Generative AI-powered platforms have driven exponential growth in referral traffic to US retail sites, with a 4,700% surge in July. Data show major spikes during the 2024 holiday season—Nov. 1 to Dec. 31 clicks rose 1,300% year-over-year and Cyber Monday visits jumped 1,950%—and continued momentum into 2025 with January up 1,100% and April up 3,100% versus a July 2024 baseline. Consumers directed from AI spend 32% more time on sites, view 10% more pages, and exhibit 27% lower bounce rates. High consumer trust in AI-provided links is a key driver of the increased traffic.
The surge, Pandya added, is being driven by consumer trust in the links shared by generative AI-powered platforms like Claude, Perplexity, and ChatGPT, among others being tracked by Adobe. "We also ran a survey-in addition to the Adobe analytics platform data that's informing the traffic spikes that we're observing-and there, the consumers are saying that they really trust the links we see," he said.
Adobe spotted the first big wave of generative AI-driven traffic to US retail sites during the holiday season. In 2024, from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, clicks from AI sources jumped 1,300% YoY-and on Cyber Monday alone, visits spiked 1,950%. While still small compared with channels like paid search or email, the surge marks a significant shift. The data is based on Adobe's analysis of the universe of chat services and AI-powered browser experiences.
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