ChatGPT Recommendations for Retailers Up 28% Year-Over-Year

Recent data reveals that ChatGPT's influence as a recommendation tool for e-commerce sites is growing, though its market share remains relatively small.

According to new analysis from mobile app intelligence firm Apptopia, during the Black Friday shopping weekend—from Thanksgiving through Sunday—ChatGPT-driven referrals to retailer mobile apps surged by 28% year-over-year.

However, smaller retailers may not be benefiting as much as e-commerce giants like Amazon and Walmart. This year, Amazon’s share of ChatGPT referrals rose to 54%, up from 40.5% last year. Meanwhile, Walmart’s share climbed from 2.7% to 14.9% over the same period.

These figures are based on Apptopia’s U.S. panel data, which tracks observed consumer activity on mobile devices. As this is not first-party data, the numbers represent estimates. For this analysis, the company defined a referral session as a retail app session occurring within 30 seconds of a ChatGPT interaction.

Despite the notable year-over-year increase, Apptopia notes that AI chatbot usage for discovering e-commerce deals still accounts for only a tiny fraction of the overall referral landscape. Last year, ChatGPT referrals to shopping apps made up just 0.64% of all its Black Friday sessions; this year, that figure rose modestly to 0.82%.

In this context, a referral session refers to any instance where ChatGPT offers shopping suggestions or when users click a link within the chat to directly open a retail app.

Apptopia isn’t the only firm examining AI’s impact on holiday shopping. Adobe also reported this week that traffic from AI sources to U.S. retail websites—measured by shopper clicks on links—jumped by 805% during Black Friday compared to last year. Moreover, users arriving via AI chatbots were 38% more likely to make a purchase.

Adobe further noted a 670% surge in AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites on Cyber Monday. Across the current holiday shopping period (November 1 to December 1), AI-generated traffic has grown by 760%.