Bold takeaway: ChatGPT is quietly steering more shoppers to retailers’ apps, but the impact remains small and favors a few giants over many smaller players.
New analysis reveals that ChatGPT referrals to retailer mobile apps rose 28% year over year during the Black Friday weekend (from Thanksgiving Day through Sunday). The growth shows ChatGPT is increasingly used as a referrer in e-commerce, even though its share of the market is still a sliver.
The study, conducted by mobile app insights firm Apptopia, analyzed observed consumer activity on mobile devices in the U.S. Note that this is not first-party data, so the figures are estimates. For this analysis, a referral session is defined as a mobile app session that directly followed a ChatGPT session within 30 seconds.
Despite the notable year-over-year increase, ChatGPT’s influence appears to disproportionately benefit the largest retailers. Amazon’s slice of ChatGPT referrals climbed to 54% this year, up from 40.5% in 2024. Walmart also gained a larger share, rising from 2.7% to 14.9%.
In raw terms, AI-driven shopping referrals still represent a small portion of the overall referral ecosystem. Last year, ChatGPT referrals to e-commerce apps accounted for 0.64% of all ChatGPT sessions on Black Friday; this year, that share edged up to 0.82%.
A referral session encompasses any instance where ChatGPT provided a shopping idea or where a user clicked a link within the chat that led to a retail app.
Beyond ChatGPT, other research shows AI is increasingly shaping online shopping. Adobe reported that AI-generated traffic to U.S. retail sites during Black Friday surged 805% year over year, with visitors arriving via an AI chatbot being 38% more likely to make a purchase. Cyber Monday saw AI-driven traffic rise 670%, and overall AI traffic for the November 1 to December 1 window climbed 760%.
About the author: Sarah Perez has been a TechCrunch reporter since August 2011, following more than three years at ReadWriteWeb. Her background includes IT work across banking, retail, and software sectors. You can reach Sarah at sarahp@techcrunch.com or via encrypted Signal at sarahperez.01.
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