Reclaim Traffic with Smarter Ads

"As AI Overviews and shopping agents divert organic traffic, ecommerce marketers may turn to advertising for predictable growth in 2026. Artificial intelligence is reshaping how people discover products, evaluate options, and complete purchases. It may be early days, but the pace of change is accelerating. For example, an October 2025 Harvard Business Review survey revealed that 74% of U.S. adults aged 18-30 had used an AI chatbot in the previous month. That's up from 58% of young adults in a February 2025 survey."

"Search engines increasingly answer questions within the results. Shopping agents compare products before a shopper ever visits a website. The result is declining organic traffic. Seemingly every industry is experiencing what might be a once-in-a-generation change in how it operates. Yet the same AI tools creating disruption also offer opportunity. If organic traffic is less reliable, ad targeting becomes more valuable, and audience intelligence becomes a competitive advantage. For ecommerce shops, optimized targeting can regain predictability."

""There are standard audiences that have been around forever, like age, gender, and interest, but we find a lot of our more interesting data sets in purchase history, what we call the Shopping Graph," explained Mike Ford, CEO of Skydeo, a predictive audience firm. This optimization is simple enough: target consumers who have recently purchased adjacent products, perhaps from competitors or in similar product categories."

AI overviews and shopping agents are diverting organic traffic and reshaping product discovery, evaluation, and purchase paths. Rapid adoption of AI chatbots among young adults is accelerating these changes. Search engines and shopping agents increasingly answer queries and compare products before site visits, reducing organic visits. As organic channels become less reliable, ad targeting and audience intelligence gain importance for predictable ecommerce growth. Merchants can buy pre-built audiences based on purchase behavior, device use, and location history, and activate them across social, programmatic display, connected TV, and video. Moving beyond demographics to purchase-history-based 'Shopping Graph' targeting helps recover predictability.

Read at Practical Ecommerce