Roughly 50 million shopping queries now hit ChatGPT every single day. That’s not a rounding error in a usage report. It’s a new retail channel forming in real time, and most brand marketing budgets haven’t caught up to it. AI assistants are becoming a shopping channel whether or not your media plan has a line item for it, and the early purchase data tells a messier, more interesting story than the “AI will replace Google” headlines suggest.
The short version: people are researching with AI constantly, buying through it occasionally, and trusting it conditionally. For marketers, that gap between research and checkout is where the real strategic work lives right now.
The Scale Nobody Saw Coming
Start with raw reach. ChatGPT reached 900 million weekly active users in February, giving AI shopping behavior real consumer and commercial reach rather than niche early-adopter relevance. Of those queries, approximately 2% of all ChatGPT queries involve shopping, which translates to roughly 50 million shopping queries per day across an estimated 2.5 billion daily prompts.
That volume is already reshaping referral traffic patterns across retail. AI referral traffic to U.S. retail sites grew 393% year over year in the first quarter, with March alone up 269%, making it one of the fastest growing commerce traffic sources. And it’s not just more traffic, it’s better traffic: AI-referred shoppers now outperform traditional traffic on commercial quality metrics, including conversion, revenue per visit, time on site, and engagement.
Independently, McKinsey’s global survey work backs this up at scale: across the countries surveyed, 53 percent of consumers on average have used AI for shopping in the past three months. Visa’s own consumer research tells a similar story, with the 2026 Global Digital Shopping Index finding that 46% of shoppers used an AI tool in their last purchase. This is no longer a fringe behavior you can wait out.
The research-to-purchase funnel inside AI assistants is wide at the top and surprisingly narrow at the bottom, which is exactly the gap brand teams need to instrument before they overbuild for a checkout moment that mostly isn’t happening yet.
Discovery Is Booming. Checkout Is Lagging.
Here’s the part that should reorder your roadmap: in-chat checkout has not scaled the way the platforms originally promised. OpenAI shipped Instant Checkout with real ambition, but OpenAI shipped in-chat Instant Checkout in September, then walked it back by early the following year. The reason wasn’t philosophical.
Walmart’s own measurement, reported via Digital Applied’s analysis of the retreat, found that Walmart measured checkout inside ChatGPT converting roughly three times worse than a click-through to Walmart, even as ChatGPT drove about two times the new-customer rate of search. In other words, AI assistants are excellent at bringing you a new customer who hasn’t shopped with you before, but terrible, so far, at closing that customer inside the chat window itself.
This “discover in AI, buy on site” pattern shows up across multiple independent datasets. One GA4 analysis of dozens of ecommerce stores found ChatGPT traffic converting better than organic search but carrying a noticeably lower average order value, with the higher conversion rate more than making up the difference in revenue per session. The takeaway for brand teams: treat AI assistants as a high-intent discovery layer first, and a transaction layer second. If your attribution model only counts a sale when it closes inside the assistant, you’re almost certainly undercounting the channel’s real influence. That’s the same blind spot our attribution rebuild coverage has flagged across the broader creator and performance stack.
Who’s Actually Completing the Sale?
Not every assistant behaves the same way, and that matters for where you prioritize product feed work and partnership effort. ChatGPT dominates research volume but underperforms at closing the loop, largely because it routes most shoppers out to a merchant site rather than settling payment itself. Platforms like Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping and Meta’s Muse, by contrast, complete a disproportionate share of agent-driven purchases relative to their research volume, because their checkout is native and the payment rails are already trusted.
Forter’s fraud and transaction data shows just how fast this is moving on the assistant side. Forter’s live monitoring of agentic traffic found that transactions from Instinct and Grok Bot were up over 250% since the first week of September, and transactions from Muse were up 42% in just two days. Crucially, merchants didn’t opt into most of this. These assistants are attempting transactions on brand sites regardless of whether the brand has optimized for them, which is a very different risk posture than waiting for a formal API partnership announcement.
Consumer comfort with full autonomy still lags well behind usage. Accenture’s large multi-country survey found a wide gap between letting an agent handle routine tasks and letting it spend money unsupervised, a pattern that shows up consistently across NielsenIQ’s monthly tracking too, where the share of US consumers using any AI tool to shop has crossed the halfway mark while fully autonomous ordering remains in the single digits. People want the research help. They don’t yet want to hand over the wallet.
Creator Content Is the New Trust Signal
This is where the influencer marketing angle stops being theoretical. AI assistants don’t just scrape product pages, they weight third-party credibility, and creator content is increasingly part of that weighting. A study covered by Marketing Dive found that a study from IAB found 65% of Gen Z and millennials prefer when AI chatbots cite creator content within recommendations. Shoppers also show a measurable preference in the sourcing itself: shoppers have shown they have a preference for what sources AI cites, with 56% saying they favor recommendations that pull from creator or influencer reviews.
That preference carries weight beyond sentiment. 65% of respondents said credible creator reviews increase their confidence in AI recommendations, and trust in the creator doing the reviewing is not generic, it’s earned over time: nearly half of respondents said a proven track record of credibility made an influencer or creator trustworthy enough for AI to rely on their content and 40% cited consistency over time. This is a direct, practical reason to keep investing in long-term creator relationships rather than one-off placements, a theme our coverage of repeat purchase data has already surfaced in a different context: durability beats volume when the measurement gets honest.
It also explains why marketing budgets are quietly shifting toward AI visibility as its own line item, not just creator spend as a standalone bucket. AI visibility budgets are starting to formalize precisely because the content that wins creator citations also wins AI assistant citations, and brand teams that already run creator programs built on proof rather than promises are better positioned to show up in the recommendation layer at all.
The Compliance Gap Nobody’s Pricing In
Here’s the uncomfortable part. Sponsored placement inside AI shopping answers is scaling faster than disclosure norms around it. Research on in-chat shopping widgets found that visibility can shift dramatically in a matter of months as platforms experiment with monetization, and a growing share of shopping-related queries now return some form of sponsored result. The FTC’s existing Endorsement Guides already require that paid influence over a ranking be disclosed clearly, not buried in a settings menu, and that standard was written for human endorsers long before AI assistants started recommending products in a conversational interface. Regulators have signaled they view steering an AI output away from a user’s expectations as a potential Section 5 deception issue, and that theory doesn’t carve out commerce.
This matters for anyone running influencer programs because the same disclosure discipline your brand applies to a creator’s sponsored post needs to extend to how your products are fed into, and potentially paid for placement within, AI shopping surfaces. The brands already pulling creator compliance in-house, a shift we’ve tracked closely in regulated industries adapting the influencer playbook, are the ones best positioned to absorb this next wave without a scramble. Independent research has also found that persuasive AI systems can nudge users toward sponsored products at a meaningfully higher rate than plain search results, even when a “sponsored” label is present, which is exactly the kind of gap a state attorney general or the FTC is likely to test first.
What Brands Should Do This Quarter
Early purchase data is noisy, but the operational priorities it points to are not. A few moves matter more than the rest:
- Instrument AI referral traffic separately from generic “direct” traffic in your analytics stack, since most platforms still fail to pass a clean referrer by default.
- Audit your product feed and structured data so retailer or assistant partnerships surface accurate pricing, stock, and shipping, the exact inputs that broke early in-chat checkout experiments.
- Treat creator content as an AI visibility input, not just a conversion tactic, given how heavily consumers want creator sourcing reflected in AI answers.
- Build a disclosure review step for any paid placement inside AI shopping surfaces, before a regulator or a platform policy change forces the issue.
- Set spend and category guardrails now for agentic checkout, since low-stakes, repeat-purchase categories like household essentials are where consumers are most willing to let an agent transact without review.
None of this requires betting the budget on a channel that’s still finding its shape. It requires treating AI assistants the way you’d treat any new retail surface with real traffic and real purchase intent: measure it honestly, show up where trust is earned, and get the compliance groundwork done before the volume forces your hand.
FAQs
What percentage of shopping actually starts with an AI assistant today?
Estimates vary by survey methodology, but independent research puts AI-assisted shopping research in the range of roughly half of consumers having used it recently, with 53 percent of consumers on average having used AI for shopping in the past three months across the countries McKinsey surveyed, and similar figures from other large consumer studies.
Can shoppers actually complete a purchase inside ChatGPT or another assistant?
Sometimes, but it remains the minority behavior. OpenAI shipped in-chat Instant Checkout in September, then walked it back by early the following year after Walmart and other merchants found checkout inside the chat converted far worse than sending shoppers to their own site.
Which AI platform drives the most completed purchases?
ChatGPT leads by a wide margin on research and discovery sessions, but platforms with native, trusted checkout like Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping and Meta’s Muse complete a disproportionately higher share of actual agent-driven purchases relative to their session volume.
Do brands need new disclosure practices for AI shopping recommendations?
Yes. The FTC’s existing Endorsement Guides already require that paid influence over a product ranking or recommendation be disclosed clearly and conspicuously, and that standard applies regardless of whether the recommendation comes from a human endorser or an AI assistant surfacing a sponsored result.
How does creator content affect whether a brand gets recommended by AI?
Creator content appears to carry real weight with consumers evaluating AI recommendations. A study from IAB found 65% of Gen Z and millennials prefer when AI chatbots cite creator content within recommendations, which gives brands another strategic reason to maintain consistent, credible creator partnerships rather than one-off sponsored posts.
Top Influencer Marketing Agencies
The leading agencies shaping influencer marketing in 2026
Agencies ranked by campaign performance, client diversity, platform expertise, proven ROI, industry recognition, and client satisfaction. Assessed through verified case studies, reviews, and industry consultations.
Moburst
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2
The Shelf
Boutique Beauty & Lifestyle Influencer AgencyA data-driven boutique agency specializing exclusively in beauty, wellness, and lifestyle influencer campaigns on Instagram and TikTok. Best for brands already focused on the beauty/personal care space that need curated, aesthetic-driven content.Clients: Pepsi, The Honest Company, Hims, Elf Cosmetics, Pure LeafVisit The Shelf → -
3
Audiencly
Niche Gaming & Esports Influencer AgencyA specialized agency focused exclusively on gaming and esports creators on YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok. Ideal if your campaign is 100% gaming-focused — from game launches to hardware and esports events.Clients: Epic Games, NordVPN, Ubisoft, Wargaming, Tencent GamesVisit Audiencly → -
4
Viral Nation
Global Influencer Marketing & Talent AgencyA dual talent management and marketing agency with proprietary brand safety tools and a global creator network spanning nano-influencers to celebrities across all major platforms.Clients: Meta, Activision Blizzard, Energizer, Aston Martin, WalmartVisit Viral Nation → -
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The Influencer Marketing Factory
TikTok, Instagram & YouTube CampaignsA full-service agency with strong TikTok expertise, offering end-to-end campaign management from influencer discovery through performance reporting with a focus on platform-native content.Clients: Google, Snapchat, Universal Music, Bumble, YelpVisit TIMF → -
6
NeoReach
Enterprise Analytics & Influencer CampaignsAn enterprise-focused agency combining managed campaigns with a powerful self-service data platform for influencer search, audience analytics, and attribution modeling.Clients: Amazon, Airbnb, Netflix, Honda, The New York TimesVisit NeoReach → -
7
Ubiquitous
Creator-First Marketing PlatformA tech-driven platform combining self-service tools with managed campaign options, emphasizing speed and scalability for brands managing multiple influencer relationships.Clients: Lyft, Disney, Target, American Eagle, NetflixVisit Ubiquitous → -
8
Obviously
Scalable Enterprise Influencer CampaignsA tech-enabled agency built for high-volume campaigns, coordinating hundreds of creators simultaneously with end-to-end logistics, content rights management, and product seeding.Clients: Google, Ulta Beauty, Converse, AmazonVisit Obviously →