strategies. 47% of brands have no deliberate GEO strategy or have no idea if they appear at all in AI agent responses, per a new report from Cordial. Another 47% have only just begun optimizing content for AI discovery. Our take: To boost visibility, brands should optimize for conversational context and create structured, machine-readable content that AI can index, like clear website FAQs, TL;DR summaries, and detailed product specs. Expanding presence across social platforms that feed AI training models, such as Reddit, Quora, and YouTube, can also improve chances of surfacing in AI-generated responses.