ChatGPT referrals to retailers’ apps increased 28% year-over-year, says report
New data shows ChatGPT’s growing influence as a reference to e-commerce websites, but also how small its share of this market currently is.
This is evident from a new analysis from the mobile app insights provider ApptopiaChatGPT referrals to retailer mobile apps increased 28% year over year during the Black Friday shopping weekend, which runs from Thanksgiving Day on Thursday through Sunday.
However, using ChatGPT may not benefit smaller retailers as much, but it will help further entrench e-commerce giants Amazon and Walmart. This year, Amazon’s share of ChatGPT referrals grew to 54%, up from 40.5% in 2024. Walmart’s share, meanwhile, rose from 2.7% last year to now 14.9%.
The data was collected by Apptopia’s US panel and is based on observed consumer activity on mobile devices. Since they are not first-hand data, the figures are only estimates. For this analysis, the company defined a referral session as a retail mobile app session that immediately followed (within 30 seconds) a ChatGPT session.
Despite the big jump from 2024, consumers’ use of AI chatbots to find e-commerce deals still represents a small piece of the overall referral market, Apptopia notes. Last year, ChatGPT referrals to e-commerce apps were just 0.64% of all ChatGPT sessions on Black Friday, and that figure only grew to 0.82% this year.
In this case, a referral session occurred anytime ChatGPT gave the searcher a shopping idea or the user clicked a link directly from the chat session that took them to the shopping app.
Apptopia isn’t the only company researching the impact of AI on e-commerce during the busy holiday shopping season. Adobe also reported this week that AI traffic to US retail sites (measured by shoppers clicking a link) increased 805% year-over-year on Black Friday, and those who arrived at a retail site through an AI chatbot were 38% more likely to make a purchase.
Additionally, Adobe said AI traffic to US retail sites increased 670% on Cyber Monday. In the holiday shopping season to date (November 1 to December 1), AI traffic is up 760%, the report said.
