ChatGPT is becoming a shopping channel, and brands are being urged to adapt

Consumers are already completing purchases inside ChatGPT through product cards and built-in checkout, and some projections suggest the chatbot could rival Amazon as a shopping channel by the 2026 holiday season.

The numbers behind the claim: 70-80% of consumers are said to use AI answer engines when shopping; 40% of Amazon users engaged its Rufus assistant on Black Friday; retailer traffic referred by AI engines climbed 700% during the last holiday season; and Salesforce estimates 20% of holiday orders were influenced by AI. Google, meanwhile, has confirmed AI Mode is becoming its default search experience, meaning fewer clicks, fewer cited sources and customers who may never visit a brand's website.

Advocates argue ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot should now be treated as marketplaces rather than search alternatives, and that consumer trust in AI recommendations already exceeds trust in ads, websites and even friends.

The response being taught is answer engine optimization. A free webinar on Thursday, January 29 at 2 PM Eastern covers how AEO differs from SEO, how to structure products for AI marketplaces through schema markup and content hierarchy, which platforms AI systems draw from, and why smaller brands may hold an edge over large ones. The hosts compare the moment to Google's 2004 land grab, arguing that brands that optimize early become the products AI keeps recommending. Attendance is capped at 500 live seats.