Optimove Insights: Nearly 3 in 4 Holiday Shoppers Use AI for Gift Ideas, and New Customers Surged 593% on Black Friday 2025

Optimove Insights found that during Black Friday 2025, returning customers active at its covered e-commerce brands rose 359% and orders rose 290% versus those brands’ average day from January through October 2025; new customers increased 593%. In a survey of 648 U.S. consumers, 72% said they use AI assistants regularly or occasionally for shopping ideas or gift recommendations, while 63% plan to wait until Black Friday or Cyber Monday to start holiday shopping in 2026. The report highlights simultaneous retention and acquisition opportunities, but does not report company financial results or market reactions.

Analysis

The investable question is not whether AI is entering shopping, but who captures the economics of discovery. If assistants become a meaningful product-discovery layer, Google could gain influence over commercial intent and shopping-ad allocation; however, the report provides no evidence that Gemini referrals convert, monetize, or displace existing search. AI answers could also keep shoppers inside the assistant, reducing retailer site visits and weakening the value of traffic even as discovery grows.

For retailers, the more immediate risk is costly acquisition masquerading as demand. First-time buyers may require discounts and fail to repeat, while loyal shoppers browsing without ordering can inflate engagement metrics without improving holiday contribution profit. Clear product feeds may improve AI visibility, but also make products easier to compare, intensifying price competition and potentially pressuring gross margins.

The signal is weak for near-term trading: consumer intentions are from a higher-income survey sample, and the behavioral comparison uses holiday days against a non-holiday daily baseline. Neither establishes incremental sales, profitability, nor AI-attributed revenue. Over 1–3 months, watch holiday conversion, discount depth, repeat purchase and acquisition costs; over 6–18 months, the key structural test is whether AI discovery sends attributable, monetizable traffic or shifts bargaining power to platforms. Contrarian risk: the market may overvalue AI discovery before retailers or platforms show measurable conversion lift.

Key Decisions for Investors

• No event-driven position from this report. It is vendor-sponsored research, and the data does not isolate AI-originated purchases or incremental profit.
• Keep GOOG on the watchlist, not as a report-driven buy: seek disclosed evidence of shopping-related AI referrals, conversion, or monetization. Falsifier for the upside thesis would be rising AI usage without measurable commercial engagement or advertising contribution.
• For retail exposure, monitor holiday gross margin alongside conversion, discounting, new-customer acquisition cost, and repeat rates. Treat traffic or customer-count strength without contribution-profit improvement as a potential negative signal.
• Reassess after holiday earnings: a persistent rise in promotional intensity or weaker repeat purchasing would support caution on consumer-facing retailers; verified incremental AI-attributed sales with stable margins would weaken that view.