AI traffic to US retailers surges 393% in Q1 as shoppers spend more through AI assistants

AI traffic to US retailers rose 393% in Q1, and it's boosting their revenue too | TechCrunch

As of March, AI traffic to U.S. retailers' websites rose by 269% over the previous 12 months, continuing the momentum during the holiday shopping season when AI traffic was up by 693%, according to new data released on Thursday by Adobe. And in the first three months of 2026, AI traffic had risen 393% compared to a year earlier, as more consumers used AI assistants for online shopping. The change in traffic sources isn't the only impact. AI visitors are converting better, engaging at higher rates, spending more time on sites, and driving higher revenue per visit, the data shows, often reversing trends from only a year ago, when regular customers were worth more to retailers. Adobe's insights are based on its analysis of online transactions, via its Adobe Analytics division, which covers over 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites. The analysis also relied on a survey of over 5,000 U.S. respondents about their use of AI when shopping, as well as the company's new AI Content Visibility Checker tool, designed to test retail websites for accessibility by LLMs. In Adobe's survey, 39% people said they used AI for online shopping, and 85% said it improved their experience. These findings are likely due to how AI helps people narrow down products to find what they need, and tap into discounts. In addition, 66% of those surveyed said they now believe AI tools provide accurate results when shopping. Unlike publishers, where AI is causing referral traffic to decline, retailers are incentivized to make their sites AI-friendly. Adobe's data found that AI traffic converted 42% better than living, breathing customers in March 2026, setting a new record. Notably, it's a reversal of a trend that told a different story only a year ago: in March 2025, AI traffic converted 38% worse than regular people. In addition, Adobe found that when a consumer lands on a retail site via an AI source, their engagement rate tends to be 12% higher than those who used non-AI sources. Shoppers also spend more time on the website (48% longer) and browse more pages (13% more pages per visit), the data shows. In terms of the top line, AI-driven revenue per visit (RPV) was 37% higher than non-AI traffic as of March. Just 12 months ago, regular human traffic was worth 128% more than AI. However, not all sites are ready for AI, Adobe warned. It found that roughly a quarter of the content on retailers' homepages has not been optimized for LLMs, nor has the content on category pages. Individual product pages fare even worse: around 34% of pages can't be properly accessed by AI. The company suggests that retailers work to make their sites more accessible to LLMs if they want to stay top-of-mind with online shoppers going forward.

AI Traffic to US Retailers Jumps 393% in Q1 as Agentic Shoppers Outspend Humans

Report signals rapid shift toward agent-led commerce in U.S. retail. The dead internet is more alive than ever. A year ago, retailers were debating whether to block AI bots from crawling their websites. That calculation just got a lot harder. New data from Adobe Analytics shows AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites grew 393% in the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same period last year, and shoppers arriving from those sources are now spending more, staying longer, and buying at higher rates than everyone else. Adobe reported that AI traffic from Q1 2026 grew 393% year over year, with March alone up 269% YoY. "This continues the momentum that was observed during the most recent holiday season (Nov. to Dec. 2025) where AI traffic was up 693% YoY," the company wrote. In March 2025, AI traffic converted 38% worse than standard non-AI sources like paid search and email. This is the opposite of what is happening with the content creation industry. A new UNESCO report found that generative AI is on its way to cause revenue losses of 24% for music creators and 21% for audiovisual creators by 2028. By March 2026, Adobe reports AI traffic was converting 42% better -- a new record, according to the company, which tracks over one trillion visits to U.S. retail sites. Revenue per visit from AI referrals was 37% above non-AI traffic as of last month. According to Adobe, just one year ago, regular human traffic was worth 128% more. The engagement data also shows that once a shopper arrives at a retail site via an AI assistant, they spend 48% more time on the page, browse 13% more pages per visit, and show a 12% higher engagement rate than visitors from other channels. "AI is quickly becoming the primary interface between consumers and their favorite brands," Vivek Pandya, director of Adobe Digital Insights, wrote in the report. Adobe surveyed more than 5,000 U.S. consumers alongside its traffic data. Thirty-nine percent said they've used AI for online shopping, and 85% of that group said it improved their experience. Trust is also climbing: 66% of respondents said they believe AI tools provide accurate results -- a figure that helps explain why conversion rates are surging instead of flattening. AI is serious business AI traffic is becoming a pretty big deal for service providers who are doing anything they can to control who provides the views and referrals in the ecommerce ecosystem. Amazon and Perplexity had a spat in federal court over whether AI agents can make purchases on third-party platforms without the platform's explicit consent. A San Francisco judge issued a preliminary injunction in March blocking Perplexity's Comet browser from shopping on Amazon after the e-commerce giant argued the agent disguised automated sessions as human browser traffic. Perplexity called Amazon's legal push "bullying," arguing that agentic shopping would bring Amazon more transactions, not fewer. OpenAI launched an "Instant Checkout" feature inside ChatGPT in September 2025. The same month Salesforce estimated that AI agents influenced more than 20% of all global online retail sales during the 2025 holiday season. Now, with OpenClaw, AI agents can buy things more easily, be it via API connections, MCP servers, skills, integrations, or users activating browser control. Adobe's report also flags a structural problem that's going to matter more as this traffic grows: a significant portion of U.S. retail websites aren't fully readable by the models generating that traffic. Homepages scored an average of 75% on Adobe's AI Content Visibility Checker, meaning roughly a quarter of their content is invisible to LLMs. Individual product pages came in at 66% -- a more critical gap, since that's where purchase decisions happen. The best-performing retailers scored 82.5% on homepage visibility; the lowest-performing hit just 54.2%. "Consumer adoption of these AI tools is not slowing down," Adobe wrote, "and businesses need to ensure their digital front doors are optimized for AI to remain relevant in today's environment." McKinsey projects that agentic commerce -- AI systems that research, compare, and purchase autonomously -- could drive $1 trillion in U.S. retail revenue by 2030, so it's no wonder why AI companies want to be the ad companies of the agentic era.

AI Traffic Outperforms Paid Search for US Retailers, Adobe Says | PYMNTS.com

In March, AI traffic converted 42% better than non-AI traffic, marking a "major reversal" from a year earlier, when AI traffic converted 38% worse, Vivek Pandya, director of Adobe Digital Insights, said in a Thursday blog post. "Rising consumer trust has played a factor, with Adobe's survey showing that 66% of respondents believe AI tools provide accurate results," Pandya said. "This is giving shoppers confidence and driving more transaction activity." Conversion is a measure of visits to a website that result in purchases, according to the post. Two related metrics are also higher for AI traffic. Adobe found that in March, individuals who landed on a retail site from an AI source spent 48% more time on the website and browsed 13% more pages than those who landed from a non-AI source. The PYMNTS Intelligence report "How AI Becomes the Place Consumers Start Everything," which was published in December 2025, found that dedicated AI environments are beginning to replace traditional discovery. "Winning attention increasingly depends on whether a brand's offers, policies and product truths can be interpreted and recommended inside conversational environments," the report said. Adobe also announced in its Thursday blog post that the amount of traffic from AI sources to U.S. retail sites saw year-over-year growth of 269% in March and 393% in the three months from January through March. The company found that 39% of consumers said they have used AI for online shopping and that 85% of those consumers said the technology improved their shopping experience. "These figures highlight the durable value that AI is delivering in the eCommerce space, shortening the time it takes for consumers to find what they need or locate relevant discounts," Pandya said in the post. Adobe also released new data in the post showing that 66% of the individual product pages on retail websites can be read by large language models (LLMs), meaning that the other 34% of sites have not been optimized for LLMs. "Retailers have thousands of SKUs, and our data shows that much of the content is currently invisible to LLMs," Pandya said in the post.