Holiday shopping now often starts in a chatbot. That is the headline finding of Optimove Insights' Black Friday and Cyber Monday Report 2026, released October 7, 2026: 72% of surveyed U.S. consumers now use tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for shopping ideas or gift recommendations, either regularly or occasionally. And the behavioral data points the same direction — new-customer counts on Black Friday 2025 surged 593% above an average shopping day at the e-commerce brands Optimove measured.
The report's core message for marketers is blunt: Black Friday is no longer a choice between retention and acquisition. It is both at once, compressed into the same hours, with AI assistants sending first-time buyers toward brands they have never interacted with before.
What the report actually measured
The study combines two datasets, which is what makes it worth more than most holiday surveys. The first is a survey of 648 U.S. consumers conducted in Spring 2026, aged 18 and over with household incomes of $75,000 or more, measuring forward-looking 2026 holiday intentions. The second is first-party behavioral data covering more than 5.5 million customers at leading e-commerce brands, comparing Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025 activity against those same brands' average daily performance from January through October 2025.
One caveat worth stating plainly: Optimove sells a personalization and CRM platform, and the report positions "Positionless Marketing" as the answer. Treat the findings as vendor research — dated, attributed, and useful, but published by a company with a stake in the conclusions.
Here is what the behavioral data showed when Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025 were compared to an average day:
| Metric (vs. average day, Jan–Oct 2025) | Black Friday 2025 | Cyber Monday 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Returning customers active | +359% | +267% |
| Orders | +290% | +210% |
| New customers | +593% | +404% |
New-customer growth outpaced everything else — including orders — on both days. First-time buyers are arriving from more places than ever, and per the report, that increasingly includes AI assistants.
AI is becoming the discovery layer
The survey side of the report quantifies a shift that has been building all year. Of the consumers surveyed:
- 49% regularly consult AI tools for shopping ideas or gift recommendations
- 23% do so occasionally
- 12% are open to it
- 72% combined use these tools at least occasionally
Discovery increasingly begins outside a brand's own channels. Optimove's practical advice is deceptively simple: publish clear, accurate product information on use cases, pricing, availability and promotions, so AI systems can surface your products when they are relevant to a shopper's request.
This is the same advice generative engine optimization practitioners have been giving all year, now endorsed by hard numbers: if three in four of your potential customers may consult a chatbot before they ever see your website, your product content has to make sense to a machine summarizing it. Answer-first product pages, explicit pricing, unambiguous availability, and clean structured data are no longer nice-to-haves — they are the shelf your products sit on inside AI answers.
Why Black Friday is both retention and acquisition at once
The 2026 intentions data sharpens the picture:
- 63% of consumers plan to wait for Black Friday or Cyber Monday to begin their holiday shopping
- 47% plan to explore new brands this season, while 53% expect to shop only with brands they bought from last year
- Returning-customer activity grew faster than orders on both days, suggesting loyal shoppers browse and compare before committing
"Black Friday isn't a retention event or an acquisition event. It's both, happening in the same hours," said Pini Yakuel, CEO of Optimove, in the release. "Loyal customers are coming back, first-time buyers are arriving from AI assistants and everywhere else, and each one needs something different."
That last phrase is the operational challenge. A customer restocking a favourite product and a first-time visitor exploring a new category can look identical in a basic segment. They need very different messages, offers and timing — and during the compressed BFCM window, brands that cannot tell them apart in real time are effectively serving both badly.
What brands should do before the holiday rush
Make your product content answerable
Since AI assistants are now a starting point, audit your product pages the way a summarizing model would see them. Are use cases explicit? Is pricing visible without hunting? Are promotions, sizes, availability and shipping details stated in plain language? The report's own recommendation — clear, accurate information on use cases, pricing, availability and promotions — is effectively a GEO checklist for the holidays.
Run two messaging tracks, not one
Treat the promotional period as the report suggests: two opportunities at once. The first track re-engages existing customers based on their history and current browsing. The second is built to welcome and convert first-time buyers arriving from AI assistants and every other channel — then immediately moves them into post-purchase flows that turn a first purchase into a lasting relationship.
Capture the moment for first-party data
BFCM is the single largest first-party data collection event of the retail year. Every new customer acquired on Black Friday is someone whose consented data can feed personalization for the next twelve months. Brands that treat those buyers as one-off promo hunters get exactly that; brands that move them into welcome, education and replenishment flows enter 2027 with a measurable asset.
What this means if you're a smaller brand
You do not need Optimove's platform to act on this research. The three moves above — answerable product content, dual messaging tracks, first-party data capture — scale down cleanly. If anything, AI discovery favours structured, clear content over big budgets: a small brand with crisp, machine-readable product pages can be cited by an assistant just as readily as a national one, and the 593% new-customer surge shows holiday buyers are more willing than usual to try brands they have never heard of.
The window is tight, though. Sixty-three percent of shoppers plan to wait for Black Friday to even start — meaning the brands that fix their product content and messaging architecture in the coming weeks will be visibly prepared, and the rest will be improvising live.
If you want a second pair of eyes on your holiday readiness — from AI-answerable product content to a retention-first messaging plan — reach out through our contact page.
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