According to TechCrunch, a new analysis from mobile app insights firm Apptopia shows that ChatGPT referrals to retailer mobile apps increased 28% year-over-year during the Black Friday shopping weekend, from Thanksgiving through Sunday. The data, based on observed consumer activity, defines a referral as a retail app session starting within 30 seconds of a ChatGPT session. However, the growth is heavily skewed: Amazon’s share of these ChatGPT referrals grew to 54% this year, up from 40.5%, while Walmart’s jumped from 2.7% to 14.9%. Despite the increase, this behavior is still rare—only 0.82% of all ChatGPT sessions on Black Friday led to a retail app referral. In related data, Adobe reported that AI traffic to U.S. retail sites surged 805% year-over-year on Black Friday, and those shoppers were 38% more likely to make a purchase.
The Amazon/Walmart Juggernaut
Here’s the thing that really jumps out: this isn’t some democratizing force for small businesses. Not even close. The data suggests ChatGPT is basically acting as a supercharged front-end for the existing e-commerce giants. Think about it. When you ask an AI for product recommendations, where’s it most likely to send you? To the massive, well-known retailers with vast product catalogs it’s been trained on. Amazon and Walmart together now account for nearly 70% of these ChatGPT referrals. That’s a staggering consolidation of influence. It seems like the AI, in its current form, is just reinforcing the “everything store” and “big box” paradigms we already have. So much for discovering that cool, independent boutique.
A Tiny Slice of a Huge Pie
Now, let’s pump the brakes on the hype for a second. Apptopia’s own numbers show how niche this all still is. Less than 1% of ChatGPT sessions during the biggest shopping weekend of the year resulted in a retail referral. That’s microscopic. It tells us that, for now, most people aren’t using ChatGPT as a shopping engine. They’re using it for coding help, writing, or general questions. The 28% growth sounds impressive, but it’s growth from a nearly invisible base. The real story might be in Adobe’s complementary data—that massive 805% surge in AI traffic to retail sites and the higher purchase intent. That hints at a behavior that’s exploding, but maybe not perfectly captured by Apptopia’s “30-second window” methodology. Could people be getting ideas from ChatGPT and then later, manually opening Amazon? Probably.
The Future Battle for AI Commerce
So what does this mean going forward? It sets the stage for a huge battle. Retailers are going to be desperate to train their own AI models or partner with ones that won’t just default to sending traffic to Amazon. Apptopia and other analytics firms are going to be watching this space like hawks. And you can bet Amazon and Walmart are investing billions to make sure their AI shopping assistants are the best. The risk for everyone else is getting completely frozen out of this new discovery channel before it even becomes mainstream. If AI is the future of search, and search is the gateway to commerce, then controlling that AI is the ultimate prize. Right now, it looks like the giants are already winning.
