How Marketing Can Be Authentic In The Age Of AI |
With just eight days until Christmas, we know that regardless of how much people are spending this year, they’re using more AI to do it. Back in September, Salesforce predicted that $263 billion of holiday spending could come through AI-assisted shopping. And while we won’t know how accurate that projection was until after the holidays, we do know that between November 1 and Cyber Monday, there was a 758% year-over-year increase in AI-driven e-commerce traffic, according to Adobe.
But what are people seeing when they open an AI chatbot to do some shopping? Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge Consulting, told me it’s actually really different depending on which platform shoppers use. Google’s AI—both through its AI Overviews that pop up on many searches and AI Mode—is more of an advisor, showing the shopper a variety of information and reviews for products, so the consumer can make a more informed choice. In fact, Yu said, only 4% of citations on Google go to actual retailers.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, prioritizes the transaction, Yu said. More than a third of all of the links the chatbot pulls up go to retailers—four times more than what is typically seen on a Google search. Its priority is product availability and retailer options, rather than product research and reviews.
“Google’s AI is really good at the research and the wisdom of the crowd, whereas ChatGPT is really trying to bring you to the store,” he said.
Yu says that Google is leveraging the strength of all of its assets this holiday. YouTube videos—part of the Google empire—are a key part of AI results for shopping. Google also leans on the unbiased review content that it’s indexed for years. Questions about the best cooking utensils, for example, bring up content from sources including the Food Network, Reddit discussions and Quora. And Google is also getting good at answering multifaceted questions, meaning you can ask, “What is the best big screen TV that I can get by Christmas?” and get a response to all of it.
As a newer player to the AI commerce game that isn’t part of a global tech behemoth, ChatGPT doesn’t have all of the historic information that Google has, nor does it have a popular video hosting site in its corporate family. But what it does have, it’s working to leverage, Yu said. ChatGPT is more of an AI sales associate in a store, helping you to make the purchase you’re looking for. Some of that may be because of how parent company OpenAI is positioning itself in the general e-commerce space, forging new partnerships directly with retailers and payment companies, Yu said. But OpenAI also has no ad platform as of yet, meaning it’s more important to the bottom line for ChatGPT to help people make purchases.
Yu said the holiday season approach to e-commerce is likely to continue as the year goes on, but he predicts there will be another big player using AI to help shoppers in 2026: Amazon.
“Amazon has the best closed loop intent data,” he said. “They know each household: What you already bought, what you already own, what you’re more likely to buy. …I think Amazon, in a lot of ways, has been on the defense … in the commerce space around AI, but in ‘26, I think they’re going to be pretty aggressive in terms of turning some of that stuff on.”
Trust in AI as a research and e-commerce assistant is growing, but in general, people do not like it when brands use AI-generated images and videos. Consumers want brands to show authenticity, which is a complicated concept nowadays. I talked to Rebecca Swift, senior vice president of Creative at Getty Images, about how marketers can bring that authenticity—especially in the age of AI. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.
As the holiday hustle and bustle continues, we’re taking a publishing break from Forbes CMO. We will not be publishing next Wednesday, December 24, nor the following Wednesday, December 31. We’ll be back in your inboxes on Wednesday, January 7. We hope you have a great holiday, and we will see you in 2026!
When Disney CEO Bob Iger said on an earnings call last month that the company would allow users to create and share AI-generated content on its Disney streaming service, the internet had a meltdown. And last week, the company