American consumers set a new online shopping record for Black Friday, spending $9.8 billion on November 24, a record for the famous sales day and a 5.7 percent increase over 2022, according to Adobe Analytics. Thanksgiving Day online sales were also strong, rising 5.5 percent to $5.6 billion, per Adobe, which predicts that Cyber Monday numbers will blow past both those days, projecting U.S. consumer spending of between $12 billion and $12.4 billion for another new record. A notable trend during the holiday shopping weekend was increased reliance on “buy now, pay later” deals. Continue reading Black Friday Sets Sales and Mobile Shopping Records in U.S.

Amazon continues its push into social shopping, partnering with Snapchat to allow sale of some products to U.S. users directly through the app. Amazon’s Snapchat ads will display real-time pricing, Prime eligibility and delivery estimates, as well as product details. Snapchat users will be able to link their Amazon accounts via a one-time set-up, with purchases defaulting to their preferred Amazon payment method and shipping address (unless otherwise specified). Both Amazon products and those through the e-commerce giant’s independent sellers will be included in the program. Continue reading Snapchat Latest Social Site to Link Amazon for In-App Sales

Meta Platforms is offering its social media users a “more seamless shopping experience” by inviting them to link their Amazon accounts to Facebook and Instagram so purchases will complete without having to leave the apps when clicking on display ads. “The opt-in experience will allow you to see real-time pricing, Prime eligibility, delivery estimates and product details on select Amazon product ads in Facebook and Instagram,” according to Meta. In the past year, Meta has made improvements to its online ad system, leveraging artificial intelligence to counter the effect of Apple’s 2021 privacy changes. Continue reading Meta, Amazon Team for In-App Shopping on Social Platforms

Amazon now has more than 750,000 robots that relieve warehouse employees from some intensely repetitive tasks. Just in time for the holiday shopping rush, the company is adding a new robotic technology, Sequoia, which is already operating at a fulfillment center in Houston, Texas. Amazon says Sequoia is a complete “reimagining” of how inventory is stored and managed, resulting in a 75 percent improvement in how inventory is identified and housed, and also improves employee safety. Amazon is also expanding its robot workforce with the addition of a bipedal robot called Digit, from Agility Robotics. Continue reading Amazon Introduces New Robots to Improve Fulfillment Speed

Swedish fintech company Klarna, whose online payments platform claims to work with 500,000 merchants worldwide, is debuting an AI-powered shopping lens. As with in-app lens tools from Google and Amazon, the Klarna lens lets shoppers snap pictures of items or styles then use its app to find out where to buy using a “search and compare” filter. Klarna claims its camera feature can visually identify over 10 million items and match them with more than 50 million store offers. “Klarna uses AI to translate the image into a search term,” turning it into “a shoppable item,” the company explains. Continue reading Klarna AI Image Search Takes Aim at the E-Commerce Space

Walmart has doubled the size of its Marketplace platform in the past 18 months, with about 100,000 active sellers. Now, the company — which receives seller applications at the rate of about 20,000 per month, about 10 percent of which get approved — feels it is within striking distance of Amazon. Some say Walmart has been emulating the moves of the Seattle-based e-retail giant, including now adding sponsored video ad units in time for the holiday shopping season. The Walmart+ online brand has been emphasizing convenience, membership, free delivery and even a Paramount+ Essential plan, similar to Amazon’s approach of offering Prime Video. Continue reading Walmart Extends E-Commerce Push, Adds Sponsored Videos

Amazon has developed a new virtual fan experience that includes shopping and interactive tours to tie-in with popular Prime Video series and films. The first such immersive experience is designed for fans of the Prime Video series “Gen V,” and includes a virtual tour of the show’s fictional Godolkin University, which trains aspiring superheroes, complete with a campus store brimming with actual merchandise that fans can purchase from Amazon. The programming extensions aim to offer “culturally rich environments for customers to discover, learn, experience, and consume more of their favorite stories” while shopping. Continue reading Amazon Launches Immersive Online Shopping on Prime Video

Free video streaming service Crackle has become one of the first third-party publishers to support Amazon Interactive Video Ads. The integration via the Crackle Connex sales arm will let consumers learn more about a product or add a product to their Amazon shopping cart directly from the screen during an ad break. Crackle parent company Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment is expected to add Amazon ads to its Chicken Soup for the Soul and Redbox VOD apps in the future. The agreement also allows Amazon Fire TV customers to watch free movies and TV shows via Redbox. Continue reading Crackle Using Amazon Tech to Test Interactive Shopping Ads

U.S. consumers are consolidating their devices, eliminating outdated ones to make room for new ones that better serve their needs, according to the fourth annual Deloitte Connected Consumer survey. The study found that while 48 percent of consumers purchased a minimum of one new connected device this year, the average number of devices per household fell to 21 in 2023 from 25 in 2021, “when many loaded up on technology during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Although many consumers may be attempting to streamline their digital lives, they remain very interested in virtual experiences and tech innovation. Continue reading Deloitte: Consumer Views of Connected Devices Are Changing

Salesforce suggests “the retail industry is again on the precipice of major disruption” based on consumer adoption of artificial intelligence, which is being used to change shopping habits and inform purchases through things like personalization, browsing suggestions and recommendations based on past habits and visualizations. Other popular use cases include AI-generated marketing assets and customer service agents. Based on a study conducted in May and June of this year involving 2,400 shoppers and 1,125 retail decision makers, Salesforce notes that one in six shoppers, or 17 percent, have already used generative AI for “purchase inspiration.” Continue reading Salesforce: 17 Percent of Shoppers Have Used Generative AI

Amazon is rolling out systematic artificial intelligence summaries of customer product reviews for mobile users. The retail giant says it will be using generative AI to condense highlights of consumer comments so buyers won’t have to wade through dozens of individual reviews to grasp recurring sentiments. Short, AI-generated paragraphs will begin appearing on the product detail page, highlighting prevalent opinions. Along with the summary, Amazon will also include clickable buttons that highlight key product attributes, such as “ease of use,” “wearability” or “performance,” linking the references to reviews that discuss those aspects in detail. Continue reading Amazon’s Generative AI Will Help Streamline Product Reviews

Social image pinboarding and shopping inspiration platform Pinterest touted its recently announced Amazon partnership and AI efforts as part of its Q2 2023 earnings, which showed a 6 percent gain in year-over-year revenue of $708 million, beating analyst expectations. Pinterest announced the multiyear partnership with Amazon that marked a Pinterest first for third-party ads. On the investor call, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready told analysts the company has been testing Amazon ads traffic and is “very pleased” with the early results. When users click on Amazon ads on Pinterest they land on Amazon’s site to complete their purchase. Continue reading Pinterest Touts AI and Amazon Partnership with Q2 Earnings

Amazon says it achieved its “fastest Prime speeds ever” for deliveries across the 60 largest U.S. metro areas in Q2, when more than half its member orders arrived “the same or next day.” The benchmark announcement precedes this week’s earnings statement and was couched as fulfillment and transportation investments that have paid off. Amazon says it will in two years double the number of same-day delivery sites. So far in 2023 it has “delivered more than 1.8 billion units to U.S. Prime members the same or next day,” almost four times the shipments delivered at that rate during the same period in in 2019. Continue reading Amazon Boosts Efforts to Ship its Prime Deliveries in One Day

TikTok is making a big push into e-commerce with a plan to sell made-in-China products to consumers. The move sets up a rivalry with popular shopping platforms Shein and Temu to bring Chinese goods to the U.S., while the overall approach replicates the successful “Sold by Amazon” program. As with leading online marketplace Amazon.com and the companies it represents, TikTok will warehouse and ship items — ranging from clothing, electronics and kitchenware — for Chinese merchants, handling checkout, marketing and after-sale services. TikTok plans to debut its American shopping program in August. Continue reading TikTok Offering Chinese Goods via U.S. E-Commerce Market

Elon Musk has begun rebranding Twitter as X with a simple black letter X-ing out the iconic blue bird logo. The reaction has been mixed so far. Some say it conjures cool, as in “X marks the spot,” while others suggest it evokes a corporate industrial “Big Brother” that could negatively impact the successful brand. Whether it will help Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino monetize the social service remains to be seen, but it definitely marks a clean break from a colorful past. On Monday, at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, feathered features like the company logo that once lorded over the cafeteria were removed, and stylized X logos were projected. Continue reading Twitter Rebrands as ‘X’ in Next Step Toward ‘Everything App’