# Searchpanel – full text > Searchpanel scores how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google AI answers recommend each of your products, then helps you fix the gaps. Free SKU audit. Long form of https://searchpanelapp.com/llms.txt. Content as of 2026-11-11. Publisher: Searchpanel (also written "SearchPanel"), a product of XENA Intelligence (https://xenaintelligence.com/). Author of the blog and Xenalytics: Akhil Suresh Nair (https://searchpanelapp.com/authors/akhil-suresh-nair). ## Key facts - Name: Searchpanel (also written "SearchPanel"; by XENA Intelligence, https://xenaintelligence.com/) - Full text of every page, post and infographic in one file: https://searchpanelapp.com/llms-full.txt - Author of the blog and Xenalytics: Akhil Suresh Nair, founder and CEO of XENA Intelligence (https://searchpanelapp.com/authors/akhil-suresh-nair) - What it does: per-SKU AI Visibility Score (0–100), refreshed daily, across ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Mode / AI Overviews - Four stages: Monitor (Visibility Score, prompt tracking, competitors & citations) → Diagnose (content gaps, technical & schema, Fix Queue) → Create (listing generation, blog/article engine, schema & metadata) → Sync (Amazon and Shopify integrations, knowledge base, publishing) - Score signals (defined at https://searchpanelapp.com/#score): mention rate, average position, citations, consistency, freshness, location visibility - Who it is for: CPG and ecommerce brands on Amazon and Shopify; agencies managing several brands - Free SKU audit (no account, no credit card): https://searchpanel.ai/try-audit - Book a demo: https://searchpanel.ai/book-a-demo - App login: https://app.searchpanel.ai/ - Pricing: https://searchpanelapp.com/pricing - Glossary (AI visibility, AEO/GEO, agentic commerce terms, defined): https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary - AI shopping statistics for CPG brands (sourced, with CSV): https://searchpanelapp.com/ai-shopping-statistics (CSV: https://searchpanelapp.com/ai-shopping-statistics.csv) - Main product site: https://searchpanel.ai/ - Blog (AI visibility news for CPG brands): https://searchpanelapp.com/blog (RSS: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/rss.xml) - Xenalytics (daily interactive e-commerce and CPG infographics by XENA Intelligence, replicated from https://xenaintelligenceapp.com/xenalytics): https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics (RSS: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/rss.xml) ## Pricing (https://searchpanelapp.com/pricing) Monthly plans, priced in USD by the number of SKUs tracked (excluding applicable taxes): - Free: $0/month, 1 SKU. AI visibility tracking for 1 SKU. - Starter: $95/month, up to 10 SKUs. Daily tracking on 5 AI engines, a Visibility Score per SKU and a weekly fix queue. - Growth: $349/month, up to 250 SKUs. Everything in Starter plus Diagnose, Create and one-click Sync, the daily Shelf and streaks, competitor SKU tracking, and Amazon and Walmart listing sync. - Scale: $999/month, up to 1,000 SKUs. Everything in Growth plus multi-brand workspaces, an included agent-readiness audit, and API and Looker export. - Enterprise: custom pricing for 1,000+ SKUs, including everything in Scale. Talk to sales: https://searchpanel.ai/book-a-demo - Free SKU audit, no account or credit card: https://searchpanel.ai/try-audit ## Visibility Score signals - Mention rate (https://searchpanelapp.com/#signal-mention-rate): Whether AI names your product at all, across every tracked prompt and engine. - Average position (https://searchpanelapp.com/#signal-average-position): Where your product sits once the engine starts listing. - Citations (https://searchpanelapp.com/#signal-citations): Which domains and URLs AI relies on – and whether your pages are among them. - Consistency (https://searchpanelapp.com/#signal-consistency): How much the same product’s score varies from engine to engine. - Freshness (https://searchpanelapp.com/#signal-freshness): How recently your listing changed and how quickly engines reflected it. - Location visibility (https://searchpanelapp.com/#signal-location-visibility): The same product scored by market, so you see where visibility stops. ## Glossary (https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary) AI shopping and AI visibility glossary. Updated 2026-11-01. ### Agentic commerce URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#agentic-commerce Agentic commerce is shopping in which an AI agent searches, compares and sometimes buys or reorders products for a person, inside a retailer’s app or across the web. Why it matters for CPG brands: When an agent fills the cart, it may choose the brand for generic list items, so product data has to be clear enough for software to pick it. ### AI citation URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#ai-citation Also called: Cited source An AI citation is a link or source an AI answer shows as the basis for what it says. Citations reveal which domains and pages an engine relies on for a topic. Why it matters for CPG brands: If your product pages are never cited, the engine is describing your products from someone else’s pages, such as retailers, reviewers or competitors. ### AI crawler URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#ai-crawler Also called: AI bot, AI user agent An AI crawler is an automated client that fetches web pages for an AI company, to train models, to build a search index or to answer a user’s request live. Examples include OpenAI’s GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Anthropic’s ClaudeBot; Google-Extended is a robots.txt token that controls use of content for Google’s Gemini models. Why it matters for CPG brands: If robots.txt or a firewall blocks these clients, the engines cannot read your current product pages. ### AI product visibility URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#ai-product-visibility AI product visibility is how often, and how prominently, AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google’s AI answers name a specific product when shoppers ask for recommendations. It is measured per product (SKU), not per brand. Why it matters for CPG brands: A brand can look healthy overall while many of its products never appear in AI answers. Product-level measurement shows which SKUs are missing. ### AI share of voice URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#ai-share-of-voice AI share of voice is the share of AI answers, for a set of prompts, that name your product or brand compared with competitors. Why it matters for CPG brands: It turns a list of individual answers into one comparison you can track against named competitors over time. ### AI shopping agent URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#ai-shopping-agent Also called: AI shopping assistant An AI shopping agent is an assistant that acts on a shopper’s behalf: it answers product questions, builds carts and can complete or manage orders. Examples covered on this blog include Walmart’s Sparky and Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping. Why it matters for CPG brands: Retailer agents often recommend from their own catalog and bundles, so visibility work includes retailer listings, not just your own site. ### AI Visibility Score URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#ai-visibility-score Also called: Visibility Score An AI Visibility Score is a 0–100 measure of how likely AI engines are to name and recommend a specific product when a shopper asks. Searchpanel calculates one for every SKU, refreshes it daily and splits it by engine and market. Why it matters for CPG brands: One number per SKU makes it possible to rank products, spot drops quickly and see which engine to work on first. ### Answer engine optimization (AEO) URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#answer-engine-optimization Also called: AEO Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of making your content easy for AI assistants and answer features to find, understand, quote and cite, so your product or brand is named in the answer itself rather than in a list of links. Why it matters for CPG brands: AI answers name only a few products. Clear, specific, well-structured pages are more likely to be the ones an engine relies on. ### Buyer-intent prompt URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#buyer-intent-prompt Also called: Prompt tracking A buyer-intent prompt is a question a shopper might ask an AI assistant while deciding what to buy, such as “best gluten-free crackers for kids.” Prompt tracking runs a fixed set of these prompts against each engine on a schedule and records which products are named. Why it matters for CPG brands: AI answers change from week to week, so a single check is not a measurement. Repeating the same prompts shows the trend. ### Content gap URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#content-gap A content gap is information a shopper asks about, such as a spec, ingredient, size, use case or comparison, that is missing or unclear on your product pages, so AI answers draw on other sources or skip your product. Why it matters for CPG brands: Filling content gaps is usually the most direct fix for a low mention rate. ### Fix Queue URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#fix-queue The Fix Queue is Searchpanel’s ranked list of changes for a product, covering content gaps and technical and schema issues, so teams work on the fixes most likely to improve AI visibility first. Why it matters for CPG brands: It turns a visibility report into a work list, then the score is re-checked after changes are published. ### Generative engine optimization (GEO) URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#generative-engine-optimization Also called: GEO Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of improving how often and how prominently content appears in answers written by generative AI search engines. The term was introduced in the 2023 research paper “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization” (Aggarwal et al.). Why it matters for CPG brands: GEO and AEO are often used interchangeably. Both measure success by whether you are named or cited in the answer, not by a page ranking. ### Google AI Overviews and AI Mode URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#google-ai-overviews-and-ai-mode Also called: AI Overviews, AI Mode AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that Google shows at the top of some search results, with links to the sources used. AI Mode is Google Search’s conversational mode, where people ask follow-up questions and get AI-written answers. Why it matters for CPG brands: Both can recommend specific products, so a product can be visible in classic results and still be missing from Google’s AI answers. ### llms.txt URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#llms-txt llms.txt is a proposed plain-text Markdown file at the root of a website (/llms.txt) that gives large language models a short summary of the site and links to its most useful pages. It was proposed by Jeremy Howard in September 2024. Why it matters for CPG brands: It is a low-effort way to hand AI tools an accurate, current summary of who you are and what you sell. Searchpanel publishes one, plus a full-text version. ### Model Context Protocol (MCP) URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#model-context-protocol Also called: MCP The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for connecting AI applications to outside tools and data. Anthropic introduced it in November 2024, and retailers now use it to let outside AI agents work with their stores; Walmart described its Agent Gateway as MCP-based in October 2026. Why it matters for CPG brands: MCP-style connections let agents read product data and take actions directly, without scraping web pages. ### Query fan-out URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#query-fan-out Also called: Fan-out queries, Background searches Query fan-out is when an AI assistant turns one user prompt into several background web searches, then writes its answer from the results. The searches it chooses, including any brand names in them, shape which products can appear. Why it matters for CPG brands: If an assistant already has brands in mind when it searches, being mentioned on cited pages may not be enough to get named. ### Structured data (schema.org) URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#structured-data Also called: Schema markup, JSON-LD Structured data is machine-readable markup, usually JSON-LD using the schema.org vocabulary, that labels facts on a page: a Product’s name, brand, price, availability, reviews and FAQs. Why it matters for CPG brands: It removes guesswork for crawlers and AI tools reading your product pages, and it is one of the technical checks behind a product’s visibility. ### Unbranded prompt URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#unbranded-prompt Also called: Non-branded query An unbranded prompt is a shopping question that does not name a brand, for example “what’s a good electrolyte drink?” It shows which brands an AI assistant recommends on its own. Why it matters for CPG brands: Unbranded prompts are where shoppers discover new products, so they are where smaller brands have the most to gain or lose. ### Visibility Score signals URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/glossary#visibility-score-signals The Searchpanel Visibility Score is built from six signals: mention rate, average position, citations, consistency, freshness and location visibility. Why it matters for CPG brands: Each signal points to a different fix. A low mention rate is a content problem; weak citations usually mean your own pages are not among the sources an engine reads. ## AI shopping statistics for CPG brands (https://searchpanelapp.com/ai-shopping-statistics) 42 sourced statistics, updated 2026-11-05. CSV: https://searchpanelapp.com/ai-shopping-statistics.csv - 3.3x growth in AI-referred orders on Shopify, year over year, in Q3 2026. AI-referred traffic grew 2.6x. Note: Shopify said the volume is still small. Source: The Motley Fool, Shopify (SHOP) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript, 2026-11-03: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/11/03/shopify-shop-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/shopify-ai-orders-specific-products-cpg) - 74% of AI-attributed purchases on Shopify in Q3 2026 came from outside its top 100 categories. Source: The Motley Fool, Shopify (SHOP) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript, 2026-11-03: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/11/03/shopify-shop-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/shopify-ai-orders-specific-products-cpg) - 2x the conversion rate of general AI search for searches powered by Shopify Catalog’s structured product data, per Shopify’s Q3 2026 call. Source: The Motley Fool, Shopify (SHOP) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript, 2026-11-03: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/11/03/shopify-shop-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/shopify-ai-orders-specific-products-cpg) - +60% conversion of AI-referred visits to US retail sites versus non-AI traffic in July 2026. In March 2025 they converted 38% worse. Source: Adobe Digital Insights, AI Traffic Trends Report, August 2026, 2026: https://business.adobe.com/assets/pdfs/resources/sdk/ai-traffic-trends-report-august-2026/ai-traffic-trends-report-2026-08-19.pdf (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/ai-shopping-traffic-conversion) - +1,324% growth in AI traffic to US retail sites from October 2024 to May 2026, per Adobe. Source: Digital Commerce 360, Adobe: AI-referred traffic to retail sites doubles in a year, 2026: https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/06/17/adobe-ai-referred-traffic-to-retail-sites-doubles-in-a-year/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/ai-shopping-traffic-conversion) - 400M+ customers used Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months, Amazon said on Oct 29, 2026. Customer interactions were up 570% year over year. Source: The Motley Fool, Amazon (AMZN) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript, 2026-10-30: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/30/amazon-amzn-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-shopping-earnings-week-cpg-brands) - 50% more spent per order by U.S. customers who use Alexa for Shopping than by those who don’t, per Amazon. Note: A correlation: heavy buyers are the most likely to try a shopping assistant, and Amazon didn’t say how it controlled for that. Source: The Motley Fool, Amazon (AMZN) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript, 2026-10-30: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/30/amazon-amzn-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-shopping-earnings-week-cpg-brands) - 8x+ growth in the number of people using Alexa for Shopping’s agentic features since the start of 2026, per Amazon (Oct 29, 2026). Source: Amazon, Alexa for Shopping adds 100+ new capabilities to make shopping even faster and easier, 2026-10-29: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/alexa-for-shopping-new-capabilities (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-agents-reorder-cpg-amazon-shopify) - 10M+ people in the U.S. and Canada set up Meta’s Muse in its first six weeks. Shopping is its top use case, with an average purchase over $200. Source: MediaNama, From shopping to smart glasses, Meta expands its Muse AI push, 2026-10-22: https://www.medianama.com/2026/10/223-meta-earnings-call-smart-glasses-muse/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-shopping-earnings-week-cpg-brands) - 3x longer, on average, are Google AI Mode queries than traditional searches, per Alphabet’s Q3 2026 call. Source: Google, Q3 earnings call: CEO’s remarks, 2026-10-28: https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/alphabet-earnings-q3-2026/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-shopping-earnings-week-cpg-brands) - 39% of US consumers say they have used AI for online shopping (Adobe survey, March 2026). Source: Adobe Digital Insights, Adobe report: US retailers see surge in AI traffic, but many websites are not entirely readable by machines, 2026: https://business.adobe.com/blog/ai-traffic-surge-retail-sites-not-machine-readable (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/ai-shopping-traffic-conversion) - 37% AI shopping adoption among U.S. adults, per CivicScience’s first Agentic Retail Report. Grocery ties electronics as the top AI-assisted category, at 32%. Source: CivicScience, CivicScience Launches the Agentic Retail Report, 2026-10-15: https://civicscience.com/civicscience-launches-the-agentic-retail-report-an-ongoing-benchmark-of-how-ai-is-reshaping-retail/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-thanksgiving-grocery-carts-cpg) - 56% of US adults surveyed say they read an AI answer and then click to double-check, and 71% want a real source before a purchase (Fractl survey of 1,007 adults). Source: Kelsey Libert, Search Engine Land, The quiet click: Why people read AI answers and click anyway, 2026-11-02: https://searchengineland.com/why-people-read-click-ai-answers-499684 (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/shopify-ai-orders-specific-products-cpg) - 40% of U.S. shoppers are comfortable letting AI build their cart if they complete the purchase themselves (Shopify’s July survey of 2,000 adults). Source: Shopify, Shopify Holiday Retail 2026: United States fact sheet, 2026-10-06: https://www.shopifyholidayretail.com/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-thanksgiving-grocery-carts-cpg) - 52% of U.S. consumers would let an AI agent buy groceries and household essentials, per American Express. Source: American Express via Investing News Network, American Express Launches Playbook to Help Businesses Prepare for Agentic Commerce, 2026-10-06: https://investingnews.com/american-express-launches-playbook-to-help-businesses-prepare-for-agentic-commerce-as-ai-changes-how-customers-search-shop-and-buy/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-thanksgiving-grocery-carts-cpg) - 40% of U.S. adults said letting AI buy household essentials would be safe, versus 28% for electronics (Ipsos, Oct 27, 2026). Source: Ipsos, Ipsos Future of Shopping Survey: topline findings, 2026-10-27: https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/documents/2026-10/WTF%20Shopping%20Topline%2010.27.2026.pdf (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-agents-reorder-cpg-amazon-shopify) - 79% don’t want AI to switch products without asking, while 71% say AI could switch them to a cheaper option (The Harris Poll). Source: The Harris Poll, AI in Household Care: Proof Before Autopilot, 2026-10-05: https://theharrispoll.com/articles/ai-in-household-care-proof-before-autopilot/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-agents-reorder-cpg-amazon-shopify) - 73% are comfortable with AI suggesting a restock, but only 57% with AI reordering on its own (The Harris Poll). Source: The Harris Poll, AI in Household Care: Proof Before Autopilot, 2026-10-05: https://theharrispoll.com/articles/ai-in-household-care-proof-before-autopilot/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-agents-reorder-cpg-amazon-shopify) - 72.6% of 2,541 ecommerce brands appeared in fewer than 5% of ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews answers for their category. The median was 1.9%. Source: Found by Flux, The State of AI Visibility in Ecommerce: October 2026, 2026-10-26: https://flux.agency/insights/state-of-ai-visibility-ecommerce (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/chatgpt-merchant-ranking-cpg-brands) - 37% vs. 8% brands were named in 37% of AI recommendation answers but only 8% of “concern” answers (Yarnit, Oct 30, 2026). Source: Yarnit, AI Shopping Visibility Report Fall 2026, 2026-10-30: https://www.yarnit.app/blog/ai-shopping-visibility-report-fall-2026 (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/chatgpt-merchant-ranking-cpg-brands) - 59.6% of about 957,000 ChatGPT background searches for prompts that named no brand already contained a brand name (Graphite). Note: Graphite is a growth agency that sells AEO services. Source: Search Engine Journal, ChatGPT Rarely Named Some Brands Even When Sources Mentioned Them, 2026-10-26: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/chatgpt-brand-mentions-cited-pages-graphite/594379/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/chatgpt-brand-shortlist-cpg) - 11% median visibility, with search on, for brands ChatGPT rarely names without search, even when they appear on at least 15% of the pages it cites (Graphite). Source: Search Engine Journal, ChatGPT Rarely Named Some Brands Even When Sources Mentioned Them, 2026-10-26: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/chatgpt-brand-mentions-cited-pages-graphite/594379/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/chatgpt-brand-shortlist-cpg) - 72.9% unbranded AI visibility for household-name brands, versus 43.6% for mid-market brands and 11.4% for small brands (Ranqo study of 102 brands). Source: arXiv (Ranqo), Generative Engine Optimization at Scale: Measuring Brand Visibility Across AI Search Engines, 2026-06-18: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.20065 (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/chatgpt-brand-shortlist-cpg) - 63.3% of the time, the first-cited brand in AI answers changes from one week to the next (Archipel). Source: Archipel, AI Visibility Observatory: October 2026 Edition, 2026-10-11: https://www.archipelmarketing.com/en/observatory/editions/2026-10 (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/chatgpt-brand-shortlist-cpg) - ~10% → ~70% Oreo’s share of AI cookie recommendations for specific cookie queries after Mondelēz unblocked AI crawlers and made its brand sites machine readable. Note: Company-reported, to Digiday. Source: Digiday, Mondelez overhauls its $3.5 billion digital commerce strategy in era of AI search, 2026-04-07: https://digiday.com/podcasts/mondelez-overhauls-its-3-5-billion-digital-commerce-strategy-in-era-of-ai-search/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/cpg-brands-agentic-commerce-readiness-gap) - 56% of ChatGPT “Shop at” buttons pointed to big-box retailers and about 5% to the brand’s own store. When the brand’s product page was a source, the brand got 34%. Note: Wislr tracked four product brands, Oct 10–13, 2026. Source: Wislr, ChatGPT now puts a “Shop at” button in its shopping answers, 2026-10-16: https://www.wislr.com/articles/chatgpt-shop-at-buttons-big-box/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/walmart-ai-shopping-agents-cpg-brands) - $0.89 vs. $2.45 revenue per US paid ChatGPT visit versus a paid Google search visit. Conversion was 0.37% versus 1.17% (Kaiser and Schulze, 1,898 shops). Note: Working paper, not yet peer reviewed; the paid panel is not CPG-specific. Source: Maximilian Kaiser and Christian Schulze, ecommerceresearch.org, Can Advertising Fund Free AI? Evidence from ChatGPT’s International Advertising Rollout (working paper, version 1, October 2026), 2026-11-03: https://ecommerceresearch.org/chatgpt-ads/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/chatgpt-ads-vs-organic-ai-answers-cpg) - $3.27 revenue per visit from organic ChatGPT referrals in US traffic, the highest of the five channels measured (Kaiser and Schulze). Note: Working paper, not yet peer reviewed. Source: Maximilian Kaiser and Christian Schulze, ecommerceresearch.org, Can Advertising Fund Free AI? Evidence from ChatGPT’s International Advertising Rollout (working paper, version 1, October 2026), 2026-11-03: https://ecommerceresearch.org/chatgpt-ads/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/chatgpt-ads-vs-organic-ai-answers-cpg) - 9 required fields in OpenAI’s direct product feed spec: item ID, title, description, URL, brand, seller name, image URL, availability and price. Source: OpenAI Developers, Products (file upload product feed spec), 2026-11-02: https://developers.openai.com/commerce/specs/file-upload/products (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/chatgpt-merchant-ranking-cpg-brands) - 0 of 6 product searches where three Claude models agreed on a top pick, across 1,980 picks from the same 20 Shopify products (Search Engine Journal test). Source: Slobodan Manic, Search Engine Journal, 3 AI Models Shopped Shopify’s Catalog – Each Picked A Different Winner, 2026-11-02: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/3-ai-models-shopped-shopifys-catalog-each-picked-a-different-winner/594298/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-agent-catalog-picks-cpg-brands) - ~68x the gap between a catalog’s review count (447,221) and the brand page’s (6,537) for a product two of the models often picked and quoted. Source: Slobodan Manic, Search Engine Journal, 3 AI Models Shopped Shopify’s Catalog – Each Picked A Different Winner, 2026-11-02: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/3-ai-models-shopped-shopifys-catalog-each-picked-a-different-winner/594298/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-agent-catalog-picks-cpg-brands) - 5 of 17 products in Walmart’s $35 Holiday Meal Basket (26 items, serves 10) are national brands. Shoppers can ask Sparky to add it to their cart. Note: Walmart names the five national brands; the 17-product split is our sort of its published list. Source: Walmart, Walmart Meal Basket Serves 10 for $35 – $3.50 Per Person, 2026-10-28: https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2026/10/walmart-holiday-meal-basket (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-thanksgiving-grocery-carts-cpg) - 59% of U.S. CPG companies report no meaningful agentic AI capabilities (BCG GenAI CPG Survey 2026). Source: BCG, Are CPG Companies Ready for Agentic Commerce?, 2026-10-30: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2026/how-cpg-companies-win-agentic-commerce (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/cpg-brands-agentic-commerce-readiness-gap) - 1%–5% average incremental revenue BCG reports for CPG companies piloting GEO. Those testing owned agents and ecosystem integration see 3% to 10%. Source: BCG, Are CPG Companies Ready for Agentic Commerce?, 2026-10-30: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2026/how-cpg-companies-win-agentic-commerce (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/cpg-brands-agentic-commerce-readiness-gap) - 2 of 53 consumer products companies run a live agentic commerce offering, versus 5 of 6 digital retail platforms (Kearney benchmark of 106 companies). Source: Kearney, The state of agentic commerce: insights from more than 100 leading global companies, 2026-10-21: https://www.kearney.com/service/digital-analytics/article/the-state-of-agentic-commerce-insights-from-more-than-100-leading-global-companies (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/cpg-brands-agentic-commerce-readiness-gap) - 14% vs. 38% of consumer brands are live on third-party AI agent discovery, versus 38% of marketplaces (HFS Research). Source: HFS Research, Brands have 24 months to win over the AI shopper, 2026-10-26: https://www.hfsresearch.com/research/brands-have-24-months-to-win/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/walmart-ai-shopping-agents-cpg-brands) - 17.1% of US retail sales were made online in Q2 2026 (seasonally adjusted), a record. Source: US Census Bureau, Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales, 2nd Quarter 2026, 2026: https://www.census.gov/retail/ecommerce.html (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/us-ecommerce-share-of-retail) - 21.3% store-brand share of US dollar sales in 2025, all outlets. Store-brand sales grew 3.3% versus 1.2% for national brands. Source: Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA), PLMA 2026 Private Label Report: A Statistical Guide to Today's Store Brands (Circana Unify+ data, 52 weeks ending Dec 28, 2025), 2026: https://plma.com/sites/default/files/files/2026-01/plma-2026-report.pdf (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/store-brands-market-share-2025) - $68.6B Amazon advertising services revenue in 2025, up from $12.6B in 2019. Source: Amazon via SEC EDGAR, Amazon.com, Inc. Form 10-K for 2025: net sales by groups of similar products and services, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872426000004/R33.htm (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/amazon-revenue-mix-advertising) - $6.4B Walmart’s global advertising business in fiscal 2026 (“nearly $6.4 billion”), up 46% including VIZIO. Source: Walmart via SEC EDGAR, Walmart Q4 and fiscal 2026 earnings release (February 19, 2026), 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416926000032/earningsreleasefy26q4.htm (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/walmart-ecommerce-advertising-growth) - $378.4B gross merchandise volume on Shopify in 2025, up 29% from 2024. Shopify estimates its merchants made more than 14% of US e-commerce sales. Source: Shopify Inc. via SEC EDGAR, exhibit 99.1, Shopify Q4 and full-year 2025 financial results, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1594805/000159480526000006/exhibit991pressreleaseq420.htm (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/shopify-gmv-growth) - 4 of 7 CPG giants grew Q3 2026 organic sales mainly through volume rather than price/mix: Coca-Cola, Unilever, P&G and Nestlé. Note: Each company’s own release; Unilever’s is linked here. Source: Unilever, Q3 2026 Trading Statement: Continued strong performance in the third quarter, 2026: https://www.unilever.com/news/press-and-media/press-releases/2026/continued-strong-performance-in-the-third-quarter/ (analysis: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/cpg-giants-q3-2026-volume-vs-price) ## Pricing FAQ ### Is there a free way to try Searchpanel? Yes, two ways. The Free plan tracks 1 SKU for $0 a month. The free SKU audit needs no account and no credit card. Paste a product URL and in about 60 seconds you’ll see how AI recommends it, plus the first fixes. ### How is Searchpanel priced? By catalog depth: the number of SKUs you track. Free covers 1 SKU for $0 a month, Starter covers up to 10 SKUs for $95 a month, Growth up to 250 for $349 a month, and Scale up to 1,000 for $999 a month. Above 1,000 SKUs, Enterprise is priced to your catalog. ### What’s the difference between Starter and Growth? Starter tracks your SKUs daily on 5 AI engines, gives each one a Visibility Score and sends a weekly fix queue. Growth adds Diagnose, Create and one-click Sync, the daily Shelf and streaks, competitor SKU tracking, and Amazon and Walmart listing sync. ### Which AI engines are tracked? ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google’s AI answers, tracked daily on every paid plan. ### We have more than 1,000 SKUs. What then? That’s what Enterprise is for. It includes everything in Scale, with pricing set to your catalog size. Book a demo to talk it through. ### We’re an agency. Which plan fits? Scale includes multi-brand workspaces, so you can run several client brands from one account. For larger rosters, book a demo. ## Homepage FAQ ### What is Searchpanel? Searchpanel is an AI product visibility platform. It measures how AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google’s AI answers recommend each of your products, gives every SKU a 0–100 Visibility Score, diagnoses why a product is missing, and helps you generate and publish the fixes. ### Which AI engines does Searchpanel track? ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and Google AI Mode / AI Overviews. Each engine is scored separately, so a strong result on one never hides a product another engine never names. ### How is this different from SEO or brand-mention tools? SEO gets a page ranked; AI answers name just a few products. Brand-mention tools average visibility across a whole company, while Searchpanel scores each SKU on its own – so a healthy brand average can’t hide the products AI has stopped recommending. ### Do I need to connect my store to try it? No. The free SKU audit needs no account and no credit card – paste a product URL and see how AI recommends it. For a demo, a public store or product URL is enough for the team to score your best sellers before the call. ### Which stores does Searchpanel integrate with? Searchpanel connects to Amazon (Seller Central) and Shopify to import your catalog and sync improvements. You can also add products manually. ### Who is Searchpanel for? CPG and ecommerce brands selling on Amazon and Shopify, and agencies that manage AI visibility across several brands. ### Who makes Searchpanel? Searchpanel is built by XENA Intelligence. ## Blog posts (full text) ### ChatGPT now shows brands their mentions. Here's what the count misses for CPG brands URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/chatgpt-business-hub-cpg-brands Published: 2026-11-11 · Updated: 2026-11-11 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: ChatGPT, AI Visibility, Business Hub, Product Feeds, CPG Key takeaways: - OpenAI launched Businesses in ChatGPT in beta on November 10: claim a profile, connect a product feed and see mentions, clicks and discovery topics. - For an online business, a mention counts only when ChatGPT references your website. The brand name alone doesn't count. - ChatGPT's most-cited U.S. domains in Findrix's October data were retailers and Reddit, so CPG brands that sell through retailers should treat the count as a floor. - Business Agents are free at launch for eligible U.S. ecommerce sites, can't take orders, and each brand is claimed separately. On Tuesday, OpenAI opened a front desk for brands inside ChatGPT. It's called Business Hub. You claim your business, verify it, fix the details ChatGPT shows, connect a product feed and, for the first time, see how often ChatGPT mentions you and sends clicks to your site. Most CPG brands should claim their profiles this week. But read the fine print on that mention number before anyone puts it in a board deck. For a brand that sells mostly through retailers, it will probably look smaller than your real presence in ChatGPT, and the reason is in OpenAI's own help page. #### What did OpenAI launch on November 10? Businesses in ChatGPT is a beta with two parts. Business Hub is open to eligible businesses wherever ChatGPT is available. Business Agents, a branded chat that answers questions about your products, is limited for now to eligible U.S. ecommerce and online service businesses with a website. OpenAI says ChatGPT has 1.2 billion weekly users. Both are free at launch, Digiday reported after a briefing with Benji Shomair, OpenAI's vice president of monetization. He didn't rule out charging later. Here's what each piece does and who can use it today. Businesses in ChatGPT at launch: what you get and who can use itAllAny eligible businessU.S. ecommerce and online servicesLimited ad testSearchShowing 7 of 7 FeatureAvailabilityWhat it doesCatch for CPG brands Claim a profileAny eligible businessVerify by business phone, business email, a DNS TXT record or ShopifyEach distinct brand is claimed and managed on its own. No parent-company view yet. Identity check (Persona)Any eligible businessRequired before edits, feeds, insights or an agent. Brings the blue check.May need a government ID, business registration and proof you can represent the brand Edit business detailsAny eligible businessWebsite, description, category, logo, delivery and return policyOpenAI reviews changes, and ChatGPT may still use other sources Product feedAny eligible businessCSV or hosted feed, or Shopify, with prices and availabilityDoes not guarantee ChatGPT recommends your products InsightsAny eligible businessMentions, website clicks and discovery topics over 28 daysBrand name alone doesn't count as a mention. No prompts, no share of voice. Business AgentU.S. ecommerce and online servicesA labeled chat that answers questions from your info and links to your siteCan't take orders. Industry rules apply. Sponsored agentLimited ad testUses your Business Agent as the destination for a ChatGPT adPaid, and separate from ChatGPT's own answers Edits, feeds, insights and agents all require an approved Persona identity check after the claim. Compiled from OpenAI's announcement, help center and Business Agents Policy (Nov. 10, 2026), plus Digiday and VentureBeat reporting. Business Hub and agents are free at launch per Digiday. Source: OpenAI Help Center, Setting up your business on ChatGPT #### How does Business Hub count a mention? This is the part to read twice. According to OpenAI's setup guide, for an online business "a mention counts when ChatGPT references the business's website. The brand name alone doesn't count." An OpenAI spokesperson put it more bluntly to Digiday: "Just naming the brand doesn't count." The other numbers have limits too. Website clicks are clicks on links from supported ChatGPT surfaces, not completed visits or purchases. Insights cover the past 28 days. Low counts are withheld, and a blank metric doesn't necessarily mean zero. Discovery topics are themes from answers that cited your site, not the prompts people typed. And per Digiday, "share of voice isn't part of this beta." #### Why will a CPG brand's mention count look low? Because ChatGPT's product answers lean on retailers, not brand sites. When we looked at Findrix's October study of U.S. buyer questions, the most-cited domains in ChatGPT answers were retailers, Reddit and a few reference sites. No manufacturer's own site made the top eight. Most-cited domains in ChatGPT answers, U.S., 35 markets (citations)ulta.com15,397reddit.com14,013walmart.com9,921sephora.com5,920nih.gov5,215google.com4,820nordstrom.com4,614target.com4,433Source: Findrix Radar, How AI recommends brands in the United States (18,400 buyer questions, 35 markets incl. non-CPG, measured Oct. 14 to 17, 2026) Picture the common case. Someone asks ChatGPT for a fragrance-free body wash for sensitive skin. ChatGPT names your brand and links to the Ulta or Target listing. That's a reference to the retailer's website, not yours. In Business Hub, that answer most likely never shows up as your mention. So treat the number as a floor. It tells you how often ChatGPT sends people to your own site, which matters if you sell direct. It does not tell you how often ChatGPT recommends your products. Those are different questions, and for most CPG brands the second one is bigger. Still, a floor from the source is worth having. Farhad Divecha, group CEO of Accuracast, told Digiday that visibility tools have been working from approximations, and he wants to see "how far off these tools were from the actual data from ChatGPT." Fair test. Compare OpenAI's count with whatever you track today, on the same 28 days, before you trust either. One more CPG wrinkle. OpenAI says each distinct brand is managed separately, and central management across a parent company's brands isn't available yet. A house with 30 brands has 30 claims, 30 identity checks and 30 dashboards. #### Should a CPG brand publish a Business Agent? If you have a direct-to-consumer site with real product questions, probably yes. The agent answers from information you supply, such as product details and your return policy, and sends shoppers to your site to buy. It can't complete purchases, make bookings or check an order. You also can't bring your own bot: "We aren't allowing folks to bring their own agents," Shomair told Digiday. That handoff matches where shoppers are. Circana data reported by FoodNavigator on November 10 shows people use AI to compare far more than they let it buy. Shoppers and AI: comparing vs. buying (share of consumers)Comfortable using AI to compare prices53%Influenced by AI in their decisions34%Trust an AI agent to buy without their approval16%Source: Circana, via FoodNavigator (Nov. 10, 2026); sample size not stated in the article Circana's Kiara Barrett said "many AI trust problems are actually product data, pricing and inventory problems." That is the real risk with an agent. It will repeat whatever you feed it, so a stale price or an old pack count becomes your brand saying something wrong in your own voice. Read the Business Agents Policy before you write instructions, especially in supplements, baby or consumer health. The agent can't give advice that legally requires a professional license, can't ask for unnecessary health details, and can't invent prices, reviews or results. Verification alone doesn't guarantee your category gets an agent. The paid version can wait. A sponsored agent uses the same agent as an ad destination, and it's still a limited test. Our read of the first ChatGPT ads sales data still holds: fund the organic answer first. #### How did ChatGPT shopping get here? OpenAI's merchant page says it is building "a merchant platform for self-serve data integration later this year." Business Hub, with self-service feeds, looks like that platform. Here's the short history. ChatGPT's path from checkout to Business Hub - Sep 29, 2025OpenAILaunched Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol, and said more than 700 million people used ChatGPT each week. Source - Nov 24, 2025OpenAIIntroduced shopping research, which builds a buyer's guide from questions and sources. Source - Mar 24, 2026OpenAIMoved away from standalone Instant Checkout. Merchants share product feeds through ACP and keep their own checkout. Source - Oct 21, 2026OpenAIExpanded ChatGPT Ads to 89 countries and said over 100,000 advertisers had run campaigns. Source - Oct 30, 2026OpenAI Help CenterExplained merchant ranking: availability, price, quality, and whether a merchant is the maker or primary seller. Source - Nov 10, 2026OpenAILaunched Businesses in ChatGPT in beta: Business Hub, insights and Business Agents. Source Note that ranking factor from October. ChatGPT considers whether a merchant is the maker of an item, which we covered in our post on merchant ranking. A verified profile with a clean feed is the plainest way to tell ChatGPT you are the maker. OpenAI is careful to say claiming doesn't guarantee more visibility, and Shomair said it "should not have an impact on how frequently it appears." He also said clearer information could help ChatGPT surface a business in more relevant conversations. #### What should CPG brands do this week? - List every brand you need to claim. One claim per brand. Start with the ones that have a shoppable site. - Line up verification now. Domain verification needs a DNS TXT record, which usually means IT. Persona may ask for a government ID and business registration. Decide who the admin is and add your agency as a teammate, not with a forwarded invite. - Fix the profile fields. Website, description, category, logo, delivery and return policy. These are the facts an agent will quote. - Connect a feed that matches your retailers. Same GTINs, pack sizes and prices as your top retail listings, so ChatGPT can tell they're the same product. - Test the agent with real questions. Pull 10 from customer service: allergens, sizes, subscriptions, returns. Publish only when every answer is right. - Benchmark the count. Put Business Hub's 28-day mentions next to your own tracking, and track retailer citations separately. Business Hub readiness for a CPG brand - We have a list of every brand we need to claim, with an owner for each. - IT can add a DNS TXT record for each brand's domain this week. - The admin who will pass Persona verification is named and has the documents. - Our profile description, category, delivery and return policy are written and approved. - Our product feed uses the same GTINs, pack sizes and prices as our top retail listings. - We know whether our category is eligible for a Business Agent under OpenAI's policy. - We tested the agent with 10 real customer questions and every answer was correct. - We track AI recommendations that link to retailers, not just our own site. 0 of 8 Start with the brand list. It decides everything else. Business Hub shows only the slice of ChatGPT that points at your own site. Our free SKU audit shows the rest: whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google recommend each product you sell, and which retailer or publisher they cite when they do. The Searchpanel homepage explains the score, our glossary covers AI share of voice and AI citations, and if you want help setting up Business Hub across a portfolio, book a demo. FAQ: Q: What is ChatGPT Business Hub? A: A beta tool OpenAI launched on November 10, 2026. Businesses claim their profile, verify it, update details such as website, description and return policy, connect a product feed, and see insights on mentions, website clicks and discovery topics over the past 28 days. Q: Does ChatGPT count a brand name as a mention in Business Hub? A: No. For an online business, OpenAI counts a mention only when ChatGPT references the business's website. If ChatGPT names your product but links to a retailer, that answer likely won't appear as your mention. Q: Can a CPG brand's Business Agent sell products? A: No. A Business Agent answers questions from information the brand supplies and links to the brand's website. It can't complete purchases, make bookings or check orders. It is available to eligible U.S. ecommerce and online service businesses. Q: Does claiming a business in ChatGPT improve its rankings? A: OpenAI says claiming doesn't guarantee more visibility or control over ChatGPT's independent recommendations, and advertising doesn't influence answers. Accurate information may help ChatGPT surface a business in more relevant conversations. Q: How do multi-brand CPG companies use Business Hub? A: Each distinct brand is claimed and managed separately. OpenAI says central management across a parent company's brands isn't available yet. Sources: - Introducing Businesses in ChatGPT, OpenAI, 2026-11-10: https://openai.com/index/introducing-businesses-chatgpt/ - Setting up your business on ChatGPT, OpenAI Help Center, 2026-11-10: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001635-setting-up-your-business-on-chatgpt - Business Agents Policy, OpenAI, 2026-11-10: https://openai.com/policies/business-agents-policy/ - OpenAI's new business agents give brands a free way into the conversation it's also selling as an ad, Digiday, 2026-11-10: https://digiday.com/marketing/openais-new-business-agents-give-brands-a-free-way-into-the-conversation-its-also-selling-as-an-ad/ - OpenAI lets you claim your business in ChatGPT and set up a custom agentic AI customer sales rep, VentureBeat, 2026-11-10: https://venturebeat.com/technology/openai-lets-you-claim-your-business-in-chatgpt-and-set-up-a-custom-agentic-ai-customer-sales-rep - How AI recommends brands in the United States (measured Oct. 14 to 17, 2026), Findrix Radar, 2026-10-17: https://www.findrix.ai/radar/us - Product data is critical to consumer trust in AI shopping (Circana data), FoodNavigator, 2026-11-10: https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2026/11/10/how-brands-can-improve-trust-in-agentic-commerce/ - Power product discovery in ChatGPT (accessed Nov. 11, 2026), OpenAI, 2026-11-11: https://chatgpt.com/merchants/ - Powering Product Discovery in ChatGPT, OpenAI, 2026-03-24: https://openai.com/index/powering-product-discovery-in-chatgpt/ - Buy it in ChatGPT: Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol, OpenAI, 2025-09-29: https://openai.com/index/buy-it-in-chatgpt/ - Introducing shopping research in ChatGPT, OpenAI, 2025-11-24: https://openai.com/index/chatgpt-shopping-research/ - ChatGPT Ads expands to 26 new countries as over 100,000 advertisers have used the platform, OpenAI, 2026-10-21: https://openai.com/index/chatgpt-ads-expands-26-new-countries - Shopping with ChatGPT Search, OpenAI Help Center, 2026-10-30: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11128490-shopping-with-chatgpt-search ### ChatGPT and Gemini pick the store before the product. What new grocery data means for CPG brands URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-store-recommendations-grocery-cpg Published: 2026-11-10 · Updated: 2026-11-10 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: AI Visibility, Grocery, Retailers, Gemini, ChatGPT, CPG Key takeaways: - EMARKETER analyzed 11,250 ChatGPT and 11,250 Gemini store recommendations across 23 U.S. retail categories in September 2026. - In grocery, Costco led at 44%, Whole Foods Market 43%, Walmart 33%, Trader Joe's 32% and Aldi 29%, down from 33% a month earlier. - Gemini's grocery answers cited Tasting Table in 17% of recommendations and The Kitchn in 8%. ChatGPT spread its sources, led by Consumers' Checkbook at 8%. - ChatGPT relied more on third-party publishers; Gemini favored retailer- and brand-owned sites. - Tinuiti found 48% of U.S. gift buyers expect to use a retailer's own AI assistant, so the store answer decides which assistant picks your product. Before a shopper asks an AI assistant which oat milk to buy, a lot of them ask where to buy it. That first answer names a store, and the store decides which shelf, which product page and which retailer's own assistant gets the next question. Most CPG brands track the product answer. Far fewer track the store answer. EMARKETER just put numbers on it. Its AI Visibility Index for U.S. retail stores, published in a Q4 report on November 3 and summarized in articles on November 5 and November 9, shows which stores ChatGPT and Gemini recommend, and which publishers they lean on to decide. For grocery, the answer is not the list most brand teams would guess. #### What did EMARKETER's AI Visibility Index measure? In September 2026, EMARKETER ran 11,250 ChatGPT and 11,250 Gemini recommendations across 23 retail store categories. The prompts were standardized questions like "best store to buy skincare products," varied by product type, need, audience and price tier, and checked against consumer search volume. The categories include several where CPG brands live: everyday essentials, groceries, beauty products, pet supplies, consumer health and baby gear. The headline metric is brand mention rate, the share of each tool's recommendations that name a store. Combined figures weight ChatGPT and Gemini by EMARKETER's forecast of their 2026 U.S. monthly users (118.4 million and 89.6 million). Across all 23 categories, Target led with a 31% mention rate in September, up from 29%, followed by Walmart at 23% and Amazon at 18%, per the November 5 article. Specialists owned their own aisles: Best Buy at 91% in electronics, The Home Depot at 89% in home improvement and Chewy at 85% in pet supplies. One caution: EMARKETER's November 9 piece gives different figures for the same month (Target 29%, Walmart 24%, Amazon 15%, Chewy 72%, and Ulta at 63% in beauty). We can't see which cut each uses, so read the rankings, not the decimals. #### Which grocery stores do ChatGPT and Gemini recommend most? EMARKETER calls grocery a highly competitive category. No one came close to the 85% to 91% that Chewy and Best Buy posted in their categories. Grocery store mention rate in ChatGPT and Gemini recommendations, U.S., September 2026Costco44%Whole Foods Market43%Walmart33%Trader Joe's32%Aldi29%Source: EMARKETER AI Visibility Index, Retail Store Movers and Leaders (Nov 5, 2026) Three things stand out. Aldi fell from 33% to 29% in a single month, which tells you these lists move. Whole Foods and Aldi had particularly strong No. 1 mention rates, meaning when they're named, they're often named first. And Target and Kroger gained ground, according to EMARKETER, though neither cracked the top five. If your brand's grocery distribution is concentrated in conventional supermarkets, notice what is missing from that chart. Check how many of the five you sell through, and how your category shelf looks at each one. #### Who decides which grocer gets named? This is the part brand teams can act on. EMARKETER looked at the sources each engine cited for grocery recommendations, and the two engines behave very differently. Top cited sources in grocery store recommendations, share of recommendations, September 2026Tasting Table (Gemini)17%The Kitchn (Gemini)8%Consumers' Checkbook (ChatGPT)8%Kiplinger (ChatGPT)6%Source: EMARKETER AI Visibility Index, Retail Store Movers and Leaders (Nov 5, 2026) Gemini's grocery answers lean hard on two food publishers. Tasting Table showed up in 17% of its recommendations and The Kitchn in 8%. ChatGPT spread its sources out: Consumers' Checkbook led at 8%, Kiplinger followed at 6%, and the rest of its top 10 sat between 3% and 4%. Across all retail categories, EMARKETER found ChatGPT relied more on third-party publishers, while Gemini favored retailer- and brand-owned websites. Between August and September, ChatGPT also mentioned fewer unique brands and cited fewer domains, while Gemini expanded both. So the engines are drifting in opposite directions, and one tracking number blended across both will hide that. A Cision report released on November 9 points the same way from a different category. In AI answers to "best car" questions, Toyota led with a 13.8% share of brand mentions, yet its own website was a fraction of the cited sources, against more than 4,000 for YouTube. Cision also found a supplement example every CPG marketer should read twice: social posts about magnesium glycinate talked mostly about stress relief, while AI responses emphasized bone support and cardiometabolic support. The answer can name your product and still pitch it differently than your customers do. #### Why should a CPG brand care which store AI names? Because the store answer routes the shopper into a system you don't control. Once someone lands at Walmart or Amazon, the retailer's own assistant picks the product. Tinuiti's survey of 1,000 U.S. holiday gift buyers (published November 5) found 57% plan to use AI tools for holiday shopping and 48% expect to use a retailer's own assistant. U.S. holiday gift buyers who plan to use each type of AI tool, 2026Any AI tool57%A retailer's own AI assistant48%ChatGPT30%Google Gemini28%Source: Tinuiti, Holiday Shopping Statistics 2026 (survey of 1,000 U.S. holiday gift buyers, Nov 5, 2026) Per EMARKETER's read of the same survey, roughly 1 in 3 gift buyers plan to use Amazon's Alexa for Shopping and about 1 in 4 plan to use Walmart's Sparky. We covered how those assistants choose products in our posts on Alexa for Shopping's text orders and Walmart's agents. So there are two gates now. ChatGPT or Gemini picks the store. Then the store's assistant picks the product. A brand that wins the second gate at a retailer the first gate never names is winning a smaller race. Our view: map the store answer for your category before you spend another dollar on retailer content. #### What should CPG brands do before Black Friday? Thanksgiving is November 26 and Cyber Five runs through November 30. Tinuiti found 25% of gift buyers plan to do most or all of their shopping in that window. There is time for a focused pass. - Run the store prompts yourself. Ask ChatGPT and Gemini "best store to buy [your category]" in a few variations (budget, organic, for a family, near me). Log which retailers they name and in what order, per engine. - Rank your retailer content work by that list. The stores AI names most for your category get your best product pages, reviews and images first. - Find the publishers behind your category answer. For grocery store answers on Gemini, that's Tasting Table and The Kitchn. Check which ones get cited in your category, then earn coverage there with real product news, not paid listicles. - Fix your own site for Gemini. Since Gemini favors retailer- and brand-owned sites, make sure your product pages and where-to-buy page are crawlable and name the retailers that actually carry each SKU. - Compare AI's framing to your customers'. Read what the answers say your product is for, then read your reviews. If they don't match, as in Cision's magnesium example, fix the claims on your pages first. - Re-check monthly. Aldi lost four points in a month. A one-time audit goes stale fast. Store-answer audit for a CPG brand - We asked ChatGPT and Gemini where to buy our category this month and logged the stores they named. - We tracked results separately for each engine, not as one blended number. - We know which of the named stores carry our products today. - Our best retailer content work is prioritized by the stores AI names most. - We know which publishers ChatGPT and Gemini cite in our category. - Our where-to-buy page lists the real retailers for each SKU and is crawlable. - We compared how AI describes our product's benefits with what our reviews say. - Someone owns a monthly re-check through the holidays. 0 of 8 Start with the first item. It takes 20 minutes and a spreadsheet. The product answer still matters, and our free SKU audit checks it for every product you sell across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google. The Searchpanel homepage explains how the score works, our glossary defines AI share of voice and AI citation, and if you want us to map the store answer for your category with you, book a demo. FAQ: Q: Which grocery stores do ChatGPT and Gemini recommend most? A: In EMARKETER's September 2026 AI Visibility Index, Costco had the highest grocery mention rate at 44%, followed by Whole Foods Market at 43%, Walmart at 33%, Trader Joe's at 32% and Aldi at 29%. Target and Kroger gained ground but were not in the top five. Q: What sources do AI assistants use to recommend grocery stores? A: Gemini leaned on food publishers: Tasting Table appeared in 17% of its grocery recommendations and The Kitchn in 8%. ChatGPT's sources were more evenly spread, led by Consumers' Checkbook at 8% and Kiplinger at 6%. Q: Do ChatGPT and Gemini use the same sources? A: No. EMARKETER found ChatGPT relied more heavily on third-party publishers, while Gemini favored retailer- and brand-owned websites. Between August and September, ChatGPT cited fewer domains and Gemini cited more. Q: Why does the store AI recommends matter to a CPG brand? A: The store answer sends the shopper to a retailer whose own assistant, such as Alexa for Shopping or Walmart's Sparky, then picks the product. Tinuiti found 48% of U.S. holiday gift buyers expect to use a retailer's AI assistant this year. Q: How can a brand check its store answer? A: Ask ChatGPT and Gemini where to buy your category in several variations, log the stores named per engine, note the sources they cite, and repeat monthly. Prioritize retailer content at the stores AI names most. Sources: - AI Visibility Index: Retail Store Movers and Leaders, EMARKETER, 2026-11-05: https://www.emarketer.com/content/ai-visibility-index-retail-store-movers-leaders - AI Visibility Index: Retail Store Insights Q4 2026, EMARKETER, 2026-11-03: https://www.emarketer.com/content/ai-visibility-index-retail-store-insights-q4-2026 - Exclusive data shows how AI visibility extends beyond retail's biggest players, EMARKETER, 2026-11-09: https://www.emarketer.com/content/emarketer-exclusive-ai-visibility-extends-retail-stores-q4 - AI Visibility Index: US Retail Store Leaderboard, Sep 2026 (methodology), EMARKETER, 2026-09-01: https://www.emarketer.com/chart/c/373579/ai-visibility-index-us-retail-store-leaderboard-sep-2026-373579 - Holiday Shopping Statistics 2026: Spending, AI and Timing, Tinuiti, 2026-11-05: https://tinuiti.com/blog/ecommerce/holiday-shopping-statistics/ - Amazon and Walmart add AI shopping features ahead of the holidays, EMARKETER, 2026-11-06: https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-walmart-add-ai-shopping-features-ahead-of-holidays - Cision Report Reveals the Consumer Trends Hidden Between Search, Social, and AI, Cision (PR Newswire), 2026-11-09: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cision-report-reveals-the-consumer-trends-hidden-between-search-social-and-ai-302932157.html ### One in seven retailers turned away an AI shopping agent. What CPG brands should check before Black Friday URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-shopping-agents-blocked-retailers-cpg Published: 2026-11-09 · Updated: 2026-11-09 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: AI Shopping Agents, Product Data, Retailers, CPG, AEO Key takeaways: - Blend Commerce tested 200 U.S. and U.K. retailers on September 8 to 15, 2026. Its shopping agent was refused twice at 29 of them, including H-E-B, Chewy, Macy's and Best Buy. - Every refusing store whose robots.txt could be read (24 of 29) allows the search crawlers used by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude. Bot protection did the blocking. - Of 171 stores with readable product pages, only 18% published a GTIN, 20% a returns policy and 22% shipping details. - Food and drink retailers averaged 58 out of 100, below the 65 average. The test used an unfamiliar agent, not ChatGPT or Gemini. - Check your own site's agent access, put GTINs in structured data, and ask retail partners which named agents can reach your pages. A Shopify agency called Blend Commerce sent a shopping agent to 200 retailers in the U.S. and U.K. this fall and tried to get one item to the checkout page at each. At 29 of them, roughly one in seven, the agent never got through the door. The list includes Home Depot, Best Buy and Macy's, and on the CPG side H-E-B and Chewy. The detail that should worry brand teams: these stores mostly say AI is welcome. Blend could read the robots.txt file for 24 of the 29, and every one of those 24 allows the search crawlers used by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude. The refusals came from bot protection software, not from policy. Blend published the audit on October 6 and put out a statement on November 4, which PPC Land picked apart in detail the next day. With Black Friday on November 27, it is worth an hour of your week. #### What did the Blend Commerce audit test? Blend picked 10 retailers in each of 20 sectors, five per country, and ran 17 checks between September 8 and 15, 2026. The checks sit in four layers: can an agent reach the site, find the products, read the product data, and get a basket to checkout. Nothing was bought. The average score was 65 out of 100. Read it with one caveat in mind. The agent was Blend's own software, running an unmodified Chromium browser. It did not pose as ChatGPT, Gemini or any named agent. Blend's own chart note says it plainly: a retailer may allow named AI agents while refusing automation it does not recognize. So this is a test of how stores treat an honest but unfamiliar machine, which is how most agents look today. It is not proof that ChatGPT is locked out of Chewy. Blend also sells conversion audits and says so in the report. Ten stores per sector is a small sample. The numbers are still the most concrete look we have at what an agent hits when it shows up at a store. #### How did grocery, beauty and pet retailers score? The categories where CPG brands live spread across the whole table. Baby and nursery led every sector. Food and drink sat seven points under the overall average. AI shopping agent readiness by sector, average score out of 100 (10 U.S. and U.K. retailers each)Baby and nursery88Health and wellness72Beauty69Pets65All 200 retailers65Alcohol59Food and drink58Department stores51Source: Blend Commerce, AI Shopping Audit 2026 (audited Sept. 8 to 15, 2026) The size split runs against intuition. Large retailers refused the agent 20% of the time (16 of 80), mid-sized ones 15% (12 of 80) and emerging ones 2.5% (1 of 40). Big stores have bigger security teams, and those teams are doing what they were asked to do. Nobody asked them about agents with a customer's money. Here are the U.S. retailers in the audit that sell the categories CPG brands care about most. Filter by sector or show only the stores that refused the agent. U.S. retailers in CPG-heavy sectors: AI agent readiness scoreAllFood and drinkHealth and wellnessBeautyPetsBaby and nurseryAlcoholDepartment storesSearch Only stores that refused the agentShowing 35 of 35 RetailerSectorSize tierScoreRefused? VitacostFood and drinkEmerging94No SafewayFood and drinkLarge72No H-E-BFood and drinkLarge45Yes ShopRiteFood and drinkMid40No Giant FoodFood and drinkMid34No Tiger FitnessHealth and wellnessMid100No Best Price NutritionHealth and wellnessEmerging97No PureFormulasHealth and wellnessMid63No iHerbHealth and wellnessLarge57No Muscle & StrengthHealth and wellnessLarge34No Soko GlamBeautyMid89No Ulta BeautyBeautyLarge72No Image BeautyBeautyEmerging70No LovelySkinBeautyMid65No Sally BeautyBeautyLarge48No PetsensePetsMid85No PetcoPetsLarge69No PetFlowPetsEmerging60No Pet Food ExpressPetsMid48No ChewyPetsLarge45Yes KidslandBaby and nurseryMid96No Modern NurseryBaby and nurseryLarge96No Mega BabiesBaby and nurseryEmerging90No Bambi BabyBaby and nurseryMid84No Albee BabyBaby and nurseryLarge81No Crown Wine & SpiritsAlcoholEmerging66No Astor Wines & SpiritsAlcoholMid58No ABC Fine Wine & SpiritsAlcoholLarge55No Total Wine & MoreAlcoholLarge43No K&L Wine MerchantsAlcoholMid31No Dillard'sDepartment storesMid82No TargetDepartment storesLarge48No HSNDepartment storesEmerging34No Macy'sDepartment storesLarge25Yes Saks Fifth AvenueDepartment storesMid0Yes Scores out of 100 from 17 checks. Refused means the store returned an error, challenge page or empty page on two attempts. Refused stores can still earn points on checks that did not need the page. Size tiers are relative to each sector's pool. Source: Blend Commerce, AI Shopping Audit 2026, U.S. retailers in seven sectors Target scored 48, Safeway 72, ShopRite 40 and Giant Food 34. Ulta scored 72 and Petco 69. If your brand does most of its online volume at a few of these names, their front door is part of your AI visibility whether you like it or not. #### Which product data fields are missing? Blend could read product pages at 171 of the 200 stores. Most had the basics. The fields that let an agent compare and commit were rare. Share of 171 readable retailers whose product data includes each fieldProduct schema82%Price76%Availability73%Shipping details22%Returns policy20%GTIN (barcode number)18%Source: Blend Commerce, AI Shopping Audit 2026 GTIN is the one CPG brands own. Every UPC on a shelf is a GTIN, and you assigned it. Yet none of the beauty, pet or department store retailers Blend could read published one in their product data. Without it, Blend notes, an agent comparing prices has to guess whether two listings are the same product. For a 12-count versus a 24-count of the same SKU, that guess is how the wrong pack ends up in the cart. We covered why that mismatch turns into returns in yesterday's post on AI-recommended returns. Two more numbers: 107 of the 200 publish a product sitemap, and 38 have a live agent checkout endpoint, 37 of them on Shopify. Shopify stores averaged 91 against 59 for everyone else, and still 89 against 66 with the endpoint checks removed. That matches what Shopify told investors about AI orders, which we wrote up on November 4. #### Why does this matter before the holidays? Because the traffic that agents and AI answers send is now the best traffic a retailer gets. Adobe reported on October 29 that in September, AI traffic to U.S. retail sites converted 90% better than non-AI traffic and generated 83% more revenue per visit. Adobe expects AI traffic to rise 159% year over year on Thanksgiving and 95% on Black Friday. Adobe also scores how much of a page AI systems can read and cite. The average U.S. retail homepage scored 63%. Grocery scored 55%, behind electronics at 79%. The fight over access is getting louder too. Amazon blocked Meta's Muse agent in September, while Walmart opened Agent Profiles and an Agent Gateway on October 21, Reuters reported. On November 5, Cloudflare published a paper arguing that in nearly every agent problem it lists, the site bears the primary cost. Its preferred fix is Web Bot Auth, which lets an agent sign its requests so a site can tell who it is. Until that is common, an unfamiliar agent will keep getting the same treatment as a scraper. Fall 2026: who let AI shopping agents in - Sep 15, 2026Blend CommerceFinished a week of tests at 200 U.S. and U.K. retailers. 29 refused its agent twice. Source - Oct 21, 2026WalmartOpened Agent Profiles and an Agent Gateway for outside shopping agents, as Reuters later reported. Source - Oct 29, 2026AdobeReported AI traffic to U.S. retail sites converted 90% better than non-AI traffic in September. Source - Nov 4, 2026Blend CommerceIssued a statement urging security and marketing teams to test agent access before Black Friday. Source - Nov 5, 2026CloudflarePublished a paper arguing sites bear most of the cost of agent traffic, and backed Web Bot Auth for agent identity. Source #### What should CPG brands check this week? You can't change H-E-B's firewall. You can fix your own site, the data you syndicate, and the questions you ask your account teams. Adam Pearce, Blend's CEO, put it this way in the November 4 statement: "I'd bet most marketing teams don't even know it's happening." Work through this with your ecommerce and web leads. Tick what you have already confirmed. Agent door check for a CPG brand - We loaded our top five product pages in an automated browser and got the page, not a challenge screen. - Our web or security team told us which AI agents are on the allow list, and who owns that rule. - robots.txt allows the search crawlers used by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, and we checked it this month. - Every variant on our site has its GTIN in the product structured data, not only in the admin. - Our product data includes shipping details and a returns policy. - We publish a product sitemap and reference it in robots.txt. - Our own checkout works as a guest, without forcing an account. - We asked our top three retail partners whether named AI agents can reach our product pages. - We confirmed our GTINs show up on those retailers' product pages. 0 of 9 Start with the first two. They take an afternoon. Then check the other side of the problem: whether the assistants name you once they can read you. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the category questions your shoppers ask, every week through December. Our free SKU audit does that per product, and the Searchpanel homepage explains the score. For definitions, see AI shopping agent and structured data in our glossary, or book a demo to walk through your catalog. Our view: being recommended and being reachable are two different jobs, and most brands only fund the first. Spend the next two weeks on the second. FAQ: Q: Are retailers blocking AI shopping agents? A: Some are, mostly by accident. In Blend Commerce's audit of 200 U.S. and U.K. retailers, 29 refused its shopping agent on two attempts. All 24 refusing stores with a readable robots.txt allow AI search crawlers, so bot protection software, not policy, did the blocking. Q: Does this mean ChatGPT can't shop at these retailers? A: Not necessarily. Blend used its own agent in an unmodified Chromium browser and did not pose as any named AI agent. Its report notes that a retailer may allow named AI agents while refusing automation it does not recognize. Q: Which U.S. grocery and pet retailers refused the agent? A: Among U.S. food and drink and pet retailers in the audit, H-E-B and Chewy refused it. Safeway scored 72, ShopRite 40, Giant Food 34, Petco 69 and Target 48 out of 100. Q: Why does a GTIN matter for AI shopping agents? A: A GTIN identifies the same product across retailers. Without it, Blend says, an agent comparing prices has to guess whether two listings are the same thing. Only 18% of the 171 readable retailers published one in their product data. Q: What should CPG brands do first? A: Load your top product pages in an automated browser, ask your security team which AI agents are on the allow list, add GTINs, shipping and returns to your structured data, and ask retail partners whether named agents can reach your pages. Sources: - AI Shopping Audit 2026: How 200 UK and US Retailers Score, Blend Commerce, 2026-10-06: https://blendcommerce.com/blogs/shopify/ai-shopping-audit-2026 - Bot protection blocks Blend's AI shopping agent at 29 of 200 retailers, PPC Land, 2026-11-05: https://ppc.land/bot-protection-blocks-blends-ai-shopping-agent-at-29-of-200-retailers/ - Adobe report: AI traffic now generates 83% higher revenue per visit for U.S. retailers, Adobe, 2026-10-29: https://business.adobe.com/blog/ai-traffic-higher-revenue-per-visit-retail-holiday - Agents aren't humans (but they kinda are), Cloudflare, 2026-11-05: https://blog.cloudflare.com/trusted-agent-delegation - Analysis: AI shopping agents could threaten Amazon and Walmart's ad business, Reuters (via Investing.com), 2026-11-04: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/analysisai-shopping-agents-could-threaten-amazon-and-walmarts-ad-business-4999246 ### Nearly half of shoppers who bought an AI pick sent it back. CPG brands should fix the data URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-recommended-returns-product-data-cpg Published: 2026-11-08 · Updated: 2026-11-08 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: AI Shopping, Product Data, Returns, CPG, AEO Key takeaways: - Blue Yonder's 2026 survey (fielded September 2026 among more than 5,000 shoppers, including 2,000 in the U.S.) found that 24% of U.S. consumers have bought a product based on an AI recommendation. - Of those shoppers, 46% returned an AI-recommended item in the past year. Among Gen Z AI shoppers, 56% did. - The top reason for returning an AI pick was that it was different than described (36%), ahead of incorrect size or fit (23%). For all U.S. returns those reasons flip (42% and 20%). - Only 20% of U.S. respondents would trust an AI tool to recommend the right size or fit. Younger shoppers buy on AI advice far more often: 43% of Gen Z and 36% of millennials. - Put the facts an agent would repeat in titles and structured fields, match them across every retailer page, and check weekly how assistants describe your SKUs. Blue Yonder's fourth annual Consumer Retail Returns Survey, fielded in September 2026 among more than 5,000 shoppers (2,000 of them in the United States), puts a number on something brand teams already see in customer service queues. Of the 24% of U.S. consumers who have bought a product after an AI tool or assistant recommended it, 46% have returned one of those items in the past year. The most common reason is not size. It is that the product was different than described. That is a product-data problem, and CPG brands can fix it before holiday boxes start coming back. #### What did Blue Yonder find about AI shopping returns? The survey asked about AI tools or assistants, such as consumer chatbots, not about a single retailer app. Blue Yonder published the results on October 27. Retail Dive picked them up on November 3. Figures below are U.S. unless noted. Nearly a quarter of U.S. respondents, 24%, have purchased a product after receiving an AI recommendation. Younger shoppers are doing it far more often: 43% of Gen Z and 36% of millennials, against 19% of Gen X and 9% of baby boomers. U.S. shoppers who bought a product based on an AI recommendationGen Z43%Millennials36%Gen X19%Baby Boomers9%Source: Blue Yonder 2026 Consumer Retail Returns Survey, fielded September 2026 (2,000 U.S. respondents) Buying is only half the story. Among people who did buy on an AI recommendation, 46% sent at least one of those items back in the past year. For Gen Z AI shoppers, that share rises to 56%, according to Blue Yonder's press release. Of the people who returned an AI-recommended purchase, 49% said they are more likely to return those items than purchases made directly through a retailer, and only 9% said they are less likely to. Trust is thin even before the box is opened. Only 20% of U.S. respondents would trust an AI tool to recommend the right size or fit. That figure is 36% among Gen Z, 27% among millennials, 18% among Gen X and 9% among baby boomers. #### Why do shoppers return AI-recommended products? Among U.S. shoppers who returned an AI-recommended purchase, 36% said it was different than described, and 23% said it was the wrong size or fit. For U.S. returns overall, those reasons flip. Incorrect size or fit leads at 42%, and "different than described" accounts for only 20%. Why U.S. shoppers said they sent a product backDifferent than described, AI-recommended returns36%Different than described, all U.S. returns20%Incorrect size or fit, AI-recommended returns23%Incorrect size or fit, all U.S. returns42%Source: Blue Yonder 2026 Consumer Retail Returns Survey. AI figures are among U.S. shoppers who returned an AI-recommended purchase; all-returns figures are the most common reason among all U.S. respondents. Blue Yonder's own read is that AI tools struggle less with fit than with describing products accurately. Duncan Angove, the company's CEO, said: "That's not really an AI problem. It's a data problem. An AI assistant is only as good as the product information it can find, and most product data was written for a search bar, not for a machine suggesting products for someone. When what arrives doesn't match what the shopper expected, it goes back in the box." A detergent listing written to rank for "best laundry detergent" often never says unscented, 150 oz or 64 loads near the top. A person can skim a photo and a bullet list and figure it out. An assistant summarizes the text it can parse and tells the shopper this is a fresh-scent everyday detergent. The shopper who asked for unscented gets a bottle that smells like a meadow. That is a "different than described" return, and the description they heard was the agent's, built from your copy. The same gap shows up when pack counts, concentrate levels, age limits and diet flags live in an image or a file the agent never reads. We wrote last week about Shopify's finding that AI shoppers reward specific product data. This survey is the other side of that coin. When the data is vague, the recommendation can still happen. Then the product comes back. #### How should CPG brands write product data for AI shopping assistants? Write the facts an assistant would repeat out loud, and put them where a machine can find them. The title, the first sentence and the structured attributes should name the product type, the size or pack count, and the variant a shopper would say: fragrance-free, 2x concentrate, peanut-free, 12-count. Say what the product is not. If it is not a sunscreen, not a treatment, not safe for pets or not a single-use bottle, write that in text. Agents fill gaps. Empty gaps become over-promises, and over-promises become returns. Then check whether those facts survive the first pass. Paste a listing into the tester below. If the claim that would have stopped a "not as described" return sits after the first 40 words, rewrite so it does not. The 40-word testProduct descriptionOur story started with a simple idea: household cleaning should feel like a small act of care. We formulate in small batches and we never rush a recipe just to get it on the shelf faster. This all-purpose spray is dye-free, safe on sealed wood and granite, and has no ammonia.Claims that must be in there (comma separated)The sample is made up for illustration. Nothing you paste leaves your browser. Do this on the live Amazon, Walmart, Target and brand-site listings. The pages have to agree. An agent that reads two different pack sizes, or a bold claim on the brand site and silence on the retailer page, will invent a middle version. That middle version is what shows up at the door. Would an AI assistant describe this SKU the way the box does? - The title and first sentence name the product type, size or pack count, and the variant a shopper would say out loud (for example, unscented, 2x concentrate, 64 loads). - Claims an agent might repeat (fragrance-free, gluten-free, pediatrician tested, for sensitive skin) sit in structured fields, not only in photos. - What the product is not is stated in text (not a medical treatment, not for children under 2, contains tree nuts) so the agent does not over-promise. - Size, count, weight and dilution instructions match across Amazon, Walmart, Target, our site and any agent feed. - Ingredients, allergens and diet flags are in readable text, not buried in a file or an image. - Reviews that mention not as described are tagged, and we update the listing when the complaint is fair. - We ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Alexa for Shopping and Walmart Sparky our top 20 shopper questions and write down how they describe the product. - If an agent's description does not match the physical product, we fix the data the same week, not in the next catalog cycle. 0 of 8 Open your top 20 listings and circle every claim a shopper would be unhappy to hear wrongly. That is your first rewrite list. We would run that 20-question check every week through the holidays, If an assistant describes your detergent as scented when it is not, that is a listing bug, not a model mystery. A free audit is a faster way to see which SKUs agents name and how they talk about them. #### What happens if retailers just tighten return policies? The other half of the survey warns against making returns harder and calling the job done. Fifty-one percent of U.S. respondents have chosen one retailer over another purely because of a better returns policy. Twenty-nine percent stopped shopping at a retailer that tightened its policy in the last year, including 47% of Gen Z and 40% of millennials. If a retailer told them they return too often and limited their returns, 82% said they would cut back or walk away: 43% would stop shopping there, and 39% would shop there less. Sixty-three percent of U.S. consumers would not pay any fee to return a product, the highest share of the five countries surveyed. Retailers will still try to contain cost. Brands should not wait for that argument. Every "different than described" return that started with an AI recommendation is a SKU whose public data taught the agent the wrong story. Fixing that data protects the shopper, the retailer relationship and the next recommendation. #### Our take AI shopping is already sending products home, and the returns are concentrated among the shoppers who use it most. The fix is unglamorous: accurate titles, structured claims, matching copy across every store an agent can read, and a weekly check of how those agents describe you. That is the work SearchPanel is built for. If you want help seeing the gaps, run a free audit or book a demo. FAQ: Q: How many shoppers return products recommended by AI? A: In Blue Yonder's 2026 survey, 24% of U.S. consumers had bought a product based on an AI recommendation, and 46% of those shoppers returned one in the past year. Among Gen Z AI shoppers, 56% had returned an AI-recommended item. Q: Why do people return AI-recommended products? A: Among U.S. shoppers who returned an AI-recommended purchase, 36% said it was different than described and 23% said it was the wrong size or fit. For all U.S. returns, incorrect size or fit leads at 42% and different than described accounts for 20%. Q: Did Blue Yonder survey only U.S. shoppers? A: No. A third-party provider fielded the survey in September 2026 among more than 5,000 consumers in the United States, Australia, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, including 2,000 in the U.S. The AI figures cited here are U.S. results unless noted. Q: Will shoppers leave a retailer that tightens returns? A: Many say they will. Fifty-one percent of U.S. respondents have chosen a retailer because of a better returns policy, and 29% stopped shopping at one that tightened its policy last year. If limited as frequent returners, 82% said they would shop less (39%) or stop entirely (43%). Q: What should CPG brands do so AI assistants describe products correctly? A: Put the product type, size or pack count, and variant claims in the title, first sentence and structured attributes. State what the product is not. Match those facts across retailer and brand pages. Then ask the major assistants your category questions every week and fix any description that does not match the box. Sources: - 2026 Consumer Retail Returns Survey, Blue Yonder, 2026-10-27: https://edge.sitecorecloud.io/blueyonderie8e6-corporateefb0-prod6ccb-be06/media/project/blueyonder/corporate/files/resources/nearly-half-of-americans-have-returned-an-ai-recommended-item.pdf - What the 2026 Consumer Retail Returns Survey reveals about supply chain efficiency, Blue Yonder, 2026-10-27: https://blueyonder.com/blog/2026/what-the-consumer-retail-returns-survey-reveals-about-supply-chain-efficiency - Nearly Half of Americans Who Shop With AI Have Returned a Recommended Item, Blue Yonder Survey Finds, Business Wire (via MarketMinute), 2026-10-27: https://www.marketminute.com/article/bizwire-2026-10-27-nearly-half-of-americans-who-shop-with-ai-have-returned-a-recommended-item-blue-yonder-survey-finds - AI recommendations are leading to returns, Retail Dive, 2026-11-03: https://www.retaildive.com/news/ai-recommendations-returns/873075/ ### Amazon's shopping agent now takes orders by text. Here's how CPG brands make the short list URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/alexa-for-shopping-text-orders-cpg Published: 2026-11-07 · Updated: 2026-11-07 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: Amazon, Alexa for Shopping, Retail Media, Product Data, CPG Key takeaways: - Amazon started texting with Alexa for Shopping on Nov 6 for invited U.S. customers, with millions more in the coming weeks. Its examples include dog food, paper towels, detergent reorders and grocery orders. - Digiday reports Sponsored Products can appear in the options the agent texts back, free to advertisers for now. Purchases the agent completes on its own stay ad-free. - More than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months, and use of its agentic features grew more than 8x since the start of the year (Amazon). - In an 11-day eStore Brands test (UK, 71,000 slots), 67% of slots went to 50 products, 65% of products never appeared, and listings with no attributes filled never showed. - Fill every attribute on your top 20 SKUs, protect best seller rank and the Buy Box, and log weekly whether the agent names you. On Friday, November 6, Amazon started letting a small, invite-only group of U.S. customers text Alexa for Shopping. The shopper sends a message, the agent searches, compares and texts back a few options, then buys with the shopper’s approval. Amazon says millions more customers get access in the coming weeks. Read Amazon’s own examples and you are reading a CPG shopping list: dog food, paper towels, “reorder the laundry detergent I bought last month,” eggs, bacon, pancake mix and maple syrup in 30 minutes, oat milk on the grocery list. That is our category. And a text thread has far less room than a search results page. #### What did Amazon launch on November 6? Customers who accept the invite link a phone number and get a contact called “Alexa Shopping.” From there they can hand off a to-do list, text a photo of a recipe to fill a cart, set up a weekly grocery order, reorder past purchases, track prices or check on a package. The agent remembers stated preferences. Amazon’s examples include “only show me organic options,” “give me nutritional information whenever I ask about food” and telling it you only want vegan products. Amazon says more than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months, and the number using its agentic features has grown more than eight times since the start of the year. Through Shop Direct, the agent can also surface products from stores outside Amazon, the program Amazon opened to self-serve feeds on November 4 (we covered that in our AI Mode and Shopping feed post). Alexa for Shopping, from rename to text messages - May 13, 2026AmazonCombined Rufus and Alexa+ into Alexa for Shopping for U.S. customers, with Scheduled Actions for items like pet food, paper towels and detergent. Source - Sep 29, 2026eStore BrandsPublished an 11-day test of 50 shopper questions asked every hour: about six products per answer. Source - Oct 29, 2026AmazonAdded more than 100 shopping actions, including subscription management, lists and registries. Source - Nov 4, 2026AmazonLaunched the free Shop Direct Merchant Workspace so outside stores can feed products into Alexa for Shopping. Source - Nov 4, 2026ReutersReported that AI shopping agents pose a conundrum for Amazon’s and Walmart’s ad businesses. Source - Nov 6, 2026AmazonStarted texting with Alexa for Shopping for invited U.S. customers. Digiday reported Sponsored Products in the replies, free for now. Source #### Where do ads show up in the text thread? Amazon’s announcement does not mention ads. Digiday does. It reports that when the agent texts back a set of options, a Sponsored Product can be one of them, that Amazon is not charging advertisers for those placements yet, and that purchases the agent completes on its own stay ad-free. Digiday describes the reply as having “room for a handful of products at most.” That fits Amazon Ads’ own rules for the assistant. Existing sponsored ads campaigns are automatically eligible to serve in Alexa for Shopping with no extra setup. Amazon Ads says nearly 20% of shoppers who interact with a Sponsored Brands prompt keep talking about that brand, and adding prompts to a Sponsored Brands ad drove a 6% increase in conversions. Branded Conversations, where a brand supplies guidance like which cleanser suits oily skin, is due in the U.S. in January 2027 and will be marked Sponsored. Two things follow for a CPG team. First, a free placement is a free test. If your Sponsored Products campaigns are live on hero SKUs, you may already be showing up in texts without paying for it. Second, the auto-buy and reorder path is ad-free, so the brand that wins the first purchase keeps the repeat one. For detergent, dog food and paper towels, that first purchase is the whole game. The money question is bigger than one placement. Reuters reported on November 4 that Amazon and Walmart hold a combined 88% of an estimated $74.4 billion in U.S. retail media spending (Emarketer projection), and that Amazon’s third-quarter ad revenue grew 11%, its slowest pace in nearly four years per LSEG data. Flywheel’s Amie Owen told Reuters, “We are not recommending that clients fundamentally shift their retail media budgets overnight.” We agree. Keep the budget, but stop treating the product page as the only thing it buys. For context on how much of Amazon’s business ads already are, see our Amazon revenue mix report. #### What decides which products Alexa for Shopping recommends? Amazon has not published a ranking method. The best outside data we have is a vendor test from eStore Brands, published September 29. It asked Amazon’s assistant the same 50 shopper questions every hour for 261 hours in two UK categories, coffee machines and sunscreen. That produced 11,000 answers, 71,000 recommendation slots and just over 1,000 products from 286 brands. It is the UK store, two categories and one vendor’s method, so treat it as directional for the U.S. What an 11-day test of Amazon’s shopping assistant found (UK, coffee machines and sunscreen)Slots won by the top 50 products67%Products that never appeared once65%Chance of appearing, top 10% best seller rank90%Coffee machine listings with 8+ attributes filled80%Sun protection listings with 8+ attributes filled43%Source: eStore Brands, Sept 29, 2026 (50 questions hourly for 261 hours; 11,000 answers; 71,000 slots) The concentration is the headline. A typical question drew from about 94 products, yet 67% of all slots went to just 50 of them, and 65% of products never appeared once. An average answer showed six products, against 30 to 60 on a regular results page. A text reply is unlikely to show more. Attributes were the strongest content signal. Products with no structured attributes filled in did not appear at all. Visibility rose sharply from zero to four completed attributes, and products with seven to nine took most of the slots. Specific fields mattered for specific questions: age range for kids’ sunscreen, recommended uses, scent name and skin tone. Only 43% of sun protection listings had eight or more attributes filled, against 80% for coffee machines. Personal care is behind. Best seller rank still counts. Products in the top 10% of rank had a 90% likelihood of appearing, and a suppressed Buy Box made a product far less likely to show. Whether first party or third party held the Buy Box made no detectable difference. Reviews mattered less than people assume: the assistant recommended 52 products rated under four stars, some at 2.9. #### How should a CPG brand get ready for text orders? Start with the 20 SKUs that drive most of your Amazon revenue. Score each one honestly. Is your hero SKU ready to be texted back? - Every attribute field Amazon offers for the category is filled, including scent, size, pack count, age range, skin type and recommended uses where they apply. - The first words of the title name the product type, size and the variant a shopper would type (for example, unscented, 150 oz, 2-pack). - Diet and ingredient facts that shoppers set as standing preferences (organic, vegan, gluten-free, nutrition facts) are in structured fields, not only in images. - The Buy Box is not suppressed and the item has been in stock for the last 30 days. - Sponsored Products campaigns are live on the SKU, so it is eligible for the free text placements while they last. - We set up Subscribe & Save or a reorder-friendly pack so a first purchase can become the agent’s default reorder. - The Amazon listing, our DTC page and any Shop Direct feed agree on size, claims and price. - We ask Alexa for Shopping our top 20 category questions every week and log whether we appear and who wins when we don’t. 0 of 8 Open your top 20 listings and count empty attribute fields. That is your first fix list. Most of this is old Amazon hygiene with a bigger penalty. On a results page, a thin listing ranks lower. In a six-product answer or a text reply, it disappears. We would put the attribute work ahead of any new creative, because creative does not travel into a text message. Structured facts do. #### Our take Amazon is moving its shopping agent into the most personal channel on a phone, and its examples are household staples. That favors brands that are already the default, because reorders go to what was bought last. Challengers have one window, the discovery reply, and it holds a handful of products. Fill the attributes, protect rank and the Buy Box, and measure your share of answers the way you measure share of shelf. More on that loop in our household reorder post and the glossary. Want to see which of your SKUs AI shopping agents name, and who wins when you are missing? Run a free audit or book a demo. Or see how SearchPanel tracks AI visibility per product. FAQ: Q: Can you shop on Amazon by text message? A: Yes, for some U.S. customers. On November 6, 2026, Amazon began letting a small invite-only group text Alexa for Shopping, which searches, compares, texts back options and buys with approval. Amazon says millions more customers get access in the coming weeks. Q: Are there ads in Alexa for Shopping text messages? A: According to Digiday, Sponsored Products can appear among the options the agent texts back, and Amazon is not charging advertisers for those placements yet. Purchases the agent completes on its own, such as auto-buys, stay ad-free. Amazon's announcement itself does not mention ads. Q: How does Alexa for Shopping choose which products to recommend? A: Amazon has not published a ranking method. An eStore Brands test of 71,000 recommendation slots in two UK categories found completed product attributes, best seller rank and an active Buy Box mattered most, while review count and star rating mattered less than expected. Q: How many products does Alexa for Shopping show per answer? A: In the eStore Brands test, an average answer showed six products, compared with 30 to 60 on a traditional search results page. Digiday describes the text replies as having room for a handful of products at most. Q: What should CPG brands do first? A: Start with your top 20 Amazon SKUs. Fill every attribute field for the category, keep them in stock with an active Buy Box, keep Sponsored Products live so they are eligible for the free text placements, and check weekly which brands the agent names for your category questions. Sources: - Text, shop, done: Alexa for Shopping is now just a text away, About Amazon, 2026-11-06: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/alexa-for-shopping-text-to-shop - Amazon's shopping agent now takes orders by text, with Sponsored Product ads in the replies, Digiday, 2026-11-06: https://digiday.com/media-buying/amazons-shopping-agent-now-takes-orders-by-text-with-sponsored-product-ads-in-the-replies/ - Amazon's AI shopping agent moves into text messages, taking orders and tracking prices, GeekWire, 2026-11-06: https://www.geekwire.com/2026/amazons-ai-shopping-agent-moves-into-text-messages-taking-orders-and-tracking-prices/ - Analysis: AI shopping agents could threaten Amazon and Walmart's ad business, Reuters (via Investing.com), 2026-11-04: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/analysisai-shopping-agents-could-threaten-amazon-and-walmarts-ad-business-4999246 - Webinar: Alexa for Shopping (Rufus), eStore Brands, 2026-09-29: https://estorebrands.com/ignite/webinar-alexa-for-shopping-rufus - Agentic shopping is here. What does that mean for advertisers?, Amazon Ads, 2026-11-07: https://advertising.amazon.com/library/news/agentic-shopping-advertising - Amazon Ads brings brand expertise into AI shopping conversations through Branded Conversations, Amazon Ads, 2026-09-29: https://advertising.amazon.com/library/news/branded-conversations-review-requests - Meet Alexa for Shopping, your personalized, agentic AI assistant on Amazon, About Amazon, 2026-05-13: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/alexa-for-shopping-ai-assistant - Amazon adds over 100 Alexa for Shopping functions, Retail Dive, 2026-11-05: https://www.retaildive.com/news/amazon-adds-alexa-ai-shopping-functions/873602/ - Amazon's new Shop Direct Merchant Workspace makes it even easier for stores across the web to have their products discovered, About Amazon, 2026-11-04: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-shop-direct-merchant-workspace ### Google AI Mode linked only to Google in nearly half of US product answers. Here's what CPG brands should fix in their Shopping feed URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/google-ai-mode-shopping-feed-cpg Published: 2026-11-06 · Updated: 2026-11-06 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: Google AI Mode, Google Merchant Center, Product Data, Amazon Shop Direct, CPG Key takeaways: - Findrix (via Search Engine Land, Oct 29) found Google AI Mode linked only to Google in 46.5% of US product answers; 57% of product-answer links went to Google Shopping. - Fashion and beauty led: swimwear 60.4%, women's everyday fashion 57%, sun care 54.1%, activewear 53.8%. Sports nutrition was 7.6%. - ChatGPT put ~25 links per answer vs ~3 for AI Mode, linked to Walmart in 45.1% of product answers, and cited Reddit in 35.6% of all US answers. - On AI Mode, 53 domains held half of citations; ChatGPT needed 324 and Gemini 326 (Findrix Radar, Oct 14–17). - Amazon launched the free Shop Direct Merchant Workspace on Nov 4 for off-Amazon catalogs into Alexa for Shopping. Fix Merchant Center and retailer feeds this week. Search Engine Land reported on October 29 that Findrix measured 55,198 AI answers to 18,400 U.S. buyer questions. In product answers, Google’s AI Mode linked only to Google’s own pages 46.5% of the time, and 57% of the links in those answers pointed at Google Shopping product pages. ChatGPT and Gemini did not behave the same way. For a CPG brand in beauty, sun care or apparel, the Shopping listing behind Merchant Center is often the answer itself. Here’s the category data, how the three engines differ, what Amazon’s new Shop Direct portal adds this week, and a feed checklist you can run before Black Friday traffic peaks. #### What did Findrix find about Google AI Mode product answers? Findrix asked about 526 buyer questions per market across 35 U.S. markets from October 14 to 17, 2026. Each question went once to ChatGPT, once to Gemini and once to Google AI Mode. The study counts links shown in answers, not clicks or purchases. Treat the category figures as a four-day snapshot. The Google-only pattern was strongest in fashion and beauty: Share of Google AI Mode product answers that linked only to Google pagesSwimwear60.4%Women’s everyday fashion57%Sun care54.1%Activewear53.8%All U.S. product answers46.5%Sports nutrition7.6%Source: Findrix study via Search Engine Land, Oct 29, 2026 (55,198 answers; 18,400 U.S. buyer questions, Oct 14–17) Swimwear answers stayed on Google in 60.4% of cases. Women’s everyday fashion hit 57%, sun care 54.1% and activewear 53.8%. Sports nutrition was the exception at 7.6%. Local services and software looked nothing like retail: 5.1% of AI Mode links for plumbers, lawyers and dentists went to Google pages, and 1.1% for software questions. Findrix co-founder Yosif Merman told Search Engine Land the split tracks Google’s product database. When price, ratings and inventory already sit inside Google, AI Mode can build an answer with fewer outside links. That is exactly where packaged goods live. Your website may never appear. Your feed almost certainly will. #### How do ChatGPT and Gemini link differently? ChatGPT put about 25 links in a typical answer, against about three for AI Mode. In product answers it linked to Walmart in 45.1% of cases and Amazon in 6.1%. It cited Reddit in 35.6% of all U.S. answers, versus 5.1% for AI Mode and 1.5% for Gemini. None of Gemini’s measured links went to google.com. Findrix Radar’s U.S. citation list for ChatGPT reads like a beauty aisle. Across the 35 markets, ulta.com led with 15,397 citations (3.3% of ChatGPT’s U.S. citations, in only 6 of 35 markets). Reddit followed at 14,013 (every market). Then walmart.com (9,921), sephora.com (5,920), nih.gov (5,215), google.com (4,820), nordstrom.com (4,614) and target.com (4,433). For beauty and personal care, the retailer PDP and the Reddit thread are often the pages ChatGPT reads before it names you. Domains needed to cover half of each engine’s U.S. citationsGoogle AI Mode53ChatGPT324Gemini326Source: Findrix Radar, United States, measured Oct 14–17, 2026 (35 markets) Source concentration tells the same story another way. On AI Mode, half of all citations sat on 53 domains, and the single top domain held 29.5%. ChatGPT needed 324 of 52,463 domains to reach half. Gemini needed 326 of 10,907. Findrix’s rule of thumb fits: the steeper the curve, the shorter the list you have to be on. On AI Mode that list is short and mostly Google. On ChatGPT it is long, and your brand site is one small source among hundreds. Openness by category also differs. On ChatGPT, Findrix Radar’s top-five share of mentions was 14% in haircare (most open of the 35 markets on that table), 23% in sun care, 24% in sports nutrition, facial skincare and makeup, 30% in oral care and 35% in pet food. A challenger brand in haircare has more room to be named than one in pet food. These shares are ChatGPT only; AI Mode’s brand mix likely follows Shopping listings more closely, but Findrix did not publish that split. #### Why does Amazon’s Shop Direct portal matter this week too? On November 4 Amazon launched the Shop Direct Merchant Workspace, a free self-service portal for eligible merchants who do not sell the item in Amazon’s own store. Merchants create an account, verify their website and share a catalog through providers such as Feedonomics, Salsify, CEDCommerce and VersaFeed, or through the Selling Partner API. Selection can show in Amazon search and in Alexa for Shopping. Shoppers tap through to the merchant site, or use Buy for Me when the product is eligible. There are no fees, merchants choose which items to include, and they can opt out. Amazon said tens of millions of customers have already discovered hundreds of millions of unique products from other stores through Shop Direct, and that those products appear in hundreds of millions of searches monthly. Amanda Doerr, vice president of Core Shopping, framed the goal as making Amazon and Alexa the start of any shopping journey, whether the item is in Amazon’s store or elsewhere on the web. That is the same structural bet Google is making with AI Mode and Merchant Center: the feed is the front door. A CPG brand that sells DTC or only through other retailers now has two self-serve feed paths into agentic discovery. Dirty titles, missing GTINs, stale availability or mismatched claims will show up in both. Product feeds in AI answers, mid-October to November 4 - Oct 14, 2026FindrixStarted a four-day U.S. crawl of 18,400 buyer questions across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode. Source - Oct 17, 2026FindrixFinished collection: 55,198 answers and 608,256 citations across 35 markets. Source - Oct 29, 2026Search Engine LandReported AI Mode linked only to Google in 46.5% of U.S. product answers; 57% of product-answer links went to Shopping. Source - Nov 3, 2026OpenAI / Big TechnologyAdam Fry said ChatGPT’s search-like query volume is roughly one-fifth of Google’s (each web-bound question counts as one search). Source - Nov 4, 2026AmazonLaunched the free Shop Direct Merchant Workspace for off-Amazon catalogs into Alexa for Shopping and Amazon search. Source #### What should a CPG brand fix in its Shopping feed this week? Score yourself against the work that actually shows up in AI Mode and Alexa answers. We would start with Merchant Center, then mirror the same fields into any Shop Direct catalog you turn on. Is your product feed ready for AI Mode and Shop Direct? - Every hero SKU and shopper-facing variant is approved in Google Merchant Center with matching title, GTIN, brand, price and availability. - Title, size, scent, pack count, ingredients and allergens in the feed match the label and the retailer PDPs we control. - Ratings and review counts that appear on Shopping match what we publish elsewhere (no inflated or stale numbers). - We filled product_detail / product_highlight (or the six optional conversational attributes) for FAQs, manuals, variants and related products where they help. - Retailers that carry us send the same facts we send Google; we have spot-checked Ulta, Sephora, Walmart and Target listings for our top SKUs. - If we are DTC-only or sell items Amazon does not carry, we have decided whether Shop Direct is on, which SKUs are included, and which feed provider or SP-API path we use. - We ask AI Mode, ChatGPT and Gemini the same 20 shopper questions monthly and log whether our brand is named and which domain is linked. - Search Console and Shopping diagnostics are reviewed after every feed change, not only after a traffic dip. 0 of 8 Open Merchant Center diagnostics for your top 20 SKUs today. Disapprovals and mismatched GTINs are the fastest wins. Google’s Merchant Center help lists six optional conversational attributes meant for AI Mode and similar surfaces: question_and_answer, document_link, related_product, item_group_title, variant_option and popularity_rank. They sit on top of the primary feed. If you already put the same facts in description, product_highlight or product_detail, do not duplicate them. For CPG, the useful ones are usually Q&A on allergens and usage, PDF manuals or ingredient sheets, and clear variant options (scent, size, pack count). #### Our take AI Mode is not a referral channel you measure the old way. Nearly half the time a U.S. product answer never leaves Google, and most of those links are Shopping pages. ChatGPT still leans on Ulta, Reddit, Walmart and Sephora. Amazon just made the off-Amazon catalog path self-serve for Alexa. The common job is feed hygiene, not another homepage rewrite. For terms, see GEO, AEO and Google AI Mode in our glossary. Want to know which of your SKUs AI Mode and ChatGPT name, and whether the facts they show match your feed? Run a free audit or book a demo. Or see how SearchPanel scores AI visibility per product. FAQ: Q: How often does Google AI Mode link only to Google in product answers? A: In Findrix's US study of answers collected October 14 to 17, 2026, AI Mode linked only to Google's own pages in 46.5% of product answers. Overall, 57% of links in those product answers led to Google Shopping product pages. Q: Which CPG categories are most affected? A: Fashion and beauty. Search Engine Land's report of the Findrix data put Google-only answers at 60.4% for swimwear, 57% for women's everyday fashion, 54.1% for sun care and 53.8% for activewear. Sports nutrition was much lower at 7.6%. Q: Where does ChatGPT send shoppers instead? A: Outward. ChatGPT included about 25 links per answer and, in product answers, linked to Walmart in 45.1% of cases and Amazon in 6.1%. It cited Reddit in 35.6% of all US answers. Findrix Radar's top ChatGPT domains included ulta.com, reddit.com, walmart.com and sephora.com. Q: What is Amazon's Shop Direct Merchant Workspace? A: A free self-service portal Amazon launched on November 4, 2026. Eligible merchants register, verify their website and share a catalog so products can appear in Amazon search and Alexa for Shopping, with optional Buy for Me checkout. Merchants stay the seller of record. Q: What should a CPG brand fix first? A: Merchant Center. Make sure titles, GTINs, price, availability, ratings and claims match your label and retailer PDPs, then spot-check Ulta, Sephora, Walmart and Target listings. Add Google's optional conversational attributes where FAQs, manuals or variants help. Sources: - Google AI Mode sends 57% of product links to Google Shopping: Study, Search Engine Land, 2026-10-29: https://searchengineland.com/google-ai-mode-product-links-google-shopping-study-499887 - How AI recommends brands in the United States, Findrix Radar, 2026-10-17: https://www.findrix.ai/radar/us - Amazon's new Shop Direct Merchant Workspace makes it even easier for stores across the web to have their products discovered, About Amazon, 2026-11-04: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-shop-direct-merchant-workspace - How to use conversational attributes, Google Merchant Center Help, 2026-11-06: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/17085370 - Google's Search Volume Is About 5x ChatGPT's, OpenAI Says, Search Engine Journal, 2026-11-03: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/googles-search-volume-is-about-5x-chatgpts-openai-says/595817/ ### Three AI models shopped the same product list and never agreed. Here's what CPG brands should check in their catalog data URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-agent-catalog-picks-cpg-brands Published: 2026-11-05 · Updated: 2026-11-05 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: Agentic Commerce, Shopify Catalog, Meta Muse, Product Data, CPG Key takeaways: - A Nov 2 Search Engine Journal test gave three Claude models the same 20 Shopify products 1,980 times; their top pick matched in none of six searches. - Haiku and Sonnet often picked the most-reviewed item, including a bottle the catalog listed at 447,221 reviews while the brand page showed 6,537 (~68x). - Adding budget and skin-type filters moved all three models off a $48 top product; Opus cited “without clogging pores” from one listing in 31 of 33 reasons. - Shopify said Nov 3 that Shop Pay is live in Meta’s Muse, with Catalog discovery and direct checkout on by default for eligible stores. - CPG brands should search their top phrases through Catalog tools and fix rating, review count, summary and claim mismatches. On November 2, Search Engine Journal published a test by Slobodan Manic. He gave three Claude models the same 20 Shopify products, the same short instruction and the same shopper request, almost 2,000 times. Across six product searches, the models’ top pick matched in none of them. Shopify then said Shop Pay is live in Meta’s Muse, and Google expanded UCP checkout to Canadian shoppers. Agents are finishing the buy. The pick still comes from what the catalog tells the model. Here’s the data, why catalog mismatches matter for CPG, and a checklist for this week. #### What did three Claude models do with the same Shopify product list? Manic used Shop MCP, the keyless connection Shopify opened to AI agents on October 13. For each search he saved the catalog’s top 20 results once, as an anonymous U.S. buyer, then fed that fixed list to Claude Haiku 4.5, Sonnet 5 and Opus 5. Every call was fresh. The models saw title, store, price, star rating, review count, a one-line summary and the first three features. Nothing else. No shopper history, no agent-company system prompt, no tools and no web access. The headline result: on backpack, coffee beans, running shoes, water bottle, wireless earbuds and yoga mat, the three models’ most-picked product never matched. Haiku and Sonnet agreed on three searches. Sonnet and Opus on two. Haiku and Opus on one. On three of the six, the different pick also came from a different store. Share of picks that went to each model’s own top product (six searches, 50 picks each)Claude Sonnet 5, average across six searches94%Claude Opus 5, average across six searches89%Claude Haiku 4.5, average across six searches67%Source: Slobodan Manic, Search Engine Journal, Nov 2, 2026 (1,980 picks; six product searches at 50 picks per model) Each model was consistent with itself. Change the model and a different product wins. Sonnet’s favorite took 94% of its picks on average. Opus’s took 89%. Haiku’s took 67%. The catalog’s own rank mattered less than expected: Haiku picked the catalog’s first product 8% of the time, Sonnet never, and Opus 20%. This isolates the model layer, not ChatGPT Shopping, Gemini or Claude Duet. Real agents add their own instructions. Which SKU gets the order can still depend on which model the shopper’s agent runs. #### Why do review counts in the catalog decide the pick? On backpack, coffee beans and water bottle, Haiku and Sonnet mostly picked the product with the most reviews in the list of 20, and said so in their reasons. On water bottle, Shopify’s catalog listed nobl’s Stainless Steel Water Bottle at 5.0 stars from 447,221 reviews. Haiku picked it 45 of 50 times and quoted 447,221 every time. Sonnet picked it 39 times and cited the figure in 33 of them. nobl’s own product page showed 5.0 from 6,537 when Manic checked on October 24. That is about 68 times fewer. The catalog’s Blush color record said 4.2 from 1,674. A later search the same day showed 447,227, so the big number was live. It did not appear on nobl’s product page or home page. Opus never picked that bottle. It picked Owala FreeSip, 4.6 from 34,394 reviews, all 50 times, calling it the safest default. The model cannot check the catalog against your site. Whatever the feed says is what it reasons from. A wrong review count, stale rating or flattened summary can change which variant an agent buys. #### Do shopper constraints and listing phrases change the winner? Yes. When the request stayed “mineral sunscreen SPF 50,” Haiku picked the catalog’s $48 top-ranked sunscreen 100 of 100 times, Sonnet 90 and Opus 33. When Manic added “under $25, for oily skin,” all three picked that $48 product zero times. Sonnet and Opus stayed under $25 every time. Haiku did 98 times. Of the six sunscreens under $25, Opus split picks between ATTITUDE ($22.95) and a $17.49 Sun Bum lotion that had the lowest rating of the six. In 31 of Opus’s 33 reasons for Sun Bum, it pointed to the phrase “without clogging pores,” which only that listing used. Badger had the best rating of the six and got zero Opus picks. Its listing mentioned “organic plant oils.” Claims travel the same way. Across eight skincare searches, “clinically proven” showed up in 63 reasons from Sonnet and Haiku, and in 61 of those it came straight from the picked listing. All 22 reasons that said a retinal product works “11x faster” than retinol were Haiku’s, and all 22 came from listings. The model repeats your copy to the shopper. It does not verify it. Picks of the catalog’s top product when listed first vs. last (8 skincare searches, out of 80)Haiku 4.5, product listed first28Haiku 4.5, product listed last11Opus 5, product listed first24Opus 5, product listed last10Sonnet 5, product listed first15Sonnet 5, product listed last11Source: Slobodan Manic, Search Engine Journal, Nov 2, 2026 (480 picks across eight skincare searches; 10 picks per model per list order) List position also moved picks. Moving the catalog’s top product from first to last cut Haiku from 28 to 11 picks out of 80, Opus from 24 to 10 and Sonnet from 15 to 11. In 480 reasons, none mentioned position. A shopper reading the explanation would never see it. #### Why does this matter now that agents can check out? Because the pick is no longer only a recommendation. On November 3 Shopify published that Shop Pay is live in Muse. Eligible Shopify stores can be discovered through Shopify Catalog and bought through Shopify-powered checkout, with Shop Pay as an option where available. Direct checkout for Meta is on by default for eligible stores. Orders show up in Shopify Admin attributed to Meta AI and Muse. You stay the merchant of record. Shopify’s help center lists the same setup: Catalog powers discovery, and subscription-only products, bundles and customizable products are not supported in Meta’s direct checkout. On November 4 Google said UCP-powered direct checkout is rolling out to Canadian shoppers in AI Mode and the Gemini app, starting with lululemon, select Shopify merchants, Shoppers Drug Mart and Simons. Google’s Canada post also said 59% of holiday shoppers in Canada plan to use an AI tool to help them shop this season. Retailers remain the seller of record. Simplified Merchant Center onboarding is due next year. Agent picking and checkout, mid-October to November 4 - Oct 13, 2026ShopifyOpened Shop MCP so agents can search Catalog, build carts and complete Shop Pay checkout with no API key. Source - Oct 24, 2026Manic testFixed Catalog lists fetched for backpack, coffee, shoes, water bottle, earbuds and yoga mat. Source - Nov 2, 2026Search Engine Journal1,980-pick test: three Claude models never agreed on a top product across six searches. Source - Nov 3, 2026ShopifyShop Pay live in Meta’s Muse; Catalog discovery and direct checkout on by default for eligible stores. Source - Nov 4, 2026Google CanadaUCP checkout expands to Canadian shoppers in AI Mode and Gemini; 59% of holiday shoppers plan to use AI. Source We covered Shopify’s Q3 AI order multiples in yesterday’s post. The new piece is the decision layer between the list and the cart. #### What should a CPG brand check in its catalog data this week? Manic’s four store actions map cleanly to CPG work. Score yourself: Does your catalog data match what an agent should say about you? - We searched our top three shopper phrases through Shop MCP or Shopify’s catalog tools and saved rating, review count, summary and features for each of our SKUs that appear. - Those catalog fields match our product page, retailer listings and reviews app (count, rating, size, scent, claims). - Every variant that a precise prompt would ask for has its own listing, not a shared description with the hero SKU. - Listings use the words shoppers name when they filter (budget, skin type, allergen, scent-free, pack count), not only brand story. - Claims like “clinically proven” or speed comparisons appear only when we can stand behind an agent repeating them. - Sales channels > Agentic shows Catalog access and Meta direct checkout the way we want them (on by default for eligible Shopify stores). - We know which products are subscription-only or bundles, because Meta’s direct checkout does not support those. - We re-run the catalog check monthly and after any reviews-app, theme or feed change. 0 of 8 Start with the Shop MCP search for your top phrases. Ten minutes will surface mismatches. If you are not on Shopify, apply the same check to Google Merchant Center, OpenAI feeds and retailer agent profiles. We covered ChatGPT’s merchant ranking in our merchant ranking post. #### Our take Agentic checkout is spreading across Muse, Gemini and Google AI Mode. The quieter risk is upstream: different models, given the same list, pick different winners, and they reason from catalog fields that can disagree with your site by a large margin. Fix the data the agent sees before you argue about the model. For terms, see agentic commerce and GEO in our glossary. Want to know which of your SKUs agents name, and whether the facts they cite match your listings? Run a free audit or book a demo. Or see how SearchPanel scores AI visibility per product. FAQ: Q: Did three AI models agree on which Shopify product to buy? A: Not in this test. Slobodan Manic’s November 2, 2026 Search Engine Journal experiment found Claude Haiku 4.5, Sonnet 5 and Opus 5 never shared the same top pick across six product searches, out of 1,980 total picks. Q: Why do catalog review counts matter for AI shopping agents? A: Haiku and Sonnet often chose the product with the most reviews in the list and quoted the count. In one case the catalog showed 447,221 reviews while the brand’s page showed 6,537. Models reason from the catalog fields they are given. Q: Can shoppers buy through Meta’s Muse agent now? A: For eligible Shopify stores, yes. Shopify said on November 3, 2026 that products can be discovered in Muse through Shopify Catalog and bought through Shopify-powered checkout, with Shop Pay as an option where available. Direct checkout is on by default. Q: What should a CPG brand check first? A: Search your top shopper phrases through Shop MCP or Shopify Catalog tools, then compare rating, review count, summary and features with your product page and retailer listings. Fix mismatches before arguing about which model wins. Sources: - 3 AI Models Shopped Shopify’s Catalog – Each Picked A Different Winner, Slobodan Manic, Search Engine Journal, 2026-11-02: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/3-ai-models-shopped-shopifys-catalog-each-picked-a-different-winner/594298/ - Ready for Muse—and whatever’s next., Shopify, 2026-11-03: https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/blog/muse-shop-pay - Selling on Meta (accessed Nov 5, 2026), Shopify Help Center, 2026-11-05: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/agentic-storefronts/meta - A new way to shop: Introducing a more intuitive, agentic shopping experience for consumers and retailers in Canada, Google Canada Blog, 2026-11-04: https://blog.google/intl/en-ca/products/explore-get-answers/a-new-way-to-shop-introducing-a-more-intuitive-agentic-shopping-experience-for-consumers-and-retailers-in-canada/ ### Shopify says AI shoppers reward specific products. Here’s what CPG brands should fix in their product data URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/shopify-ai-orders-specific-products-cpg Published: 2026-11-04 · Updated: 2026-11-04 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: Shopify, Agentic Commerce, Google AI Overviews, Product Data, CPG Key takeaways: - Shopify said AI-referred orders grew 3.3x and AI traffic 2.6x year over year in Q3 2026, on its Nov 3 call. - 74% of AI-attributed purchases on Shopify came from outside its top 100 categories. - Searches powered by Shopify Catalog’s structured product data convert at 2x the rate of general AI search. - A Fractl survey of 1,007 US adults found 56% read an AI answer and then click to double-check. - CPG brands should put filterable facts (count, size, scent, claims) in structured data and the first lines of every variant page. Shopify reported third-quarter results on November 3. The headline was the usual one: gross merchandise volume of $119.1 billion, up 29.5% from a year ago, and revenue up 32%. The part a CPG brand should read twice came later in the call, when Harley Finkelstein described what AI shopping on Shopify actually looks like. AI-referred orders grew 3.3x year over year. And the shoppers arriving from AI tools were not buying the obvious stuff. “AI channels are surfacing highly specific products that fit specific customers with a specific need,” he said. Here’s what Shopify disclosed, what a new survey says shoppers do after reading an AI answer, and what Google changed on brand searches the same week. #### What did Shopify say about AI shopping in Q3 2026? Finkelstein was careful to say the volume is still small, but “adoption is growing.” He gave a handful of multiples, all comparing AI channels with something else. AI traffic to Shopify stores grew 2.6x year over year, and orders grew faster than traffic, which means AI-referred visits are converting better over time, not worse. Shopify’s AI shopping multiples, Q3 2026 (as stated on the Nov 3 earnings call)AI-referred orders, year over year3.3xAI-referred traffic, year over year2.6xAI shoppers sent straight to product pages, vs. organic search3xCatalog-powered searches converting, vs. general AI search2xAI shoppers converting (“64% more often”)1.64xSource: Shopify Q3 2026 earnings call, Nov 3, 2026 (transcript via The Motley Fool) Two of those numbers matter most for product teams. AI channels send shoppers straight to a product page at 3x the rate of organic search, so the product page is the landing page now, not the homepage or a category grid. And searches powered by Shopify Catalog convert at 2x the rate of general AI search, which Finkelstein contrasted with “what people call scraping.” Catalog turns more than a billion product pages into structured data, translating details like size, color and material into values an agent can compare. Put plainly: when an agent reads clean attributes instead of guessing from page copy, twice as many of those searches end in a sale. #### Why are AI shoppers buying outside the top categories? The most striking number on the call: 74% of AI-attributed purchases in Q3 came from outside Shopify’s top 100 categories. CFO Jeff Hoffmeister repeated it, saying three quarters of AI-referred sales “yet again” came from outside the top 100. So this is not a one-quarter fluke. Where Shopify’s AI-attributed purchases came from, Q3 2026 - Outside Shopify’s top 100 categories74% - Inside the top 10026% Share of AI-attributed purchases, per Harley Finkelstein on the call. The CFO described it as three quarters of AI-referred sales, “yet again.” Shopify did not publish a category list. Source: Shopify Q3 2026 earnings call, Nov 3, 2026 (transcript via The Motley Fool) This is what happens when shoppers describe a need instead of typing a product name. Nobody asks ChatGPT for “shampoo.” They ask for a sulfate-free shampoo for color-treated curly hair that is safe for a sensitive scalp. Every clause in that prompt is a filter. A product that states those facts in its data survives the filter. A product that says “gentle, salon-quality care for every hair type” does not, because the agent can’t prove it matches. For CPG, the long tail is not only niche brands. It is the specific variant of a big brand: the fragrance-free pod, the 12-count multipack, the nut-free bar. Your top seller may be fine. The variant that matches a precise prompt is where AI demand is showing up, and it is usually the one with the thinnest product data. #### Do shoppers still click after reading an AI answer? Mostly, yes. A Fractl study published in Search Engine Land on November 2 surveyed 1,007 US adults and paired it with clickstream data. When an AI answer appears at the top of results, 56% said they read it and then click a link to double-check. Only 16% read the answer and stop. What US adults say they do when an AI answer appears in searchRead it, then click to double-check56%Scroll past it22%Read it and stop16%Search again3%Don’t notice it3%Source: Kelsey Libert (Fractl), “The quiet click,” Search Engine Land, Nov 2, 2026 (survey of 1,007 US adults) Seventy-one percent said they want a real source before a final decision or purchase. Of the clicks that landed on content, 31% went to product pages and 20% to reviews. The top reasons people clicked were a trusted expert (24%), original data (23%) and customer reviews (17%). Among clicks that left the original search page, Amazon drew 13% and Reddit 7%. One caution: shopping was a lower-stakes topic in the survey, with 27% preferring a real source there versus 72% for health. Shoppers verify, but they verify less for a $6 purchase. Read that next to Shopify’s numbers. The AI answer shortlists, and then a shopper or an agent checks the product page, the reviews and the retailer listing. If those disagree with each other, you lose at the check. #### What changed on Google brand searches this week? Google appears to be moving AI Overviews for brand searches out of the main results and into the right-hand panel, where the knowledge panel used to sit. Search Engine Roundtable reported it on November 2, after SEOs including David McSweeney spotted it on October 31. Google has not announced it. One of the examples was Coca-Cola, where the panel summarized the brand under the label “Carbonated soft drinks.” How AI answers about brands and products shifted, late Sept to Nov 3 - Sep 29, 2026AhrefsAI Overviews appeared on 82.91% of branded results in its tracking, per PPC Land. Source - Oct 31, 2026Search communitySEOs spot brand AI Overviews moving to the right-hand panel. Source - Nov 1, 2026GoogleProduct panels in Search gain Add to cart and Buy now in the US, per PPC Land. Source - Nov 2, 2026FractlSurvey: 56% of US adults read an AI answer, then click to double-check. Source - Nov 3, 2026ShopifyAI-referred orders up 3.3x; 74% of AI-attributed purchases outside its top 100 categories. Source A brand panel written by a model is only as good as what the model reads about you. In one of the reported examples, Zillow’s panel gave conflicting founding years. For a CPG brand, the equivalent risk is a summary that gets your category, ingredients or claims wrong in the most visible spot on your own brand search. Check yours this week. #### What should CPG brands fix in their product data? Shopify’s data says agents reward specifics. Fractl’s says shoppers check the specifics before buying. The work is the same for both: - State the filters as facts. Count, size, scent, form and claims like gluten-free or fragrance-free should be in structured attributes and in the first lines of the description, not buried in a bullet at the end. That is the input Catalog turns into comparable values. - Give every variant its own page and data. The 74% lives in variants and niches. A multipack that shares a description with the single unit is invisible to a precise prompt. - Make the product page win the double-check. AI tools send shoppers straight there. Put the facts a shopper verifies (ingredients, dimensions, certifications, reviews) above the fold. - Match your retailer listings. If Amazon says 48 loads and your site says 50, an agent or a shopper has a reason to doubt both. We covered how ChatGPT ranks stores for a product in our merchant ranking breakdown. - Turn on the agent paths you already have. OpenAI says Shopify merchants reach ChatGPT shopping through Shopify Catalog with no extra work. Per Shopify’s help center, direct checkout in Google AI Mode and Gemini is on by default for eligible stores selling to the US, Canada or Australia, with no extra fees beyond payment processing. It does not support subscription-only products or bundles, which matters for replenishment brands. Here is a quick way to test the first point. Paste a product description and the claims a shopper would filter on. The test checks whether each claim shows up in the first 40 words, the same test we used in our Walmart agents post. The 40-word testProduct descriptionOur family has believed in the power of a truly clean home for three generations. We obsess over every detail so laundry day feels a little lighter, and we think you will love the difference. This detergent is fragrance-free, HE compatible and does 64 loads per bottle.Claims that must be in there (comma separated)The sample is made up for illustration. Nothing you paste leaves your browser. If the claims only appear after the brand story, move them up. The story can stay. It just shouldn’t be the first thing an agent reads. #### Our take Shopify gave the clearest public data yet that AI shopping is a specificity game. Generic hero copy was built for shelf presence and brand search. AI channels reward the product that can prove it fits one person’s exact need, then survive a shopper’s double-check on the product page. For more context, see our Xenalytics replica on Shopify’s GMV growth and the glossary entry on agentic commerce. Want to know which of your SKUs show up for specific prompts and which drop out? Run a free audit or book a demo. Or see how SearchPanel scores AI visibility per product. FAQ: Q: How fast is AI shopping growing on Shopify? A: On its November 3, 2026 call, Shopify said AI-referred orders grew 3.3x and AI-referred traffic 2.6x year over year in Q3. It also said the volume is still small. Q: What kinds of products do AI shoppers buy? A: Specific ones. Shopify said 74% of AI-attributed purchases in Q3 came from outside its top 100 categories, and that AI channels surface highly specific products for specific needs. Q: Do people trust AI answers without clicking? A: Mostly not. In Fractl’s survey of 1,007 US adults, 56% said they read an AI answer and then click to double-check, and 71% want a real source before a purchase. Q: Did Google change AI Overviews for brand searches? A: SEOs report Google moving brand AI Overviews into the right-hand panel where the knowledge panel sat. Google has not announced it. Sources: - Shopify (SHOP) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript, The Motley Fool, 2026-11-03: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/11/03/shopify-shop-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/ - Shopify sustains rapid growth with revenue up 32% and free cash flow margin of 22%, Shopify, 2026-11-03: https://www.shopify.com/investors/press-releases/shopify-sustains-rapid-growth-with-revenue-up-32-and-free-cash-flow-margin-of-22 - The quiet click: Why people read AI answers and click anyway, Kelsey Libert, Search Engine Land, 2026-11-02: https://searchengineland.com/why-people-read-click-ai-answers-499684 - Google AI Overviews For Brands Move To Right Column, Search Engine Roundtable, 2026-11-02: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ai-overviews-brands-right-42440.html - Google moves AI Overviews for brand searches out of the main results, PPC Land, 2026-11-03: https://ppc.land/google-moves-ai-overviews-for-brand-searches-out-of-the-main-results/ - Selling on Google AI Mode and Gemini (accessed Nov 4, 2026), Shopify Help Center, 2026-11-04: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/agentic-storefronts/google - Shopping with ChatGPT search, OpenAI Help Center, 2026-11-02: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11128490-shopping-with-chatgpt-search ### ChatGPT ads are getting easier to buy. The first sales data says CPG brands should fund the organic answer first URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/chatgpt-ads-vs-organic-ai-answers-cpg Published: 2026-11-03 · Updated: 2026-11-03 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: ChatGPT Ads, Google AI Mode, AI Visibility, Research, CPG Key takeaways: - OpenAI signed Magnite and PubMatic to sell ChatGPT ad space, EMARKETER reported Nov 2, citing The Information. - A working paper by Kaiser and Schulze (Oct 2026, 1,898 shops) found US paid ChatGPT visits earned $0.89 in revenue each vs. $2.45 for paid Google search, and 0.37% vs. 1.17% conversion. - Organic ChatGPT referrals earned $3.27 per visit in US traffic, the highest of five channels measured, and OpenAI says ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers. - Google is testing a layout in AI Mode that groups paid products under a Sponsored heading ahead of unpaid ones under All products. - CPG brands should fund organic AI visibility first and cap any ChatGPT ad test at their own parity price. Two things happened in the last week that every CPG ecommerce lead will hear about in their next agency meeting. On November 2, EMARKETER reported, citing The Information, that OpenAI signed Magnite and PubMatic to help sell ChatGPT ad space through tools buyers already use. And Google is testing a layout in AI Mode that puts paid products under a “Sponsored” heading, ahead of unpaid ones under “All products.” The paid AI shelf is getting easier to buy. Before you move budget, look at the first independent sales data on what those clicks return. It makes a strong case for funding the organic answer first. #### What did the new ChatGPT ads study find? Maximilian Kaiser (Vienna University of Economics and Business) and Christian Schulze (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management) published a working paper, “Can Advertising Fund Free AI?”, dated October 2026 and still under review. They used Google Analytics 4 ecommerce data from 1,898 online shops over 60 weeks (June 29, 2025 to August 22, 2026), with the EU, where ChatGPT ads had not yet launched, as the control group. The headline from the paid side: in US traffic, a visit from a paid ChatGPT ad generated $0.89 in revenue, against $2.45 for a paid Google search visit. Paid ChatGPT visitors converted at 0.37% versus 1.17%. Of the 87 advertisers buying both channels in US traffic, 73 recorded no paid ChatGPT sale at all across 18,726 paid visits. Fourteen sites carried all 570 purchases. Revenue per visit by traffic source, US traffic (102 advertiser sites, 60-week window to Aug 2026)Organic ChatGPT answer$3.27Paid Google search$2.45Direct$1.70Organic search$1.25Paid ChatGPT ad$0.89Source: Kaiser & Schulze, Can Advertising Fund Free AI?, working paper v1, Oct 2026, Table J.1 Panel B (pooled, unadjusted) An unpaid referral from a ChatGPT answer was worth $3.27 per visit in US traffic, the highest of the five channels measured. The paid card under the answer was the lowest. Same assistant, a gap of more than 3.5x. A few caveats. It is a working paper, not yet peer reviewed, and the paid-side numbers are descriptive, not causal. These are pooled totals across the 102 sites with full sales tracking, not adjusted for which sites sell what. And the paid panel is not a CPG panel: services, software, education and finance make up about half of it, per PPC Land’s write-up. The within-site comparisons, which do adjust for website, device and week, still show paid ChatGPT converting worse than paid search. Treat it as an early read, not a verdict on your category. #### Why does the organic answer matter more than the ad? Because the ad does not buy the recommendation. OpenAI’s October 21 post says ads in ChatGPT are “clearly labeled and separate from ChatGPT’s answers, and advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT provides.” The shopper reads the answer first. Your sponsored card sits underneath it, possibly next to a competitor the answer just praised. The study also found that the ad launch coincided with an estimated 6% to 8% drop in organic ChatGPT referrals to shops (a range across assumptions, not a precise interval), while the visitors who still came converted at the same rate. The free shelf got a little smaller and stayed just as valuable. If ChatGPT names your protein bar when someone asks for a high-protein snack without sugar alcohols, you get the best-converting traffic in the study for free. If it names someone else, an ad underneath is the most expensive way to argue with the answer. We covered what decides that answer in how ChatGPT ranks merchants and how it shortlists brands before it searches. #### What is Google testing with sponsored products in AI Mode? Search Engine Watch spotted the test on October 28. Google confirmed to Search Engine Land that it is an experiment. In the examples PPC Land walked through, a single “Sponsored” heading covers the paid cards, an “All products” heading covers the unpaid ones, and the paid cards sit in the leftmost positions. In one carousel, only one unpaid product was visible before the scroll arrow. That matters more in AI Mode than in classic search because there are fewer slots. PPC Land cites a Productrise study of more than 100,000 queries in July: AI Mode showed products on about 23% of queries versus 88% in standard search, averaging 4.3 listings against 22.5. Google’s own line, in its October 28 post, is that click-through rates are “already similar between sponsored and organic product list items within AI Mode.” It also launched multiturn ads in the US, so ads can appear on follow-up questions. The catch: Google Ads offers no way to segment delivery in AI Mode, as PPC Land notes. You can’t see which prompts you showed up on. How the paid AI shelf got built in 2026 - Feb 9, 2026OpenAIChatGPT ads go live in the US. Source - Feb 11, 2026GoogleAnnounces shopping ads in AI Mode. Source - Oct 21, 2026OpenAIChatGPT ads reach 89 countries; 100,000+ advertisers have run campaigns. Source - Oct 28, 2026GoogleAI Mode ads expand to 10 more countries; multiturn ads launch in the US. Source - Oct 28, 2026GoogleTest of separate Sponsored and All products headings in AI Mode carousels spotted. Source - Nov 2, 2026OpenAIMagnite and PubMatic deals to sell ChatGPT ad space reported. Source #### Should CPG brands buy ChatGPT ads now? Test, yes. Shift real budget, not yet. Buyers are not convinced either: EMARKETER cites Bank of America data that only 6% of advertisers think ChatGPT is lifting return on ad spend fast enough to justify new spending, against 33% for Google Search. It also notes, per Adweek, that ChatGPT still lacks search- and prompt-level reporting. If you test, set your bid ceiling from your own numbers. The paper’s “parity price” is simple: take ChatGPT ad revenue per visit, divide by paid search revenue per visit, and multiply by your search cost per click. That is the most a ChatGPT click is worth at your search return. With the study’s US figures and a $0.72 median search click, parity is about $0.26. The largest publicly known account paid $1.72. OpenAI recommends starting bids of $3 to $5, per Search Engine Journal. Plug in yours: ChatGPT ads parity-price calculatorPaid search revenue per visit$ChatGPT ad revenue per visit$Paid search cost per click$ChatGPT ad cost per click$ - Parity price for a ChatGPT ad click$0.26The CPC at which a ChatGPT ad click returns as much revenue per dollar as your search click. - What you pay vs. parity6.6xAbove 1x means each ChatGPT ad dollar returns less tracked revenue than a search dollar. - Tracked revenue per $1 of spend$0.52 ChatGPT ads vs. $3.40 searchLast-click revenue only. Margins and later purchases are not included. Defaults are the study’s US figures: $2.45 and $0.89 revenue per visit, $0.72 median search CPC (16 mostly-US accounts) and the $1.72 CPC of the largest publicly known ChatGPT account. Swap in your own. Source: Kaiser & Schulze, Can Advertising Fund Free AI?, Oct 2026 (method as described by Search Engine Journal) Before you trust the math, filter out OpenAI’s ad-review crawler, which SEJ notes can hit landing pages with tracking parameters and get counted as paid visits. And if most of your volume sells through Walmart, Amazon or Target, a click to your own site is a different test from a click to a retailer page. #### What should CPG brands do this quarter? - Fund the answer before the ad slot. Clean product data, consistent maker and brand names, and review language that matches what shoppers ask. - Measure the organic shelf weekly. Track how often ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Mode name you for the prompts that matter, your AI share of voice. Neither OpenAI nor Google reports this for you. - Cap AI ad tests at your parity price. Small budget, fixed window. - Watch where you land in AI Mode carousels. If sponsored cards push “All products” off the first screen in your category, that changes the math on Shopping ads there. - Keep retail media in the same conversation. OpenAI is building buying paths through Amazon Ads, Criteo and now Magnite and PubMatic, per EMARKETER. Retail ad growth is already outpacing sales at Walmart, as our Xenalytics replica on Walmart shows. Our take: paid AI placements may improve as formats and reporting mature. Right now, though, the organic answer is the asset and the ad is the experiment. If you want to see where your SKUs stand in the answers today, run a free audit or book a demo. Or see how SearchPanel scores AI visibility per product. FAQ: Q: Do ChatGPT ads perform as well as Google search ads? A: Not in the first independent data. Kaiser and Schulze’s October 2026 working paper found US paid ChatGPT visits generated $0.89 in revenue per session versus $2.45 for paid Google search, and converted at 0.37% versus 1.17%. The paper is not yet peer reviewed and its paid panel is not CPG-specific. Q: Do ChatGPT ads change which brands ChatGPT recommends? A: OpenAI says no. Its October 21, 2026 announcement states that ads are clearly labeled and separate from ChatGPT’s answers and that advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT provides. Q: What is the parity price for a ChatGPT ad click? A: It is the cost per click at which a ChatGPT ad click returns as much revenue per dollar as a search click: search cost per click times ChatGPT ad revenue per visit divided by search revenue per visit. With the study’s US figures and a $0.72 search click, it is about $0.26. Q: What is Google testing in AI Mode shopping results? A: Google is testing a layout that puts a Sponsored heading over paid products and an All products heading over unpaid ones in AI Mode carousels. Google confirmed it is an experiment; no rollout has been announced. Sources: - Can Advertising Fund Free AI? Evidence from ChatGPT’s International Advertising Rollout (working paper, version 1, October 2026), Maximilian Kaiser and Christian Schulze, ecommerceresearch.org, 2026-11-03: https://ecommerceresearch.org/chatgpt-ads/ - OpenAI taps Magnite and PubMatic to make ChatGPT ads easier to buy at scale, sources say, EMARKETER, 2026-11-02: https://www.emarketer.com/content/openai-taps-magnite-pubmatic-make-chatgpt-ads-easier-buy-scale--sources-say - Google Search Ad Visits Out-Earned ChatGPT Ads In U.S., Search Engine Journal, 2026-11-02: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-chatgpt-ad-revenue-per-visit/595596/ - ChatGPT ad visits earn shops $0.89 against $2.45 for Google search ads, PPC Land, 2026-11-02: https://ppc.land/chatgpt-ad-visits-earn-shops-0-89-against-2-45-for-google-search-ads/ - ChatGPT Ads expands to 26 new countries as over 100,000 advertisers have used the platform, OpenAI, 2026-10-21: https://openai.com/index/chatgpt-ads-expands-26-new-countries - Ads in AI Mode expand to 10 new countries, Google, 2026-10-28: https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/ads-in-ai-mode-global/ - Google AI Mode tests clearer labels for sponsored and organic shopping results, Search Engine Land, 2026-10-28: https://searchengineland.com/google-ai-mode-tests-clearer-labels-for-sponsored-and-organic-shopping-results-499647 - Google AI Mode test groups shopping ads under one Sponsored heading, PPC Land, 2026-11-01: https://ppc.land/google-ai-mode-test-groups-shopping-ads-under-one-sponsored-heading/ ### ChatGPT now says how it ranks stores for a product. Here’s what CPG brands should fix URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/chatgpt-merchant-ranking-cpg-brands Published: 2026-11-02 · Updated: 2026-11-02 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: ChatGPT Shopping, Product Feeds, AI Visibility, Research, CPG Key takeaways: - OpenAI’s updated ChatGPT shopping help page (late October 2026) says merchants are ranked on factors like availability, price, quality and whether they are the maker or primary seller of the item. - ChatGPT may rewrite product titles, adds its own labels like “Budget-friendly” based partly on reviews, and can lag behind merchant price changes. - Shopify stores reach ChatGPT through Shopify Catalog; other merchants can apply for a direct feed with nine required fields, including brand, seller name, availability and price. - Found by Flux (Oct 2026, 2,541 brands): 72.6% of brands appear in fewer than 5% of AI shopping answers. Yarnit (Oct 30): brands were named in 37% of recommendation answers but 8% of concern answers. - Fix identity first (GTINs, one brand and maker name everywhere), then availability and price in feeds, then review language, then weekly measurement. OpenAI rewrote its ChatGPT shopping help page at the end of October. Most of the coverage went to virtual try-on. The more useful part for a CPG brand is a short section near the bottom called “How merchants are selected.” For the first time, OpenAI names the factors it uses to order the list of stores under a product. Here’s what it says, what two new studies add, and what we would fix first. #### How does ChatGPT decide which store to show for a product? When a shopper taps a product in ChatGPT, it can show a list of merchants that carry it. OpenAI says that list is built from merchant and product metadata that comes from third-party providers or straight from merchants. Then the key line: “Merchants are ranked based on factors like availability, price, quality, and whether they are the maker or primary seller of that item.” Think about what that means for a protein bar or a laundry pod. The same item is sold by Amazon, Walmart, Target, a handful of resellers and maybe your own site. Four things decide who gets the click: in stock, price, a quality signal, and whether the seller is the maker. Only one of those is a brand advantage that a reseller can’t copy. You only get credit for it if your data says you are the maker, consistently, everywhere the product appears. The page also explains how products get into the carousel in the first place. ChatGPT looks at structured metadata from first-party and third-party providers, other third-party content, and “model responses generated by ChatGPT before it considers any new search results.” That last input is the pre-search shortlist we wrote about in how ChatGPT picks brands before it searches. A brand the model already knows starts ahead. #### Does ChatGPT rewrite product titles and labels? Yes, and the page says so plainly. ChatGPT may generate simplified titles and descriptions from third-party data because merchants describe the same product in different ways. It adds its own labels such as “Budget-friendly” or “Most popular.” OpenAI’s example: “Budget-friendly” might mean reviewers often mention good value, not that the price is the lowest. Review summaries are written by the model from public reviews, which OpenAI does not verify. Two pricing details matter for promotions. The price in ChatGPT’s first answer typically comes from the first merchant listed, which may not be the lowest. And when merchants change price or shipping terms, “there may be some delay” before ChatGPT shows it. If you run a two-day Target Circle deal, assume ChatGPT may still show the old price for part of it. The practical read: whatever your reviews say most often becomes your label. If shoppers keep writing “great value” about your premium SKU, ChatGPT may tag it as the cheap option. Watch review language the way you watch star ratings. #### What goes into an OpenAI product feed? Shopify merchants are covered automatically through Shopify Catalog, and OpenAI says no extra work is needed. Everyone else can apply for direct feed access. The feed specification lists nine required fields for discovery: item ID, title, description, URL, brand, seller name, image URL, availability and price. Titles should stay under about 150 characters and descriptions under 5,000, in plain text. A few rules in that spec trip up CPG catalogs: - GTIN is optional, but if you send one it must be 8, 12, 13 or 14 digits with a valid check digit and its leading zeros kept. - Seller name must be real, not a placeholder. For a marketplace offer, the seller and the marketplace are separate fields. - Availability has to be one of five values. A blank or unrecognized value rejects the row. - Shipping price left empty means unknown, not free. - Reviews go in as a count and an average rating for the same set of reviews. None of this is glamorous. It is exactly the input to the ranking factors above. #### How often do AI shopping answers name a brand at all? Not often, according to two studies published in the last week. Found by Flux asked ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews the same 150 shopping questions per category every week since August, across 66 category lists in the U.S., U.K. and Australia. Across 2,541 brands and 313,600 answers, 72.6% of brands appeared in fewer than 5% of answers for their category. The median brand appeared in 1.9%. The average category leader appeared in 26.6%. How often AI shopping answers name a brand (2,541 ecommerce brands, Oct 2026) - Named in fewer than 1% of answers37.6% - Named in 1% to under 5%35% - Named in 5% or more27.4% 956 brands (37.6%) appear in fewer than 1% of answers and 1,845 (72.6%) in fewer than 5%; the middle and top bands are the differences. 149 brands (5.9%) were never named. Source: Found by Flux, The State of AI Visibility in Ecommerce, October 2026 (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews; scans Oct 16-25, 2026) The platforms don’t agree either. In 35 of 56 categories, the three engines named a different top brand. On average ChatGPT named a given brand in 5.4% of answers, Perplexity in 5.1% and AI Overviews in 4.3%. Top-10 brands also swung an average of 4.2 points between weekly scans, so one check tells you little. Yarnit’s fall study is smaller, 1,100 ChatGPT and Gemini answers about 56 consumer brands, but it splits results by the kind of question asked. Brands were named in 37% of direct recommendation answers, 17% of “what should I look for” answers and 8% of answers to questions about concerns. Share of AI answers that named the brand, by question type (ChatGPT and Gemini, Aug-Oct 2026)Direct recommendation questions37%What to look for questions17%Concern questions8%Source: Yarnit, AI Shopping Visibility Report Fall 2026 (550 questions, 1,100 answers, 56 brands), Oct 30, 2026 Two Yarnit findings hit CPG directly. Beauty and personal care was the least visible of the larger segments: named in 16% of answers and cited in 3%. And the engines behaved like separate channels. ChatGPT linked to the brand’s site in 70% of its mentions, Gemini in 8%. Neither study is CPG-only, and both are run by vendors that sell visibility work, so treat them as directional. They point the same way as the OpenAI page: the engines name products they can describe and match with confidence. #### Where does Amazon fit? Mostly outside this picture, by choice. The Wall Street Journal reported on November 1 that Amazon blocked Meta’s Muse from shopping its site while Walmart and Shopify opened up to agents, according to PYMNTS. PYMNTS Intelligence also found Amazon accounts for 29% of research starts in its survey but 59% of the most recent AI-assisted purchase. Shoppers research in an assistant and still buy at Amazon, where Alexa for Shopping does the picking (we covered that in our earnings week post). So on Amazon, the detail page and reviews decide. Everywhere else, the feed and the open web decide. #### What should a CPG brand fix first? Our order of work: identity, then availability and price, then reviews, then measurement. Score yourself: Is ChatGPT able to match, label and rank your products? - Every SKU has its GTIN (UPC) on the brand site, in retailer feeds and in any marketplace listing, with leading zeros intact. - Brand and maker are written the same way everywhere (one spelling, one legal name), so ChatGPT can tell you are the maker. - Our own site, if we sell direct, is in a feed ChatGPT reads: Shopify Catalog, or an application for OpenAI direct feed access. - Titles name the size, count and flavor or scent in under 150 characters, and descriptions are plain, factual text. - Stock status updates daily in every feed we control, and no row ships with a blank availability value. - Promo prices start and end in the feed on the same day they change on the shelf. - We read the five most common phrases in our reviews each quarter, because ChatGPT turns them into labels. - We check the same 25 shopper prompts in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews every week, not once a quarter. 0 of 8 Start with GTINs and brand names. Matching comes before ranking. The terms here, from agentic commerce to AI share of voice, are defined in our glossary. If you want to see which of your SKUs ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity name today, and which store they send shoppers to, run a free SKU audit or book a demo. How we score each product is on the SearchPanel homepage. FAQ: Q: How does ChatGPT rank merchants for a product? A: OpenAI’s help page “Shopping with ChatGPT Search” says merchants are ranked on factors like availability, price, quality, and whether they are the maker or primary seller of that item. The list is built from merchant and product metadata from third-party providers or directly from merchants, and OpenAI expects to personalize it more over time. Q: Are ChatGPT product results ads? A: No. OpenAI says product results are selected independently by ChatGPT, are not ads and are not influenced by OpenAI partnerships. Ads in ChatGPT are shown separately from product results. Q: How do I get my products into ChatGPT shopping? A: Shopify merchants are integrated through Shopify Catalog with no extra work, according to OpenAI. Other merchants can apply for direct feed access; the feed spec requires item ID, title, description, URL, brand, seller name, image URL, availability and price. Q: Does ChatGPT change my product titles? A: It can. OpenAI says ChatGPT may generate simplified product titles and descriptions from third-party information, and may add its own labels such as “Budget-friendly” or “Most popular,” which are not guarantees or verified statements. Q: How often do AI shopping answers mention a brand? A: Rarely for most brands. Found by Flux’s October 2026 study of 2,541 ecommerce brands found 72.6% appeared in fewer than 5% of ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews answers for their category, with a median of 1.9%. Sources: - Shopping with ChatGPT Search, OpenAI Help Center, 2026-10-30: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11128490-shopping-with-chatgpt-search - Products (file upload product feed spec), OpenAI Developers, 2026-11-02: https://developers.openai.com/commerce/specs/file-upload/products - The State of AI Visibility in Ecommerce: October 2026, Found by Flux, 2026-10-26: https://flux.agency/insights/state-of-ai-visibility-ecommerce - AI Shopping Visibility Report Fall 2026, Yarnit, 2026-10-30: https://www.yarnit.app/blog/ai-shopping-visibility-report-fall-2026 - Amazon Positions Alexa for Shopping to Counter Third-Party Agents, PYMNTS, 2026-11-01: https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2026/amazon-positions-alexa-for-shopping-to-counter-third-party-agents/ - ChatGPT release notes (Oct 1, 2026: virtual try-on and saved products), OpenAI Help Center, 2026-10-01: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes ### Amazon, Google and Meta just reported on AI shopping. What CPG brands should take from it URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-shopping-earnings-week-cpg-brands Published: 2026-11-01 · Updated: 2026-11-01 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: Earnings, Alexa for Shopping, Google AI Mode, Meta Muse, CPG Key takeaways: - Amazon (Oct 29, 2026): 400M+ customers used Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months, interactions rose 570%, and Andy Jassy expects it to be the primary agent people use to shop Amazon. - Alphabet (Oct 28, 2026): AI Mode queries are on average 3x longer than traditional searches, and Google says sponsored and organic product listings in AI Mode already get similar click-through rates. AI Mode ads are expanding. - Meta (Oct 21, 2026): 10M+ people in the U.S. and Canada set up Muse in six weeks; shopping is the top use case, with an average purchase over $200. - Paid placements are coming to every one of these assistants, including Amazon’s Branded Conversations in January 2027. Organic product content is still the cheaper thing to fix first. Three of the companies that decide which brands shoppers see in AI answers reported earnings in the past two weeks. Meta went first on October 21, Alphabet on October 28 and Amazon on October 29. None of them called it an AI visibility update. Read the calls as a CPG brand manager, though, and you get a pretty specific to-do list. Here’s what each one disclosed, what it left out, and what we would change this week. #### What did Amazon say about Alexa for Shopping on its Q3 call? Andy Jassy gave three numbers. Over 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months. Customer interactions were up 570% year over year. And U.S. customers who use it spend 50% more per order than those who don’t. Treat that last one as a correlation. People who already buy a lot are the most likely to try a shopping assistant, and Amazon didn’t say how it controlled for that. The sentence that matters more: “Though we anticipate working with horizontal agents, we believe Alexa for Shopping is going to be the primary shopping agent customers use to shop Amazon.” Jassy also said shopping through outside agents isn’t meaningfully affecting Amazon Ads, because “few customers are doing much shopping this way yet.” So on Amazon, the agent that picks your product is Amazon’s own. ChatGPT or Gemini may shape the shortlist before a shopper gets there (we covered how ChatGPT picks brands before it searches). The final pick inside Amazon runs on your detail page, reviews, Q&A and price history. Grocery is where this lands hardest. Jassy said Everyday Essentials grew about three times faster than the rest of the store and now account for about half of Amazon’s units. Customers who buy perishables through same-day delivery buy about seven times more Everyday Essentials units than those who don’t. Alexa for Shopping now handles Subscribe & Save changes by conversation, which we went through in our post on AI agents and the reorder. #### Is Amazon putting ads inside the assistant? Yes, starting in January. Amazon Ads announced Branded Conversations on September 29 as the next step for Sponsored Brands prompts. When a shopper taps a prompt today, Alexa for Shopping already answers from the brand’s detail pages, Brand Store and campaign data. Branded Conversations adds expertise the brand supplies: what makes it different, which product fits which need, and which products work together. Amazon’s own example is a skin care brand explaining which cleanser suits oily skin, which suits sensitive skin, and what toner and sunscreen go with it. The conversations are marked Sponsored and launch in the U.S. in January 2027. In early Amazon testing, nearly 20% of shoppers who interacted with a Sponsored Brands prompt continued the conversation about that brand. The same announcement covered Review Requests, launching this month, which asks verified buyers to rate a product from pages like the Amazon homepage. Amazon says products in early testing received about three times as many ratings and reviews each week. For a new SKU that has to be recommended by an assistant reading reviews, that matters. The money behind it is growing. Amazon’s advertising services revenue was $19.6 billion in Q3, up 11% year over year, and Amazon expects high-teens growth in Q4. Amazon blamed the slower Q3 rate mainly on Prime Day timing. Amazon advertising services revenue by quarter (USD billions)Q3 202517.7 BQ4 202521.3 BQ1 202617.2 BQ2 202619.8 BQ3 202619.6 BSource: Amazon.com Q3 2026 results, Oct 29, 2026 (segment table; $17,703M, $21,317M, $17,243M, $19,809M, $19,637M, rounded) Our take: the brief you write for Branded Conversations is the same content your detail pages should already carry. If the assistant can only explain why your product is different when you pay for the prompt, your organic answers are losing. Write the brief once and put it on the page first. #### What did Google say about AI Mode and shopping? Sundar Pichai said Search query growth was the fastest in five years, including commercial queries. Queries in AI Mode are on average three times longer than traditional searches, and one in five AI Mode searches globally use voice, images or documents. Philipp Schindler then said the quiet part. AI Mode monetizes at a lower rate, and its growth weighed on Search revenue. Google is now scaling ads in AI Overviews and AI Mode, taking AI Mode ads to international markets and adding multi-turn ads in the U.S. His evidence for doing so: “Click-through rates are already similar between sponsored and organic product list items within AI Mode.” As Search Engine Land pointed out, Google shared neither the rates nor how it measured them. Two more lines from the Alphabet call belong in a brand deck. Google says its Universal Commerce Protocol now enables direct checkout for hundreds of thousands of brands, naming Chewy, Nike and Tapestry. And Google Cloud’s Thomas Kurian said Ulta Beauty’s AI shopping assistant produced a 3x higher conversion rate than traditional browsing on Ulta’s site. That’s a vendor citing its own customer, so read it as a direction, not a benchmark. What it means for a snack or personal care brand: a three-times-longer query is a query full of attributes, like “gluten-free school snacks under $5 that kids actually eat.” Your product listing has to carry those attributes in plain text and in your Merchant Center feed. And if organic and sponsored product listings really do get clicked at similar rates inside AI Mode, feed quality deserves the same attention as the bid. #### Why should CPG brands watch Meta’s Muse? On Meta’s October 21 call, Mark Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada set up Muse in its first six weeks, according to MediaNama’s report, with about 25% using it daily. Shopping is its most common use case: more than a quarter of Muse users engage in it, with an average purchase over $200. Meta plans to charge businesses fees on transactions Muse helps complete, though CFO Susan Li said it isn’t monetizing Muse outside subscriptions today. Muse comes to Meta’s glasses in November. A $200 average purchase says Muse isn’t buying paper towels yet. We wouldn’t move budget here this quarter. But it’s one more assistant recommending products, so add it to the list of places you check. AI shopping disclosures, late September to early November 2026 - Sep 29, 2026Amazon AdsAnnounces Branded Conversations (brand-supplied expertise inside sponsored Alexa for Shopping conversations, U.S. launch January 2027) and Review Requests. Source - Oct 21, 2026MetaQ3 call: 10M+ Muse setups in six weeks; shopping is the top use case, average purchase over $200. Source - Oct 28, 2026AlphabetQ3 call: AI Mode queries 3x longer; sponsored and organic product listing CTRs similar; AI Mode ads expand. Source - Oct 29, 2026AmazonQ3 results: Alexa for Shopping used by 400M+ customers, interactions up 570%; ad revenue $19.6B. Source - Oct 30, 2026WalmartSparky turns photos of handwritten lists into carts and recommends products from a picture. Source - Nov 3, 2026ShopifyQ3 results scheduled before market open; call at 8:30 a.m. ET. Source #### What should a CPG brand do this week? Every platform on this list is putting paid placements into its AI answers within months. The organic answer is still where you win or lose a shopper who never clicks an ad, and it’s the cheaper one to fix. Score yourself: AI shopping readiness after earnings week - The first lines of our top 20 Amazon detail pages say who the product is for, size or count, and how it differs. - We have a one-page brand brief (differentiators, which SKU for which need, what pairs with what) ready for Branded Conversations in January. - Our Google Merchant Center titles and attributes carry the details a long AI Mode query asks for: dietary claims, pack count, size, scent, age range. - We ran 25 long, specific shopper prompts this month in AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Alexa for Shopping and logged which SKU each one named. - Our reviews and Q&A answer the attribute questions shoppers ask, and new SKUs have a plan to build reviews (Review Requests launches in November). - One person owns paid placements inside AI answers across Amazon Ads and Google Ads before multi-turn ads scale. - Our brand site lets AI crawlers read product pages (robots.txt and bot settings checked this quarter). - Shopify’s November 3 call is on the calendar if we sell direct on Shopify. 0 of 8 Start with the detail pages. That’s where Alexa for Shopping reads first. Shopify reports on November 3 and Muse reaches Meta’s glasses this month, so the next round of numbers is close. We’ll cover them here. For the longer view of Amazon’s ad business, see the Xenalytics chart of Amazon’s revenue mix. If you want to know which of your SKUs ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity name today, run a free SKU audit or book a demo. How we score each product is on the SearchPanel homepage. FAQ: Q: How many people use Alexa for Shopping? A: Amazon said on October 29, 2026 that more than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping in the previous 12 months, with customer interactions up 570% year over year. U.S. customers who use it spend 50% more per order than those who don’t. Q: Does Google show ads in AI Mode? A: Yes. On its October 28, 2026 call, Google said it is scaling ads in AI Overviews and AI Mode, expanding AI Mode ads to international markets and adding multi-turn ads in AI Mode in the U.S. It also said sponsored and organic product listings in AI Mode already get similar click-through rates, without sharing the figures. Q: What are Amazon Branded Conversations? A: An Amazon Ads format announced September 29, 2026 that adds brand-supplied product expertise to the Alexa for Shopping conversation a shopper starts from a Sponsored Brands prompt. It is marked Sponsored and launches in the U.S. in January 2027. Q: Is Meta’s Muse used for shopping? A: Yes. Meta said shopping is Muse’s most common use case: more than a quarter of users engage in it and the average purchase is over $200. Meta plans to charge businesses fees on transactions Muse helps complete but is not monetizing it outside subscriptions yet. Sources: - Amazon.com Announces Third Quarter Results, Amazon, 2026-10-29: https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-release/news-release-details/2026/Amazon-com-Announces-Third-Quarter-Results/ - Amazon (AMZN) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript, The Motley Fool, 2026-10-30: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/30/amazon-amzn-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/ - Amazon Ads brings brand expertise into AI shopping conversations through Branded Conversations, Amazon Ads, 2026-09-29: https://advertising.amazon.com/library/news/branded-conversations-review-requests - Alphabet Q3 2026 Earnings Call, Alphabet, 2026-10-28: https://abc.xyz/investor/events/event-details/2026/2026-Q3-Earnings-Call-2026-Ujou16CTw9/default.aspx - Q3 earnings call: CEO’s remarks, Google, 2026-10-28: https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/alphabet-earnings-q3-2026/ - Google Q3 earnings call: AI Mode ads, query growth and more, Search Engine Land, 2026-10-29: https://searchengineland.com/google-earnings-call-q3-2026-499706 - From shopping to smart glasses, Meta expands its Muse AI push, MediaNama, 2026-10-22: https://www.medianama.com/2026/10/223-meta-earnings-call-smart-glasses-muse/ - Sparky Makes Holiday Magic Real, Walmart, 2026-10-30: https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2026/10/sparky-shopping-assistant-expansion - Shopify to Announce Third-Quarter 2026 Financial Results, Shopify, 2026-10-06: https://www.shopify.com/investors/press-releases/shopify-announce-third-quarter-2026-financial-results ### Retailers are building AI shopping agents. Most CPG brands aren’t ready URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/cpg-brands-agentic-commerce-readiness-gap Published: 2026-10-31 · Updated: 2026-10-31 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: Agentic commerce, GEO, Walmart Sparky, CPG, Research Key takeaways: - BCG’s GenAI CPG Survey 2026 (published Oct 30, 2026): 59% of U.S. CPG companies report no meaningful agentic AI capabilities; 41% have started. - Kearney’s benchmark of 106 consumer companies (Oct 21, 2026): 5 of 6 digital retail platforms run a live agentic offering, versus 2 of 53 consumer products companies. - On Oct 30, Walmart’s Sparky began turning handwritten lists into carts and suggesting healthier swaps, so the retailer’s agent picks the brand for generic list lines. - Visibility work moves: Mondelēz says Oreo went from about 10% of AI cookie recommendations to about 70% for specific cookie queries after unblocking crawlers and making content machine readable. Two reports landed this month that say the same thing from different angles, and a Walmart release on Friday showed why it matters. On October 30, BCG published a survey finding that 59% of U.S. CPG companies report no meaningful agentic AI capabilities. Nine days earlier, Kearney benchmarked 106 consumer companies and found that only 2 of 53 consumer products makers run anything live in agentic commerce. Five of six digital retail platforms do. The same day BCG published, Walmart gave its Sparky assistant the ability to turn a photo of a handwritten shopping list into a cart. Retailers are building the agents. Brands are mostly still working out how to get mentioned by them. #### What did BCG find about CPG readiness for agentic commerce? BCG’s report pulls from several of its own surveys. On the consumer side, its December 2025 GenAI Consumer Survey found 80% of U.S. consumers already use AI, and nearly half of those use it to shop. Among those AI shoppers, 96% use it for product discovery, 80% for consideration and 24% for purchasing. Only 4% of consumers said they would let an agent complete a purchase alone. On the company side, BCG’s GenAI CPG Survey 2026 found 41% of U.S. CPG companies have begun building some agentic AI capabilities. The other 59% report none that matter. BCG also says 32% of retailers give direct data access only to selected agents, and 87% don’t share customer data with agents at all. A brand can’t assume a retailer will feed its product story into the retailer’s own assistant. #### How far behind retailers are consumer brands? Kearney’s benchmark, published October 21 and summarized by eMarketer on October 30, rated 12 months of each company’s own communications (September 2025 to August 2026) on a five-level scale, from no mention of AI to a live agentic commerce offering. Quiet work won’t show up, but the gradient is steep. Share of companies at agentic commerce strategy level or beyond, by segmentDigital retail platforms (6 of 6)100%Domestic and specialty retailers (11 of 16)69%Consumer products companies (20 of 53)38%Luxury houses (5 of 21)24%Travel retail (2 of 11)18%Source: Kearney agentic commerce readiness benchmark, Oct 21, 2026 (106 companies; communications Sept 2025 to Aug 2026). Percentages computed from Kearney’s counts and rounded. The gap widens when you count live offerings instead of strategy decks. Share of companies running a live agentic commerce offeringDigital retail platforms (5 of 6)83%Domestic and specialty retailers (8 of 16)50%Consumer products companies (2 of 53)4%Source: Kearney, Oct 21, 2026. Percentages computed from Kearney’s counts and rounded. Kearney’s category read is useful for anyone in CPG. Beauty leads and holds one of the two live offerings in consumer products. Home care is concentrating on retailer agents such as Rufus and Sparky. Pet care shows the broadest activity. Packaged food, sitting on decades of recipe content, “has barely started.” The other finding is about seniority. In retail, agentic commerce shows up on earnings calls and in risk disclosures. In consumer products, Kearney says the topic usually sits one to two levels below the executive committee. The work is real and often funded, but it’s run by digital and ecommerce leaders, not the board. #### Why do retailer agents matter so much for CPG brands? Because the retailer owns the moment the brand gets picked. Look at what Walmart added to Sparky on October 30: turn a handwritten or Notes app list into a cart, describe a meal and get recipes with ingredients ready to buy, and ask for healthier swaps like “Find me a lower-sugar alternative to these marshmallows.” Think about what a shopping list actually says. “Paper plates.” “Broth.” “Marshmallows.” Those are categories, not brands. Every one of those features takes a generic line and turns it into a specific product, and Sparky makes that call. If you sell a household or pantry staple, that’s your shelf now. Walmart’s release doesn’t say how Sparky ranks those picks. So AI visibility isn’t only a ChatGPT problem. ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity shape the shortlist (we covered how ChatGPT picks brands before it searches). The retailer agents, from Sparky to Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping, make the swap at the point of purchase. Brands need to show up in both. #### Where are CPG companies putting money next year? Mostly into getting found. BCG asked CPG companies where they plan to invest over the coming year: CPG companies planning to invest in each area over the coming yearGenerative engine optimization (GEO)65%Product data structuring47%Owned brand agent development41%Ecosystem integration with retailers or tech platforms35%Source: BCG GenAI CPG Survey 2026, cited in “Are CPG Companies Ready for Agentic Commerce?”, Oct 30, 2026 BCG calls GEO the “no-regrets move” but warns it won’t differentiate on its own once everyone does it. We agree with half of that. Visibility is table stakes. But a brand that can’t say which of its SKUs an assistant recommends for the questions that matter is nowhere near the point where everyone does it. #### Does AI visibility work actually move the numbers? The best public example is Oreo. Mondelēz had blocked AI crawlers to protect its content. Andrew Lederman, its VP of global digital commerce, told Digiday in April that Oreo was cited in only about 10% of AI chatbot cookie recommendations. After unblocking the necessary crawlers and rebuilding its brand sites to be machine readable, Oreo came up about 70% of the time for specific cookie queries, and closer to 30% for broader snack topics. BCG reports CPG companies piloting GEO see 1% to 5% incremental revenue on average, and those testing owned agents and ecosystem integration see 3% to 10%. It also describes a luxury fashion group that prioritized 500 consumer prompts, ran about 10 pilots starting with structured data and metadata fixes, and more than doubled its brand site’s citation rate in AI search within eight weeks. And the traffic is worth chasing. Adobe found AI-referred visits to U.S. retail sites grew 393% year over year in Q1 2026 and converted 42% better than non-AI traffic in March. The same report scored the average U.S. retail product page at 66% machine readable, so a third of the content on a typical product page is invisible to the models. To make BCG’s ranges concrete, plug in your own numbers. This is arithmetic on BCG’s reported ranges, not a forecast for your brand. What BCG’s reported ranges would mean at your sizeAnnual U.S. revenue (USD)$Annual online revenue (USD)$ - Incremental revenue in GEO pilots (1% to 5%)$500,000 to $2,500,000BCG: average range for CPG companies piloting GEO. - Revenue growth in owned agent and ecosystem pilots (3% to 10%)$1,500,000 to $5,000,000BCG: CPG companies testing owned agents and ecosystem integration. - Online revenue at risk as discovery shifts to AI search (20% to 30%)$2,000,000 to $3,000,000BCG: assessment for one global CPG company, not an industry average. BCG does not publish the sample size or revenue base behind these ranges. Use the output to size a pilot budget, not to promise a result. Source: BCG, “Are CPG Companies Ready for Agentic Commerce?”, Oct 30, 2026 #### What should a CPG brand do in the next 90 days? Unless you’re in beauty or pet care with real advisory data, skip the agent build for now. Do this first: - Check that AI crawlers can reach you. Mondelēz says its own crawler blocks were part of why Oreo sat at 10%. Look at robots.txt and your bot management settings on the brand site this week. - Write the prompt list. Pull 50 to 100 real shopper questions per category, including generic list lines like “paper towels” and “lower-sugar cereal.” BCG’s luxury example used 500. - Measure by SKU, not by brand. Track which product each assistant names, in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Rufus and Sparky. A brand-level score hides the SKU that’s losing. - Make promotions and pack sizes machine readable. Kearney’s point: agents compare price, promotion, pack size and value claims across retailers in seconds. Count, size and cost per use belong in titles and structured data. - Give it an owner with an executive sponsor. If it lives two levels down, it gets the leftover budget. The brands that close that gap first get to set what the agent says about their category, and everyone else will be reacting to it. For the restock side of this, see our post on AI agents and the household reorder. For more CPG and ecommerce charts, see Xenalytics. If you want to see which of your SKUs ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity recommend today, run a free SKU audit or book a demo. How we score each product is on the SearchPanel homepage. FAQ: Q: How many CPG companies are ready for agentic commerce? A: Few. BCG’s GenAI CPG Survey 2026 found 59% of U.S. CPG companies report no meaningful agentic AI capabilities. Kearney’s Oct 2026 benchmark found 20 of 53 consumer products companies at strategy level or beyond, and only 2 running a live offering. Q: What is generative engine optimization (GEO) for CPG brands? A: GEO is making brand content and product data easy for AI assistants to find, read and recommend: crawler access, structured data, clear claims, FAQs and consistent product facts across your site and retailers. BCG reports CPG GEO pilots averaging 1% to 5% incremental revenue. Q: How did Oreo improve its AI visibility? A: Mondelēz told Digiday it unblocked necessary AI crawlers, rebuilt brand sites to be machine readable and set up measurement. Oreo went from about 10% of AI cookie recommendations to about 70% for specific cookie queries, and about 30% for broader snack topics. Q: What did Walmart add to Sparky on October 30, 2026? A: Six features: photo-based product recommendations, handwritten or Notes app lists turned into carts, Shop to Light shelf-label finding in stores, recipes with ready-to-buy ingredients, healthier swaps, and Spanish and French support. Sources: - Are CPG Companies Ready for Agentic Commerce?, BCG, 2026-10-30: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2026/how-cpg-companies-win-agentic-commerce - The state of agentic commerce: insights from more than 100 leading global companies, Kearney, 2026-10-21: https://www.kearney.com/service/digital-analytics/article/the-state-of-agentic-commerce-insights-from-more-than-100-leading-global-companies - Retailers are building for AI shoppers while most brands are still fighting to be seen, eMarketer, 2026-10-30: https://www.emarketer.com/content/retailers-building-ai-shoppers-while-most-brands-still-fighting-seen - Sparky Makes Holiday Magic Real, Walmart, 2026-10-30: https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2026/10/sparky-shopping-assistant-expansion - Mondelez overhauls its $3.5 billion digital commerce strategy in era of AI search, Digiday, 2026-04-07: https://digiday.com/podcasts/mondelez-overhauls-its-3-5-billion-digital-commerce-strategy-in-era-of-ai-search/ - AI traffic grows but retail sites lag in AI search visibility, Adobe, 2026-04-16: https://business.adobe.com/blog/ai-traffic-surge-retail-sites-not-machine-readable ### Amazon and Shopify just handed AI agents the reorder. What CPG brands should do URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-agents-reorder-cpg-amazon-shopify Published: 2026-10-30 · Updated: 2026-10-30 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: Alexa for Shopping, Shopify Catalog, Subscribe & Save, Agentic commerce, CPG Key takeaways: - On Oct 29, 2026, Amazon said Alexa for Shopping handles 100+ new actions, including skipping, pausing and rescheduling Subscribe & Save deliveries, for all U.S. customers. - Amazon says 400 million+ customers used Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months, and use of its agentic features has grown more than 8x since the start of the year. - Shopify’s Fall ’26 Edition (Oct 28) adds a Catalog eligibility view and an agent knowledge base. Shopify says ChatGPT, Copilot, Meta and other agents get product data from Shopify Catalog. - In an Ipsos poll published Oct 27, 40% of U.S. adults said letting AI buy household essentials would be safe, versus 28% for buying electronics. - Harris Poll: 71% say AI could switch them to a cheaper option, and 79% don’t want AI to switch products without asking. Put cost per use and proof where assistants read. Two announcements landed on back-to-back days this week. If you sell anything people buy again and again, read them together. On October 28, Shopify’s Fall ’26 Edition opened its product catalog, cart and Shop Pay checkout to outside AI agents. On October 29, Amazon said Alexa for Shopping can now handle more than 100 new shopping actions by conversation, including managing Subscribe & Save. One company wants to be the catalog every agent shops from. The other wants its own agent to run the household restock. For consumer brands, the restock is the business. Here’s what changed, what shoppers say they’ll allow, and what we’d do this quarter. #### What did Amazon add to Alexa for Shopping on October 29? Per Amazon’s announcement, shoppers can now ask the assistant to create and edit lists and registries, manage Subscribe & Save (“Skip my next delivery,” “Pause my subscription,” “Change my delivery to every three months”), plus account and billing tasks. It’s live for all U.S. customers. Amazon also shared two numbers. Over 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months, and the number using its agentic features has grown more than eight times since the start of the year. The October update sits on top of what Amazon shipped in May, when it merged Rufus and Alexa+. That May 13 release described Scheduled Actions for “restocking regular household items like pet food, paper towels, and detergent,” and cart commands like “add my regular dog treats” or “add my frequently ordered cleaning products.” Read that last part again if you run a household or pantry brand. “My regular” only works if you were already the regular. A shopper who says “skip my next delivery” to an assistant is one short step away from “find me something cheaper,” and the assistant is sitting right there to answer. #### What did Shopify’s Fall ’26 Edition change for AI agents? Shopify’s merchant release says “ChatGPT, Copilot, Meta, Instinct, and other AI agents get product information from Shopify Catalog.” The new pieces that matter for a DTC brand: - Catalog eligibility. A view in the admin that shows whether your store qualifies for Shopify Catalog and links to fixes. Shopify’s requirements page lists the basics: a Starter plan or higher, no password on the store, a title, an image and a price above zero on each product, and an account in good standing. - Knowledge base. A page under Sales channels > Agentic where you review and publish the facts agents get about your store, like return windows and shipping destinations. Nothing reaches an agent until you sign off. - Shop Promise. Badged products “can also rank higher in Shop app search and in the Shopify Catalog data shopping agents use.” Shopify says merchant eligibility has grown 20x. - Shop.md and Shop Pay in agents. Shoppers can point ChatGPT, Claude or another agent at shop.md to search more than a billion products and check out with Shop Pay. Shop Pay checkout is also arriving inside personal agents, starting with Muse from Meta, Claude Duet and Instinct. Shopify’s help page adds a line worth knowing. If your store isn’t eligible, AI channels “might still access and display your products through other means such as traditional web crawling.” Might. That’s not a plan. #### How fast is this moving? Fast enough that a quarterly review will miss things. AI agents and the household restock: key dates in 2026 - May 13, 2026AmazonMerges Rufus and Alexa+ into Alexa for Shopping, with Scheduled Actions for restocking household items. Source - Oct 6, 2026Meta and SierraAnnounce the Personal Agent Protocol so agents can identify themselves to retailers (reported by PYMNTS). Source - Oct 15, 2026GoogleRolls out Universal Cart in the U.S. across Search and the Gemini app. Source - Oct 21, 2026WalmartIntroduces Agent Profiles with $50, $100 or $200 spending caps and an Agent Gateway; profiles launch in November. Source - Oct 27, 2026IpsosPublishes a U.S. poll: 40% say letting AI buy household essentials would be safe. Source - Oct 28, 2026ShopifyFall ’26 Edition: Catalog eligibility, knowledge base for agents, Shop.md, Shop Pay inside personal agents. Source - Oct 29, 2026AmazonAlexa for Shopping adds 100+ actions, including Subscribe & Save management, for all U.S. customers. Source #### Will shoppers actually let AI reorder their essentials? More than for almost anything else, and that’s the point. On October 27, Ipsos published a poll of 1,120 U.S. adults (fielded August 5 to 6) asking how safe or risky it would be to let an AI assistant handle different jobs. Buying household essentials like laundry detergent, toothpaste and milk came out as the purchase people were most willing to hand over: U.S. adults who say it would be safe to let an AI assistant handle each taskResearching consumer electronics51%Purchasing household essentials (detergent, toothpaste, milk) when needed40%Reviewing bills and subscriptions32%Planning a vacation30%Purchasing consumer electronics28%Preparing your taxes21%Source: Ipsos, Future of Shopping Survey topline, Oct 27, 2026 (1,120 U.S. adults, fielded Aug 5–6, 2026; ±3.6 pts credibility interval) Forty percent isn’t a majority, and only 36% in the same poll were willing overall to let an assistant make purchasing decisions. But essentials beat buying electronics by 12 points. Delegation starts with routine repeat purchases. The Harris Poll found the same line in household care. In its Algorithmic Aisle study (3,222 adults in the U.S., UK, Brazil and India, fielded June 2026), comfort drops once the AI stops suggesting and starts acting: Household care: comfort when AI suggests vs. when it acts aloneRestocking a regular product: AI suggests73%Restocking a regular product: AI acts alone57%Finding a cheaper product: AI suggests76%Finding a cheaper product: AI acts alone57%Source: The Harris Poll, “AI in Household Care: Proof Before Autopilot,” Oct 5, 2026 (The Algorithmic Aisle, 3,222 adults in US, UK, Brazil, India, June 2026) Two more Harris numbers should worry incumbents: 71% say AI could make them switch to a cheaper option, and 71% are open to AI recommending a brand they’ve never tried. And 79% would not want AI to switch their household products without asking first. So the switch happens at the moment the assistant asks. That moment is now built into Amazon’s app. #### Why does this matter more for CPG than for other categories? Because repeat purchase is where a household brand makes its money, and habit has always protected it. Subscriptions locked that habit in. An assistant that manages the subscription changes the math. Every skip, pause or “anything cheaper?” is now a conversation with software that has the whole category in front of it. Our view: the brands that keep their regulars will be the ones whose product pages give the assistant a clear reason to say “stick with this one.” That means plain facts on size, count, cost per use and proof of performance. Harris found 73% would trust AI recommendations more if they included performance tests or other evidence. If you’re the challenger, that slot just opened up. PYMNTS reported on October 29 that only 15% of merchants have structured product data agents can read, per its 2026 Global Digital Shopping Index merchant report with Visa Acceptance Solutions. If that’s close to true for your category, the bar to beat is low. #### What should a CPG brand do this quarter? - Check Shopify Catalog eligibility today. It’s under Sales channels > Agentic. If it says Ineligible, click it and fix the reason. - Publish your knowledge base. Review and publish the return, shipping and subscription facts Shopify drafted. - Ask the restock questions yourself. On Amazon, try “add my regular laundry detergent,” “skip my next delivery” and “is there a cheaper option?” in your category. Log which brand it offers at each step, monthly. - Put the comparison facts up front. Count, size, cost per load or serving, and test results belong in the title, bullets and first lines of the description, where an assistant reads first. - Protect Subscribe & Save. Watch skip and cancel rates by item after October 29. - Qualify for Shop Promise if you sell DTC in the U.S. We covered retailer rules for outside agents in our Walmart agents post, and why known brands start ahead in ChatGPT’s brand shortlist. For ecommerce and CPG charts, see Xenalytics. If you want to see which brand ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity offer when a shopper asks to restock your category, run a free SKU audit or book a demo. How we score products is on the SearchPanel homepage. Is your brand ready for AI-managed reorders? Check what’s true today - We checked Shopify Catalog eligibility under Sales channels > Agentic and fixed any issues. - We reviewed and published our Shopify knowledge base facts (returns, shipping, subscriptions). - We asked Amazon’s assistant restock prompts in our category and logged which brand it offered. - We repeat those prompts at least monthly. - Our titles and bullets state count, size and cost per use plainly. - Our product pages show test results, certifications or other proof an assistant can read. - We track Subscribe & Save skips and cancels by item, week by week. 0 of 7 Start with the Shopify eligibility check. It takes five minutes. FAQ: Q: What can Alexa for Shopping do with Subscribe & Save? A: Since Oct 29, 2026, U.S. customers can ask Alexa for Shopping to skip the next delivery, pause a subscription or change delivery frequency, such as every three months. It can also add regular items to the cart and run scheduled restocks. Q: How do I know if my Shopify store shows up in ChatGPT and other AI agents? A: Open Sales channels > Agentic in the Shopify admin. The Catalog eligibility view shows whether your store is in Shopify Catalog, which Shopify says feeds ChatGPT, Copilot, Meta and other agents, and links to fixes if it isn’t. Q: Will shoppers let AI reorder household products automatically? A: Some will. Ipsos found 40% of U.S. adults think letting AI buy household essentials would be safe. Harris found 73% are comfortable with AI suggesting a restock, but only 57% with AI reordering on its own. Q: How can a CPG brand keep repeat buyers when AI manages reorders? A: Put count, size, cost per use and proof in titles and bullets, test Amazon restock prompts monthly, watch Subscribe & Save skips, and get your Shopify store into Shopify Catalog. Sources: - Alexa for Shopping adds 100+ new capabilities to make shopping even faster and easier, Amazon, 2026-10-29: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/alexa-for-shopping-new-capabilities - Meet Alexa for Shopping, your personalized, agentic AI assistant on Amazon, Amazon, 2026-05-13: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/alexa-for-shopping-ai-assistant - Exponential: Shopify’s Fall ’26 Edition, Shopify, 2026-10-28: https://www.shopify.com/news/fall-26-edition-merchant - Requirements for being included in Shopify Catalog, Shopify Help Center, 2026-10-30: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/shopify-catalog/requirements - Shopify Catalog and product discovery for agentic storefronts, Shopify Help Center, 2026-10-30: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/agentic-storefronts/products - Ipsos Future of Shopping Survey: topline findings, Ipsos, 2026-10-27: https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/documents/2026-10/WTF%20Shopping%20Topline%2010.27.2026.pdf - AI in Household Care: Proof Before Autopilot, The Harris Poll, 2026-10-05: https://theharrispoll.com/articles/ai-in-household-care-proof-before-autopilot/ - Walmart and Home Depot Set the Rules for AI Shoppers, PYMNTS, 2026-10-29: https://www.pymnts.com/commerce/ecommerce/2026/walmart-and-home-depot-set-the-rules-for-ai-shoppers/ - Google’s new Universal Cart launches today in the U.S., Google, 2026-10-15: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/universal-cart-launch/ ### AI is building Thanksgiving carts. Which grocery brands make the basket? URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/ai-thanksgiving-grocery-carts-cpg Published: 2026-10-29 · Updated: 2026-10-29 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: Grocery AI assistants, Walmart Sparky, Holiday 2026, Private label, CPG Key takeaways: - On Oct 28, 2026, Walmart said shoppers can ask Sparky to add its $35 Holiday Meal Basket (26 items, serves 10) to their cart. Only five of its 17 products are national brands. - In a Grocery Dive test, Safeway’s AI built a 51-item Thanksgiving cart that picked Pillsbury, Ocean Spray and French’s over cheaper store brands. Kroger’s ended at 43 items. - 40% of U.S. shoppers are comfortable letting AI build their cart if they complete the purchase, per Shopify’s July survey of 2,000 adults. - 52% of U.S. consumers would let an AI agent buy groceries and household essentials (Amex), and grocery ties electronics as the top AI-assisted category at 32% (CivicScience). - Most of these carts are built inside retailer apps, so measure with retailer sales data, test the prompts weekly and get into retailer bundles. Yesterday Walmart put out its annual Holiday Meal Basket: 26 items, serves 10, $35. Buried in the release is one line that matters more to brand teams than the price. Shoppers can ask Sparky, Walmart’s AI shopping agent, to add the whole basket to their cart. That makes this the first Thanksgiving where a real share of grocery carts will be assembled by software. Kroger, Albertsons banners like Safeway, Instacart and Walmart all have assistants that turn “dinner for 10” into a list of SKUs. Every slot on that list, the stuffing, the fried onions, the canned pumpkin, goes to a brand. Somebody wins it and everybody else doesn’t. So we looked at what these assistants actually put in the cart, using what’s been published in the last few weeks. #### What did Walmart announce on October 28? Per Walmart’s release, the 2026 basket has 17 unique products and 26 total items, 18% more items than last year, at 12% less than those same items cost last year. It’s available through December 24, in stores, online in one click, or through Sparky. Walmart says the program has saved customers more than $350 million since 2022. The brand split is the part to study. Walmart says the basket includes five national brands. We sorted the 17 products on its list: Walmart’s 2026 Holiday Meal Basket: who owns the 17 product slots - Great Value (Walmart’s private brand)52.9% - National brands29.4% - Fresh produce, no brand17.7% 9 Great Value products; 5 national brands (Butterball, Stove Top, Campbell’s, Jet-Puffed, “JIFFY”); 3 fresh items (russet potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberries). Our count from Walmart’s published item list. Source: Walmart corporate, Holiday Meal Basket release and item list, Oct 28, 2026 Five national brands made it: Butterball, Stove Top, Campbell’s, Jet-Puffed and “JIFFY”. Walmart says four of the five are on rollback. The French fried onions, the canned pumpkin and the pie crusts are all Great Value, a brand Walmart calls the largest food and consumables CPG brand in the U.S. When a shopper tells Sparky “add the holiday basket,” nobody compares brands. The retailer’s merchandising team already made that choice in a planning meeting months ago. The AI just carries it out. #### What happens when the AI builds the cart from scratch? Something quite different, at least in one test. On October 16, Grocery Dive senior editor Catherine Douglas Moran gave the same prompt to the Safeway and Kroger assistants: build a basket for a Thanksgiving meal for 10 with a frozen whole turkey, pumpkin pie ingredients and classic sides. Her write-up ran October 22. Items in a Thanksgiving-for-10 cart: preset basket vs. AI assistantsWalmart Holiday Meal Basket, preset ($35)26 itemsKroger AI assistant, first list (est. $97.03)23 itemsKroger AI, “Complete Thanksgiving Basket” (est. $127.73)43 itemsSafeway AI assistant (just over $202)51 itemsSource: Grocery Dive, “More than a Store: Can AI plan my Thanksgiving meal?”, Oct 22, 2026 (tests run Oct 16); Walmart, Oct 28, 2026 Safeway’s assistant returned 51 items. Several were private brands or produce on sale. But it also chose Pillsbury pie crusts, Ocean Spray canned cranberry sauce and French’s Original Crispy Fried Onions, which cost more than the Albertsons store-brand versions on Safeway’s own curated Thanksgiving page. It added a 15-ounce can of Libby’s pure pumpkin and also a 4- to 5-pound pie pumpkin. Kroger’s assistant started at 23 products. After it shared recipes that didn’t quite match its list, it suggested she ask it to “Add the missing ingredients to my cart.” She did, and ended at 43 items. One reporter, two prompts, so this is an anecdote and not a market share. Still, the pattern makes sense. A curated basket is a merchant’s decision, and private label usually wins it. An open-ended AI cart is closer to a recommendation, and well-known brand names seem to hold up there. Moran also found the curated pages easier to use than the chatbots. That’s a reminder that the preset basket and the AI cart are both shelves you need to be on. #### How many shoppers will actually let AI fill the cart? Fewer than will let it advise them, but not a small number. Shopify’s holiday survey of 2,000 U.S. adults, run by Sapio Research in July, shows the drop-off at each step: U.S. shoppers and AI this holiday season: how far they’ll let it goLikely to use AI for at least one shopping task60%Comfortable letting AI recommend the right product48%Comfortable letting AI build the cart (they complete the purchase)40%Trust AI to make the purchase for them31%Source: Shopify Holiday Retail 2026, U.S. country fact sheet (2,000 U.S. adults, Sapio Research, July 2026) Groceries sit at the easy end of that curve. In an Amex Trendex survey released October 6, 52% of U.S. consumers said they’d be comfortable letting an AI agent buy everyday, low-cost items such as household essentials and groceries, against 15% for high-value items like electronics. CivicScience’s first Agentic Retail Report (Oct 15) puts AI shopping adoption at 37% of U.S. adults, with grocery tied with electronics at 32% for AI-assisted shopping, the highest of any category. The money is real too. Adobe forecasts $26.1 billion in online grocery sales this holiday season, up 10.3%, and AI-referred traffic to U.S. retail sites up 130%, with the biggest jump, 159%, on Thanksgiving Day itself. #### Why won’t this show up in your analytics? Because most of it happens inside the retailer. Sparky, Kroger’s assistant and Instacart’s Cart Assistant, already live at Food Bazaar, Heritage Grocers Group and Woodman’s with ALDI U.S. among those to follow, never send a click to your site. The sale lands in the retailer’s data as an ordinary order. Off-retailer AI is murky as well. CivicScience found 61% of AI shoppers research on one platform and buy somewhere else. In his October 27 roundup, Scot Wingo said his team saw missing tracking parameters on some ChatGPT desktop links and fewer product cards in some answers, observations rather than a study. If your plan is to watch ChatGPT referrals in GA4 through November, you’ll miss most of the story. #### What should a CPG brand do in the next four weeks? Thanksgiving is November 26. Most of this can still get done. - Run the Grocery Dive prompt yourself. Use the Kroger, Safeway, Walmart and Instacart assistants, plus your own category’s version (“stocking stuffers for a 10-year-old”, “Friendsgiving snacks for 12”). Note which brand fills your ingredient slot, the pack size and the price. Run it again next week, because answers move. - Treat retailer bundles and recipe hubs as AI shelf space. Walmart built recipes around its basket, and Sparky adds the basket. Getting into those bundles is a category-management conversation with the buyer, so start it now for Christmas and next year. - Write your titles in recipe language. Our view: an assistant matching “french fried onions for green bean casserole” to a SKU does better when the title says exactly that, with the size. Check the first lines of your retailer descriptions for the words a recipe would use. - State servings and pack size plainly. “Dinner for 10” is a quantity problem. Make it easy to work out how many cans or boxes that takes. - Price for the comparison. In the open AI carts, national brands showed up next to cheaper store brands. A rollback or promo in the week before Thanksgiving makes that pick easier to keep. - Measure with retailer data. Retail media reports and sales by item will tell you more than referral traffic this season. We wrote about the other half of this, outside agents shopping Walmart and Amazon’s choice to block them, in our post on Walmart’s agent rules, and about why known brands start ahead in ChatGPT’s brand shortlist. For quick holiday charts on ecommerce and CPG, see Xenalytics. If you want to know which of your SKUs ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity name for holiday prompts today, run a free SKU audit or book a demo. More on how we score products is on the Searchpanel homepage. Is your brand ready for AI-built holiday carts? Check what’s true today - We ran a Thanksgiving-for-10 prompt on the Walmart, Kroger, Safeway and Instacart assistants and logged who filled our slot. - We repeat that test weekly through the holidays. - We know which retailer bundles, meal baskets and recipe hubs feature our category, and whether we’re in them. - Our product titles use the words a recipe would (e.g. “french fried onions”, “pure pumpkin”), plus the size. - Servings and pack size are clear in the first lines of every retailer description. - Our price or promo for the week before Thanksgiving is set and live at our top retailers. - We track holiday results with retailer sales and retail media data, not just referral traffic. 0 of 7 Start by running the prompt. It takes ten minutes and you’ll learn a lot. FAQ: Q: Can Walmart’s Sparky add a Thanksgiving meal to my cart? A: Yes. Walmart said on Oct 28, 2026 that customers can ask Sparky to add its Holiday Meal Basket, 26 items that serve 10 for $35, to their online cart. It’s available through Dec 24. Q: Which brands are in Walmart’s 2026 Holiday Meal Basket? A: Five national brands: Butterball, Stove Top, Campbell’s, Jet-Puffed and “JIFFY”. Nine of the 17 products are Walmart’s Great Value brand and three are unbranded fresh produce. Q: Do grocery AI assistants choose national brands or store brands? A: Both. In one Grocery Dive test, Safeway’s assistant mixed store brands with Pillsbury, Ocean Spray, French’s and Libby’s, even where cheaper store brands existed. Preset retailer baskets lean on private label. Q: How can a CPG brand get picked by AI grocery assistants? A: Test the prompts shoppers use on each retailer’s assistant, use recipe words and sizes in product titles, state servings clearly, set holiday promos and work with buyers to get into retailer bundles and recipe hubs. Sources: - Walmart Meal Basket Serves 10 for $35 – $3.50 Per Person, Walmart, 2026-10-28: https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2026/10/walmart-holiday-meal-basket - More than a Store: Can AI plan my Thanksgiving meal?, Grocery Dive, 2026-10-22: https://www.grocerydive.com/news/more-than-a-store-ai-ecommerce-grocery-thanksgiving-meal-planning/833063/ - Shopify Holiday Retail 2026: United States fact sheet, Shopify, 2026-10-06: https://www.shopifyholidayretail.com/ - American Express Launches Playbook to Help Businesses Prepare for Agentic Commerce, American Express via Investing News Network, 2026-10-06: https://investingnews.com/american-express-launches-playbook-to-help-businesses-prepare-for-agentic-commerce-as-ai-changes-how-customers-search-shop-and-buy/ - CivicScience Launches the Agentic Retail Report, CivicScience, 2026-10-15: https://civicscience.com/civicscience-launches-the-agentic-retail-report-an-ongoing-benchmark-of-how-ai-is-reshaping-retail/ - Adobe: U.S. Holiday Shopping Season to Hit Record $275.1 Billion Online, Adobe, 2026-09-28: https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/09/adobe-us-holiday-shopping-season-to-hit-record - Instacart Brings Its AI-Powered Shopping Technology to Grocers’ Own Websites and Apps, Instacart, 2026-09-09: https://company.instacart.com/enterprise-blog/instacart-brings-its-ai-powered-shopping-technology-to-grocers-own-websites-and-apps - October Agentic Commerce News Roundup, Retailgentic, 2026-10-27: https://www.retailgentic.com/p/october-agentic-commerce-news-roundup ### ChatGPT picks its brands before it searches. What new data means for CPG URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/chatgpt-brand-shortlist-cpg Published: 2026-10-28 · Updated: 2026-10-28 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: ChatGPT, Fan-out queries, Brand visibility, AI search research, CPG Key takeaways: - Graphite found brands ChatGPT rarely names without search stay rare with search: a median 11% visibility even when they appear on at least 15% of the cited pages. - 59.6% of about 957,000 ChatGPT background searches for unbranded prompts already contained a brand name, per Graphite’s data reported by Search Engine Journal on Oct 26, 2026. - In a small Oct 27 test, 86.7% of software products in searched answers were already in ChatGPT’s queries, against 35% for physical products. Search changes answers more for physical goods. - Ranqo’s study of 102 brands found unbranded visibility of 72.9% for household names, 43.6% for mid-market brands like Olipop and 11.4% for small brands. - Archipel found the first-cited brand changes week to week 63.3% of the time, so measure repeatedly with search off and on. Most AI visibility advice starts from one assumption: get your page cited and the AI will recommend you. Two pieces of research published in the last two weeks say that’s only half the story. When ChatGPT searches the web to answer “what’s the best…”, it usually already has brands in mind before the first result comes back. The search mostly checks a shortlist the model built in training. If your brand isn’t on that shortlist, being mentioned on the pages it cites helps a lot less than you’d hope. That’s a big deal for food, beverage, beauty and household brands, and the details are more hopeful for physical products than the headline suggests. Here’s what the data says and what we’d do with it. #### What did Graphite find about ChatGPT and brand names? Graphite, a growth agency that sells AEO services, published an analysis on October 16 comparing logged-out ChatGPT answers to comparison prompts with search and without it. Search Engine Journal covered it on October 26. Three numbers stand out: - The no-search answer predicts the search answer. Across 3,115 brand and question pairs from 57 questions, brands ChatGPT rarely named without search were rarely named with it. Brands that appeared on at least 15% of the cited pages, but that ChatGPT named in under a quarter of its no-search answers, had a median visibility of just 11% when it searched. - Brands go into the search query itself. Graphite counted about 957,000 background searches (fan-out queries) from 22,953 prompts that named no brand. 59.6% of those queries contained a brand anyway, and 22.7% used a site: operator. - ChatGPT cites far more often than it did. On comparison prompts, the share of logged-out ChatGPT answers with citations rose from 56.6% in the week of August 3 to 88.5% in the week of September 28. Graphite’s argument is that brands should work on what models learn in training, not only on citations. It is correlational data from a vendor with something to sell. Still, the direction is hard to ignore. #### Did anyone reproduce it? Yes, on a small scale. On October 27, SaaS Link Building ran 20 unbranded prompts through OpenAI’s gpt-6-luna model via an API, once with search on and once with it off. 77 of the 82 fan-out queries (93.9%) named a brand. For the top pick, search on and search off agreed in 15 of 20 prompts. The part CPG teams should read twice is the split by product type. Sixteen prompts were about software, four about physical products: running shoes, robot vacuums, noise-cancelling headphones and meal kits. Products in ChatGPT’s searched answer that it had already named in its own search queriesSoftware promptsPhysical products - Already in its search queries86.7% - Picked up from what search found13.3% 52 of 60 products across 16 software prompts. Source: SaaS Link Building, 20-prompt test on gpt-6-luna via API, Oct 27, 2026 (one run per prompt) For software, search worked like a fact check. The model looked up pricing pages for vendors it had already picked. For physical products, search changed the answer. Search swapped stale model names the model remembered for current ones (Brooks Ghost 17 became Ghost 18), and review sites carried real weight. Only 50% of the physical products in the searched answers also showed up with search off, against 90% for software. Four prompts isn’t a market-wide rate, and the authors say so. But it fits what we see with consumer products: shelves change, flavors launch, packs get resized, and the model has to go looking. #### How much does being a known brand matter? A lot. The largest dataset on this comes from a June paper by Ranqo, another visibility vendor, covering 102,025 AI answers across 102 brands between March and May 2026. On each brand’s first tracking run, for prompts that didn’t name the brand, visibility fell into three clear tiers. Share of unbranded AI answers that mention the brand, first tracking runTier 1: global household names (e.g. Nike)72.9%Tier 2: established mid-market and regional brands (e.g. Olipop, Vuori)43.6%Tier 3: small and niche brands11.4%Source: Ranqo, “Generative Engine Optimization at Scale,” arXiv, Jun 18, 2026 (102 brands, Mar–May 2026) Olipop sits in that middle tier, which is roughly where a lot of growing CPG brands live. The same paper found that only 2.9% of citations pointed at the brand’s own site, while ranked “best of” listicles made up 21% of all citations, and YouTube was the top non-corporate source at 4.2%. The author co-founded Ranqo and the sample is 102 brands, so treat the exact numbers as a baseline, not a law. #### Why can’t one test tell you where you stand? Because the answers move. Archipel’s October AI Visibility Observatory looked at 406,626 answers from six AI engines to more than 1,700 buying questions between July 12 and October 11. The brand cited first changed from one week to the next 63.3% of the time. ChatGPT read 14.5 pages per answer and cited 3.8. Google AI Overviews appeared on 86.7% of tracked buying searches in October, up from 56.3% in July. Most of those questions were in French, about France, so the US picture may differ. Put the three studies together and you get a fairly simple model of how a CPG product gets recommended: - The model starts from brands it already knows for the category. - It searches to confirm facts and, for physical products, to update models, flavors and prices. - It leans on rankings, review sites and retailer pages far more than on your own site. - The result reshuffles week to week, so one screenshot proves nothing. #### What should a CPG brand do about it? First, measure the shortlist, not just the citations. Run your category’s unbranded questions (“best high-protein snack bar for kids”, “gentlest laundry detergent for sensitive skin”) through the API with search turned off. Graphite suggests at least 50 responses per prompt. We’d repeat the test whenever a major model ships. If you never appear with search off, a better product page alone probably won’t get you in. Second, earn your way onto the pages models learn from. That means category listicles, review sites, retailer pages and press, the places the Ranqo and Archipel data say engines lean on. Graphite estimates two to five months between a model’s knowledge cutoff and its release, so this is a slow lever. Start now, before the next model ships. Third, win the search step where physical products have an edge. Because search changes answers more for physical goods, current facts matter: the new flavor name, the current pack size, the price, the claims in the first lines of the description. Make sure retailer listings and your own pages agree. Fourth, check your robots.txt. OpenAI’s search crawler (OAI-SearchBot) and its training crawler (GPTBot) are controlled separately. Blocking the training crawler may keep you out of the shortlist you’re trying to get into. If you want to see which of your SKUs ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity name today, run a free SKU audit or book a demo and we’ll walk through your category. More on how we score products is on the Searchpanel homepage. Is your brand on the AI shortlist? Check what you’re doing today - We have a list of 10 to 20 unbranded questions shoppers ask in our category. - We run those questions with search off, at least 50 times each, and log whether we’re named. - We re-run the test when a major model ships, not just once a quarter. - We know which listicles, review sites and retailer pages AI cites for our category, and whether we’re on them. - Our newest flavors, sizes and model names are live and consistent on Amazon, Walmart.com, Target.com and our own site. - Our key claims appear in the first lines of every product description. - Our robots.txt and CDN settings let both OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot reach our pages (or we chose otherwise on purpose). - We track results weekly, because the first-cited brand changes most weeks. 0 of 8 Start with the unbranded question list. Everything else builds on it. FAQ: Q: Does ChatGPT decide which brands to recommend before it searches? A: Often, yes. Graphite found 59.6% of ChatGPT’s background searches for unbranded prompts already named a brand, and a small Oct 27, 2026 test found 93.9% did. The search then mostly checks that shortlist. Q: Is getting cited by AI enough to get recommended? A: Not on its own. In Graphite’s data, brands ChatGPT rarely named without search had a median 11% visibility with search, even when they appeared on at least 15% of the pages it cited. Q: Is it different for physical products like food or beauty? A: It appears so. In one small test, only 35% of physical products in searched answers had been in ChatGPT’s queries, against 86.7% for software, and search swapped stale model names for current ones. The sample was four physical prompts. Q: How should a CPG brand measure its AI shortlist position? A: Run your category’s unbranded questions through the API with search off, at least 50 times per prompt as Graphite suggests, and track results weekly because the first-cited brand changes most weeks. Sources: - ChatGPT Rarely Named Some Brands Even When Sources Mentioned Them, Search Engine Journal, 2026-10-26: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/chatgpt-brand-mentions-cited-pages-graphite/594379/ - ChatGPT Searches Name Brands First: Our 20-Prompt Test, SaaS Link Building, 2026-10-27: https://saaslinkbuilding.com/blog/chatgpt-fan-out-brand-names-test/ - Generative Engine Optimization at Scale: Measuring Brand Visibility Across AI Search Engines, arXiv (Ranqo), 2026-06-18: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.20065 - AI Visibility Observatory: October 2026 Edition, Archipel, 2026-10-11: https://www.archipelmarketing.com/en/observatory/editions/2026-10 ### Walmart let the AI shopping agents in. Amazon kept the door shut. Here’s what CPG brands should do this week URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/blog/walmart-ai-shopping-agents-cpg-brands Published: 2026-10-27 · Updated: 2026-10-27 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Topics: Agentic commerce, Walmart, Amazon, ChatGPT Shopping, Product data Key takeaways: - Walmart announced Agent Profiles and an MCP-based Agent Gateway on Oct 21, 2026. Outside AI agents will be able to shop for customers, including their regular “usuals.” Amazon is still blocking agents it hasn’t approved, Meta’s Muse among them. - Since Oct 10, ChatGPT’s “Shop at” buttons have sent 56% of shoppers to big-box retailers and about 5% to the brand’s own store, in Wislr’s tracking. When the brand’s product page was a source, that rose to 34%. - HFS Research found only 14% of consumer brands live on third-party agent discovery, against 38% of marketplaces. - This week: rewrite the first 40 words of your top SKU descriptions, check your retailer listings, and claim replenishment items before agents learn someone else’s brand. Last Wednesday, Walmart did the thing Amazon has spent a year fighting. It invited other companies’ AI agents to shop its site, and it published the rules they have to follow. If you sell groceries, beauty or household staples, that matters more than another chatbot feature launch. It decides whose agent gets to put your product in a cart, and how that agent works out what a household “usually” buys. Here’s what happened over the last seven days, what the numbers say, and what we’d do about it on Monday. #### What did Walmart announce on October 21? Three things, according to Walmart’s own announcement: - Agent Profiles, launching “in the next month.” Every AI agent a customer uses gets its own profile inside their Walmart account. Shoppers can approve every purchase or give the agent a spending limit. Walmart’s examples are $50, $100 or $200. - The Walmart Agent Gateway, a beta for companies and developers that lets agents shop through MCP instead of clicking through a website built for people. - Terms for AI agents. Purchases need customer approval by default, agents never see card details, and agents that break the rules get blocked. The line CPG teams should read twice is about “usuals.” Walmart says the gateway will help an agent find a customer’s regular items (its example is “a particular brand of milk”) without handing the agent that shopper’s wider purchase history. Now read that from the brand side. Walmart keeps the memory of what a household rebuys. The agent asks, Walmart answers with the usual. If your SKU is the usual, it gets reordered with no comparison step at all. If it isn’t, you have to win the moment a shopper asks for something new, and that moment now happens inside someone else’s chat window. #### Why is Amazon going the other way? Amazon cut Meta’s Muse agent off from Amazon.com on September 20, less than two weeks after Muse launched, GeekWire reported. Amazon said it never agreed to any of it: Meta didn’t tell Amazon that Muse would shop its store, and the agent doesn’t identify itself while browsing. It has also sued Perplexity over the Comet browser. The money explains a lot. GeekWire notes Amazon made more than $68 billion in ad revenue last year, and that business depends on people looking at Amazon’s pages. GlobalData’s Neil Saunders told Axios that Amazon is protecting “its closed ecosystem” and likely worries about what agents do to its ad business. Amazon is betting on its own tools instead, led by Alexa for Shopping, which it launched in May. So for now you need two playbooks. On Amazon, the AI that matters is Amazon’s. Everywhere else, Walmart included, the agent might be ChatGPT, Gemini, Muse or something that hasn’t shipped yet. #### Where do ChatGPT’s shopping clicks actually go? A week and a half before Walmart’s news, ChatGPT started putting “Shop at” buttons under the products it recommends. Wislr tracked those buttons across four product brands from October 10 to 13 and published where they pointed. Use the tabs to compare. Where ChatGPT’s “Shop at” buttons sent shoppers, Oct 10–13, 2026All buttonsBrand’s page was a sourceBrand’s page wasn’t a source - The brand’s own store5% - Big-box retailers56% - Competitor brands and specialist retailers39% Across four tracked product brands. Big-box means Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Amazon and similar. Source: Wislr, “ChatGPT now puts a ‘Shop at’ button in its shopping answers,” Oct 14, 2026 (updated Oct 16) Only about 5% of the buttons sent people to the brand’s own store. More than half went to a big-box retailer. ChatGPT still named the brands about as often as before (40% of shopping answers before October 10, 43% after), so a prompt tracker would have shown nothing wrong while the checkout quietly moved to a retailer. The second tab is the useful one. When the brand’s own product page was among the sources ChatGPT read, 34% of the buttons went to the brand. When it wasn’t, 6%. Wislr calls the direction solid and the exact percentages provisional, since it’s four days of data. We’d read it the same way. Two practical things fall out of this. Your own product pages need to be readable by a machine that doesn’t run JavaScript, with price, availability and Offer markup in the HTML your server sends. And your listings on Walmart.com and Target.com are now part of your AI visibility work, because that’s where a lot of these buttons land. One housekeeping note. Between October 8 and 15, ChatGPT’s outbound links carried no referrer and no UTM tag, a bug OpenAI confirmed to Adobe’s Cedric Huesler, per Wislr. If your ChatGPT referrals fell off a cliff that week, annotate the chart before someone builds a strategy on it. #### What does ChatGPT read on a product listing? On October 20, Masters of Search wrote up research that Metehan Yeşilyurt shared on LinkedIn, crediting Malte Landwehr. A ChatGPT debug API showed US shopping results coming from OpenAI’s own product index, called Labrador and built from product feeds, while European results still lean on Google Shopping. The same data suggested ChatGPT reads only the first 50 tokens of a product description, about 40 words. That 40-word figure is one team’s measurement, not an OpenAI spec. It’s still a cheap test to run. A lot of CPG descriptions open with brand story (“Born in a small kitchen in Vermont…”) and leave the things shoppers actually ask about, like nut-free, 10g protein or fragrance-free, until sentence four. Paste one of yours in. The 40-word testProduct descriptionBorn in a tiny Vermont kitchen in 2014, our family recipe has always been about slowing down and enjoying the simple things. Every bar is baked in small batches by people who care, using oats we source from farms we know by name. Today we're proud to share that same goodness with families everywhere. Each bar is nut-free, school-safe, gluten-free and has 10g of protein.Claims that must be in there (comma separated)The sample is made up for illustration. Nothing you paste leaves your browser. #### Are CPG brands ready for agent shoppers? Mostly not, by their own account. HFS Research and EXL surveyed 101 senior US retail and consumer-brand executives in September and published the results on October 26. How 101 US retail and consumer-brand executives see agent-led shoppingExpect agents to affect revenue within two years84%Say an agent reading their product data will count for more than years of brand building75%See agent-led shopping as a serious or existential threat71%Have nothing live on either front today68%Marketplaces live on third-party agent discovery38%Consumer brands live on third-party agent discovery14%Source: HFS Research with EXL, “Brands have 24 months to win over the AI shopper,” Oct 26, 2026 (survey fielded Sept 2026) The bottom two bars are the ones we keep thinking about. 14% of consumer brands are live on third-party agent discovery, against 38% of marketplaces. Marketplaces run on structured catalogs, so agents already find them. Brands own the better product truth, then bury it in packaging copy, spec PDFs and agency decks. HFS tells brands to “claim the defaults early,” starting with replenishment and repeat purchases. Put that next to Walmart’s “usuals” and you get the same message from two directions. Once an agent has learned a household habit, changing it costs far more than winning it now. Some big companies are moving. This morning Coty announced a partnership with Brandlight to build generative engine optimization into its brand teams. Coty says pilot work on content, product pages, creator assets, digital PR and launch toolkits improved its brands’ visibility in AI recommendations, including on searches that didn’t name a brand. It published no numbers, so we’d file this as a budget signal rather than proof of method. Two weeks on the AI shelf - Oct 15, 2026GoogleUniversal Cart rolls out in the US across Search and the Gemini app. Source - Oct 15, 2026OpenAIFix starts restoring utm_source=chatgpt.com on ChatGPT links after a week without it. Source - Oct 20, 2026ChatGPT ShoppingResearch write-up: US results come from OpenAI’s Labrador index, Europe from Google Shopping. Source - Oct 21, 2026WalmartAgent Profiles, the MCP-based Agent Gateway beta and terms for AI agents. Source - Oct 26, 2026HFS ResearchSurvey: 14% of consumer brands live on agent discovery vs 38% of marketplaces. Source - Oct 27, 2026CotyPartnership with Brandlight on AI visibility across its beauty brands. Source #### What should a CPG brand manager do on Monday? None of this needs a new team. It needs someone who owns product data the way they’d own a revenue channel. Here’s the list we’d work through for your top 20 SKUs. Tick what’s already true and see where you land. Agent-ready check for your top 20 SKUs - The first 40 words of each description say what the product is, who it’s for and the two claims shoppers ask about most. - Allergens, certifications and pack sizes match across our site, Amazon, Walmart.com and Target.com. - Our product pages put price, availability and Offer schema in the server-rendered HTML. - Each size, flavor or scent has its own listing and its own feed entry. - We know which retailer ChatGPT’s “Shop at” button picks for our top five shopping prompts. - Our product feeds (Google Merchant Center, Shopify, retailer feeds) are complete, not just our Amazon listings. - Our analytics flags Oct 8–15 as a ChatGPT tracking gap and counts visits by utm_source=chatgpt.com. - Someone owns agent readiness for our replenishment SKUs and checks it every month. 0 of 8 Start with the first item this week. It costs nothing and you’ll learn a lot. Want to see where one product stands before you start? Our free SKU audit shows how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI answers treat it, with no account needed. If you’d rather walk through your catalog with us, book a demo. The short version: Walmart just made it easier for agents to rebuy the usual. Make sure the usual is you. FAQ: Q: Can AI agents shop at Walmart for customers? A: Yes, that’s Walmart’s plan. On Oct 21, 2026 Walmart said Agent Profiles would launch within a month and that its Agent Gateway, built on MCP, is starting as a beta for companies and developers. Customers approve purchases by default or set a spending limit, and agents never receive card details. Q: Does Amazon allow third-party AI shopping agents? A: Not without its agreement. Amazon blocked Meta’s Muse agent on Sept 20, 2026, citing its Conditions of Use, and has sued Perplexity over the Comet browser. Its own assistant is Alexa for Shopping. Q: Where do ChatGPT’s “Shop at” buttons send shoppers? A: In Wislr’s tracking of four product brands from Oct 10 to 13, 2026, 56% of the buttons pointed to big-box retailers, 39% to competitor brands and specialist retailers, and about 5% to the brand’s own store. When the brand’s own product page was among ChatGPT’s sources, the brand got 34% of the buttons. Q: How much of a product description does ChatGPT read? A: One research team, credited to Malte Landwehr and shared by Metehan Yeşilyurt, reported that ChatGPT Shopping reads only the first 50 tokens of a description, about 40 words. OpenAI hasn’t confirmed it, but putting your key claims first costs nothing. Sources: - Making It Possible for Agents to Shop on Behalf of Customers, Walmart, 2026-10-21: https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2026/10/Making-It-Possible-for-Agents-to-Shop-on-Behalf-of-Customers - AI shopping wars: Walmart welcomes AI agents while Amazon blocks Muse, Axios, 2026-10-21: https://www.axios.com/2026/10/21/walmart-amazon-agents-muse - Walmart welcomes external AI agents — with some guardrails, Retail Dive, 2026-10-22: https://www.retaildive.com/news/walmart-welcomes-external-ai-shopping-agents-terms-boundaries/833723/ - Amazon blocks Meta’s Muse AI assistant in new standoff over agentic shopping, GeekWire, 2026-09-20: https://www.geekwire.com/2026/Amazon-blocks-metas-muse-ai-assistant-in-new-standoff-over-agentic-shopping/ - ChatGPT now puts a “Shop at” button in its shopping answers, Wislr, 2026-10-16: https://www.wislr.com/articles/chatgpt-shop-at-buttons-big-box/ - ChatGPT Shopping runs on two different indexes in the US and Europe, Masters of Search, 2026-10-20: https://www.masters-of-search.com/the-brief/chatgpt-shopping-runs-on-two-different-indexes-in-the-us-and-europe - Brands have 24 months to win over the AI shopper, HFS Research, 2026-10-26: https://www.hfsresearch.com/research/brands-have-24-months-to-win/ - Coty and Brandlight Unveil Strategic Partnership to Strengthen Brand Visibility Across AI-powered Search and Discovery, Business Wire, 2026-10-27: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261027210871/en/Coty-and-Brandlight-Unveil-Strategic-Partnership-to-Strengthen-Brand-Visibility-Across-AI-powered-Search-and-Discovery - Google’s new Universal Cart launches today in the U.S., Google, 2026-10-15: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/universal-cart-launch/ ## Xenalytics infographics (full text) Interactive e-commerce and CPG infographics by XENA Intelligence, replicated on Searchpanel. Each entry cites its XENA original. ### Xenalytics No. 008: Walmart sells $150B online. Its ads are growing faster URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/walmart-ecommerce-advertising-growth Original: https://xenaintelligenceapp.com/xenalytics/walmart-ecommerce-advertising-growth (XENA Intelligence) Published: 2026-11-01 · Updated: 2026-11-01 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Walmart now books roughly one in five sales dollars online. The faster story sits on top of that traffic: Walmart Connect, the retail media arm, has grown 40% or more for four straight quarters. ## A $150 billion online store hiding inside a supercenter Ask most shoppers where Americans buy online and they'll say Amazon. Walmart's filings tell you to add a second name. In fiscal 2026, the year that ended January 31, 2026, Walmart reported about $150.4 billion in e-commerce net sales across its three segments. Six years earlier the same figure was about $39.7 billion. That total is our sum of three numbers Walmart discloses in every 10-K: about $99.6 billion from Walmart U.S., $35.8 billion from Walmart International (Flipkart in India, Walmex in Mexico, plus China and Canada) and $15.0 billion from Sam's Club U.S. Use the toggles on the chart above to see each one, or switch to the online share of Walmart U.S. sales. That last view is the one worth a pause. In fiscal 2020, e-commerce was 7.1% of Walmart U.S. net sales. In fiscal 2026 it was 20.6%. One in five dollars at the biggest U.S. retailer now starts with a tap, even if a store associate packs the order. For context, the Census Bureau put e-commerce at 17.1% of all U.S. retail sales in Q2 2026, which you can track in our U.S. e-commerce share chart. The two figures aren't measured the same way, so treat them as a rough comparison, not a ranking. #### Why the curve didn't flatten after 2020 The pandemic gave Walmart's online business its biggest single jump: U.S. e-commerce grew almost 80%, from $24.1 billion to $43.0 billion, in fiscal 2021. What happened next is more interesting. Growth slowed to about 12% a year for two years, then picked back up to roughly 21% to 24% a year from fiscal 2024 on. Walmart's own explanation is mostly about speed. Its stores double as warehouses, and the company keeps pointing to store-fulfilled delivery as the engine. In Q2 FY27 (May to July 2026), store-fulfilled delivery grew about 43%, and deliveries promised in under three hours made up about 37% of store-fulfilled orders. Walmart U.S. e-commerce has now grown 20% or more for ten straight quarters. ### Where Walmart's online sales come from E-commerce net sales by segment, $ billions. Drag the year slider or press play, and tap a slice. Sources: Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2021; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2022; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2023; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2024; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2025; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026. Note: Approximate segment amounts from each 10-K. International includes Flipkart (India), Walmex (Mexico and Central America), China and Canada.Data tableWhere Walmart's online sales come fromYearWalmart U.S.Walmart InternationalSam's Club U.S.Total FY2020$24.1B$11.8B$3.8B$39.7B FY2021$43.0B$16.6B$5.3B$64.9B FY2022$47.8B$18.5B$6.9B$73.2B FY2023$53.4B$20.3B$8.4B$82.1B FY2024$65.4B$24.8B$9.9B$100.1B FY2025$79.3B$29.5B$12.1B$120.9B FY2026$99.6B$35.8B$15.0B$150.4B The mix by segment barely moves, which surprised us. Walmart U.S. has been about two-thirds of the online total in every year since fiscal 2021. Drag the slider on the donut and watch the slices hold their shape while the whole ring grows. Sam's Club is small, but it grew at almost exactly the same pace as the rest. ### Compare any two fiscal years How many times bigger is Walmart's e-commerce business? Sources: Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2021; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2022; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2023; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2024; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2025; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026.Data tableCompare any two fiscal yearsPeriodValue FY2020$39.7B FY2021$64.9B FY2022$73.2B FY2023$82.1B FY2024$100.1B FY2025$120.9B FY2026$150.4B #### The faster business riding on top Here is the part that matters most for brands. Every online visit to Walmart is also an ad impression, and Walmart has gotten much better at selling them. Guess: how big was Walmart's global advertising business in fiscal 2026? Answer: $6.4B. Nearly $6.4 billion, up 46% including VIZIO, per Walmart's fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter release. For scale, Amazon reported $68.6 billion in advertising sales for calendar 2025, about 11 times as much. Sources: Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026; Amazon via SEC EDGAR, 2026 Walmart reports a "global advertising business" once a year in its fourth-quarter release. It was $2.7 billion in fiscal 2023, $3.4 billion in fiscal 2024, $4.4 billion in fiscal 2025 and nearly $6.4 billion in fiscal 2026. That last jump, 46%, includes VIZIO, the smart-TV maker Walmart bought in December 2024 for net cash of $1.9 billion. So don't read the whole leap as organic. ### Walmart global advertising business by fiscal year As stated in Walmart's fourth-quarter earnings releases. Tap a bar for the exact figure and growth rate. Sources: Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2023; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2024; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2025; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026. Note: Walmart describes fiscal 2026 as "nearly $6.4 billion" and fiscal 2024 as growth of "approximately 28%". Fiscal 2026 includes VIZIO, acquired in December 2024. Walmart records advertising either in net sales or as a reduction to cost of sales depending on the arrangement, so these figures are not a line in the income statement. Year-over-year growth computed from rounded figures will differ slightly from the reported rates (nearly 30%, 28%, 27%, 46%).Data tableWalmart global advertising business by fiscal yearPeriodAdvertising FY2023$2.7B FY2024$3.4B FY2025$4.4B FY2026$6.4B The cleaner signal is Walmart Connect, Walmart's U.S. retail media business, which Walmart reports excluding VIZIO. Switch the quarterly chart below to "Advertising." Walmart Connect grew in the 20s through most of fiscal 2025, moved into the low 30s in fiscal 2026, then hit 41% in Q4 FY26, 44% in Q1 FY27 and 43% in Q2 FY27. Now switch to "E-commerce." Walmart U.S. online sales grew 24% to 27% in those last three quarters. The ad business is growing faster than the traffic it sells against. ### Quarterly growth: e-commerce vs. advertising Year-over-year growth as reported each quarter. Switch between e-commerce and advertising, and tap the legend to hide a line. Sources: Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2024; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2024; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2024; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2024; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2025; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2025; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2025; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2025; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026. Note: Walmart's fiscal quarters end in April, July, October and January; Q2 FY27 is May to July 2026. Walmart Connect growth from Q1 FY26 excludes VIZIO; the global advertising figure from Q1 FY26 includes it, which is why it jumps to about 50%. Global e-commerce in Q4 FY25 (16%) was held back by the timing of Flipkart's Big Billion Days sale. The Q2 FY27 global ad figure counts VIZIO as part of Walmart U.S. advertising.Data tableQuarterly growth: e-commerce vs. advertisingPeriodAdvertising: Walmart Connect (U.S.)Advertising: Global advertising businessE-commerce: Walmart U.S. e-commerceE-commerce: Global e-commerce Q4 FY2422%33%17%23% Q1 FY2526%24%22%21% Q2 FY2530%26%22%21% Q3 FY2526%28%22%27% Q4 FY2524%29%20%16% Q1 FY2631%50%21%22% Q2 FY2631%46%26%25% Q3 FY2633%53%28%27% Q4 FY2641%37%27%24% Q1 FY2744%37%26%26% Q2 FY2743%38%24%23% Walmart CFO John David Rainey said as much on the August 20 call: for the model to work, ad growth has to outpace e-commerce growth, "and that's actually what we've been seeing." In the same quarter Walmart closed its purchase of Vibe, a self-serve ad platform, to reach smaller advertisers. Keep the scale in mind, though. Amazon reported $68.6 billion in ad sales for calendar 2025, roughly 11 times Walmart's figure. We broke that down in Amazon's revenue mix. Walmart is the challenger here, but it's the challenger growing at more than 40% a year. #### Marketplace sellers are the other half of the story Advertisers on Walmart aren't only big CPG brands buying sponsored listings. In Q4 FY25, Walmart said Walmart Connect growth was helped by a 50% increase in the number of marketplace sellers advertising. And the marketplace itself keeps speeding up. In Q2 FY27 (May to July 2026), which of these Walmart numbers grew fastest? Answer: U.S. marketplace sales. U.S. marketplace sales, up 52%. Walmart Connect grew 43% excluding VIZIO, Walmart U.S. e-commerce grew 24% and global membership fee revenue grew 17%. Walmart also said nearly 50% of its marketplace business now flows through its own fulfillment program for sellers (WFS), up nearly 4 points from a year earlier. Sources: Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026; Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026; Walmart, 2026 U.S. marketplace sales grew 52% in Q2 FY27. Nearly half of that marketplace business now flows through WFS, Walmart's fulfillment program for sellers. More third-party sellers means more competition for the same search results, more bidders for the same ad slots, and more listings fighting for the Buy Box on a shared product page. #### What it means for brands If you sell consumer products in the U.S., a few practical points follow from these numbers. Walmart is no longer a side channel. About $99.6 billion of U.S. online sales is a bigger pool than many brands' planning assumes. If your Walmart content, pricing and stock get less attention than Amazon's, you're leaving a growing share of shelf space to whoever pays attention. Plan for ad costs to rise with the auction. When ad sales grow 40% while e-commerce grows 25%, more money is chasing each shopper. Watch total ad cost against total sales (TACoS) rather than campaign-level numbers alone, and check whether organic rank is holding up as you spend. Fix the product data first. Walmart's search, its ads and its new AI shopping agents all read the same catalog fields. On October 21, 2026, Walmart opened a gateway for outside AI agents to shop on a customer's behalf, which we covered in Walmart's agent gateway post. Agents compare attributes, pack sizes and prices directly. Missing fields make a product hard to pick, however much you spend on ads. That is what agentic commerce looks like in practice. Measure across retailers, not one at a time. Walmart and Amazon report on different calendars and define e-commerce differently, and your own dashboards probably do too. A single view of sales, ad spend and share across marketplaces makes these trends visible early. We explain why in unified marketplace data. #### Methodology Annual e-commerce figures come from the revenue note in Walmart's 10-K filings for fiscal 2021 through fiscal 2026, which give an approximate e-commerce amount for each segment. Our all-Walmart total adds the three segments. The online share divides Walmart U.S. e-commerce by Walmart U.S. net sales from the same table. Quarterly growth rates and annual ad totals are quoted from Walmart's earnings releases, and the Q2 FY27 marketplace and fulfillment figures come from that quarter's presentation and call. Walmart counts store-fulfilled online orders and certain ad arrangements as e-commerce, so its figures are not directly comparable to Amazon's or the Census Bureau's. Full notes and every source are below. Sources: - Walmart Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026, Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416926000055/wmt-20260131.htm - Walmart Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2025, Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2025: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416925000021/wmt-20250131.htm - Walmart Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2024, Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2024: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416924000056/wmt-20240131.htm - Walmart Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2023, Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2023: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416923000020/wmt-20230131.htm - Walmart Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2022, Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2022: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416922000012/wmt-20220131.htm - Walmart Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2021, Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2021: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416921000033/wmt-20210131.htm - Walmart Q2 FY27 earnings release (August 20, 2026), Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416926000145/earningsreleasefy27q2.htm - Walmart Q2 FY27 earnings presentation (August 20, 2026), Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416926000145/earningspresentationfy27.htm - Walmart Q2 FY27 earnings call transcript (August 20, 2026), Walmart, 2026: https://corporate.walmart.com/content/dam/corporate/documents/newsroom/2026/08/20/walmart-releases-q2-fy27-earnings/q2-fy27-earnings-call-transcript.pdf - Walmart Q1 FY27 earnings release (May 21, 2026), Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416926000095/earningsreleasefy27q1.htm - Walmart Q4 and fiscal 2026 earnings release (February 19, 2026), Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416926000032/earningsreleasefy26q4.htm - Walmart Q3 FY26 earnings release (November 20, 2025), Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2025: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416925000177/earningsreleasefy26q3.htm - Walmart Q2 FY26 earnings release (August 21, 2025), Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2025: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416925000120/earningsreleasefy26q2.htm - Walmart Q1 FY26 earnings release (May 15, 2025), Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2025: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416925000069/earningsreleasefy26q1.htm - Walmart Q4 and fiscal 2025 earnings release (February 20, 2025), including 50% growth in marketplace seller advertiser counts, Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2025: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416925000010/earningsreleasefy25q4.htm - Walmart Q3 FY25 earnings release (November 19, 2024), Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2024: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416924000170/earningsreleasefy25q3.htm - Walmart Q2 FY25 earnings release (August 15, 2024), Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2024: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416924000131/earningsreleasefy25q2.htm - Walmart Q1 FY25 earnings release (May 16, 2024), Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2024: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416924000088/earningsreleasefy25q1.htm - Walmart Q4 and fiscal 2024 earnings release (February 20, 2024), Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2024: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416924000019/earningsreleasefy24q4.htm - Walmart Q4 and fiscal 2023 earnings release (February 21, 2023), Walmart via SEC EDGAR, 2023: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104169/000010416923000010/earningsreleasefy23q4.htm - Amazon.com, Inc. Form 10-K for 2025: disaggregation of net sales by group, Amazon via SEC EDGAR, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872426000004/R33.htm - E-Commerce Retail Sales as a Percent of Total Sales (ECOMPCTSA), US Census Bureau via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2026: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECOMPCTSA ### Xenalytics No. 007: e.l.f. Beauty grew 5.8x in six years. Here's who sells it now URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/elf-beauty-growth-retailer-mix Original: https://xenaintelligenceapp.com/xenalytics/elf-beauty-growth-retailer-mix (XENA Intelligence) Published: 2026-10-31 · Updated: 2026-10-31 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Seven straight years of growth, and a very different shelf. Target and Walmart still matter most, but Amazon, Sephora and e.l.f.'s own e-commerce now carry a much bigger share of the business. ## A $7 lipstick brand that kept compounding In the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2020, e.l.f. Beauty sold $282.9 million worth of makeup and skin care. Six fiscal years later the number was $1,636.5 million. That's about 5.8 times bigger, and the company says fiscal 2026 was its seventh straight year of growth in both net sales and market share. In the quarter ended June 30, 2026, net sales rose 36% to $479.4 million, which e.l.f. called its 30th consecutive quarter of growth. It then raised its fiscal 2027 outlook to $1,938 million to $1,968 million. Use the toggle on the chart above to split the total into United States and International. The US business is still most of it, at $1,292.4 million last year. International grew faster, though: from $27.6 million to $344.1 million, about 12 times. Outside the US, the 10-K names the UK, Canada and Germany as the main markets. International was 10% of sales in fiscal 2020 and 21% in fiscal 2026. Price is a big part of how e.l.f. got here. Citing Nielsen, the company says its e.l.f. Cosmetics products average about $7 in the US. Other leading mass cosmetics brands average $10 and prestige brands average $30. Nielsen counted four of the top 10 new products in all of mass cosmetics in 2025 as e.l.f.'s, after six in 2024. #### The customer list changed more than the headline did The more useful chart for anyone selling a consumer brand is built from a short note in each 10-K: which customers made up 10% or more of net sales. ### Share of e.l.f. net sales by retailer Only customers at 10% or more are disclosed, so gaps mean below 10%. Tap the legend to hide a line, or switch to estimated dollars. Sources: e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2020; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2021; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2022; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2023; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2024; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2025; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2026. Note: Percentages are from the concentration-of-risk note in each 10-K. Estimated dollars are a XENA calculation (share times total net sales) and carry rounding error of roughly half a point of sales.Data tableShare of e.l.f. net sales by retailerPeriod% of net sales: Target% of net sales: Walmart% of net sales: Ulta Beauty% of net sales: Amazon% of net sales: SephoraEst. $ millions: TargetEst. $ millions: WalmartEst. $ millions: Ulta BeautyEst. $ millions: AmazonEst. $ millions: Sephora FY202022%31%n/an/an/a$62M$88Mn/an/an/a FY202122%26%n/an/an/a$70M$83Mn/an/an/a FY202223%26%12%n/an/a$90M$102M$47Mn/an/a FY202325%20%15%n/an/a$145M$116M$87Mn/an/a FY202425%17%16%n/an/a$256M$174M$164Mn/an/a FY202523%16%12%12%n/a$302M$210M$158M$158Mn/a FY202618%13%n/a11%10%$295M$213Mn/a$180M$164M In fiscal 2020, Walmart (31%) and Target (22%) made up 53% of e.l.f.'s net sales between them. By fiscal 2026 the two together were down to 31%. Neither retailer shrank as an account. Switch the chart to estimated dollars and you'll see Walmart going from about $88 million to about $213 million. Target went from about $62 million to about $295 million, roughly where it was a year earlier. The rest of the business simply grew faster around them. Three other names show up along the way. Ulta Beauty crossed 10% in fiscal 2022, peaked at 16% in fiscal 2024, then fell below the disclosure line in fiscal 2026. Amazon first appears at 12% in fiscal 2025 and was 11% last year, which makes it e.l.f.'s third-largest customer. Sephora appears for the first time in fiscal 2026, at 10%. One caution on the gaps. A missing point means the retailer was under 10% or not separately disclosed. It doesn't mean e.l.f. sold nothing there. How Amazon reached 11% matters if you run a brand on Amazon. The filings don't say whether e.l.f. sells to Amazon wholesale, sells directly to shoppers through Seller Central, or both. They just call Amazon a customer. If you're weighing the two models for your own brand, our glossary entry on 1P vs. 3P on Amazon walks through the trade-offs. So does our look at how Amazon's own revenue mix has moved toward advertising. Which retailer was e.l.f. Beauty's biggest customer in fiscal 2026? Answer: Target. Target, at 18% of net sales, per the fiscal 2026 10-K. Walmart was 13%, Amazon 11% and Sephora 10%. Ulta Beauty, at 16% two years earlier, fell below the 10% disclosure line. Sources: e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2026; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2024 #### E-commerce went from a side channel to a quarter of sales The 10-K also splits net sales between national and international retailers and e-commerce. Drag the slider to watch the e-commerce slice grow. ### Retailers vs. e-commerce Share of net sales by channel. Drag the year slider or press play. Sources: e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2020; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2021; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2022; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2023; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2024; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2025; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2026. Note: FY2020 to FY2022 10-Ks call the second slice direct-to-consumer e-commerce; FY2023 onward say e-commerce channels.Data tableRetailers vs. e-commerceYearNational and international retailersE-commerce channelsTotal FY202092%8%100% FY202186%14%100% FY202290%10%100% FY202388%12%100% FY202484%16%100% FY202583%17%100% FY202676%24%100% E-commerce channels were 24% of net sales in fiscal 2026, up from 17% the year before. In fiscal 2020, direct-to-consumer e-commerce was 8%. Fiscal 2021, which ran from April 2020 to March 2021, spiked to 14% before easing back to 10%. The bigger move came in the last two years. The definition did change along the way, and you should know that before comparing the endpoints. Through fiscal 2022 the filings call the second slice direct-to-consumer e-commerce. From fiscal 2023 they say e-commerce channels. In fiscal 2020 e.l.f. also estimated that all digital sales, including retailer websites and Amazon, were about 11%, a few points above its own DTC number. So the trend is real, but the 8% and 24% don't measure exactly the same thing. e.l.f. Cosmetics is, in its words, the only top five mass cosmetics brand with its own direct-to-consumer e-commerce site. Its products are also sold on Amazon and TikTok Shop. #### rhode: a DTC brand bolted onto a retail brand The biggest single reason fiscal 2026 looks different is rhode, the skin care brand founded by Hailey Bieber. e.l.f. announced the deal in May 2025 and closed it on August 5, 2025. Guess: how much did rhode sell in the 12 months before e.l.f. agreed to buy it? Answer: $212M. $212 million in net sales in the 12 months ended March 31, 2025, per e.l.f.'s May 2025 deal announcement. At the time rhode sold through its own site, rhodeskin.com. e.l.f. agreed to pay up to $1 billion: $800 million at closing plus up to $200 million in earnout. Source: e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2025 The price was up to $1 billion: $800 million at closing plus up to $200 million more over three years if rhode hits its targets. At the time, rhode sold through its own website, and e.l.f. said it planned a first store launch with Sephora in North America and the UK. Once part of e.l.f., rhode made up about 18% of fiscal 2026 net sales, according to the 10-K. That works out to roughly $295 million (our calculation) for less than eight months of ownership. Put the pieces together and the channel shift makes sense. A brand built on its own site raised e-commerce's share. A planned Sephora launch lines up with Sephora reaching 10%. And Target and Walmart, still the two biggest accounts, became a smaller share of a much bigger company. #### Compare any two years ### Compare any two fiscal years How many times bigger is e.l.f. Beauty? Sources: e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2020; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2021; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2022; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2023; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2024; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2025; e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2026.Data tableCompare any two fiscal yearsPeriodValue FY2020$282.9M FY2021$318.1M FY2022$392.2M FY2023$578.8M FY2024$1,023.9M FY2025$1,313.5M FY2026$1,636.5M Pick fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2026 for the full 5.8 times. Pick fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2024 for the single biggest jump, a 77% increase in one year. #### What it means for brands Most CPG brands want to move from one or two big store accounts to a wider mix, and e.l.f. shows what that looks like. Target and Walmart still mattered; they just stopped being the whole story. Amazon became a 10% customer, the brand's own site and other e-commerce channels reached a quarter of sales, and a newer retailer came in through an acquisition. Each of those channels needs different work. Amazon brings content, reviews, the Buy Box and retail media. TikTok Shop runs on creators. Your own site is mostly about conversion. Few teams can see all of it in one place, which is why unified marketplace data matters. For a wider view of how big CPG companies are growing right now, see our breakdown of volume vs. price at the CPG giants. Our store brands chart covers the private-label competition at the same retailers. XENA's team runs marketplaces like these day to day for more than 120 brands through XENA 360, so a brand's online presence can grow with its distribution. #### Methodology Annual net sales, the US and international split, channel shares and customer shares all come from e.l.f. Beauty's Form 10-K filings for fiscal 2020 through fiscal 2026, which are linked below. Fiscal years end March 31. Where a later 10-K restated an earlier year, we use the later figure. That applies to the fiscal 2021 international number. Customer dollar figures and the rhode dollar estimate are our calculations from disclosed percentages, so they carry rounding error. The quarterly figures and the fiscal 2027 outlook come from e.l.f.'s August 5, 2026 earnings release. e.l.f. had not reported its September 2026 quarter when we wrote this, and we'll update the piece when it does. Sources: - e.l.f. Beauty Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026, e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1600033/000160003326000020/elf-20260331.htm - e.l.f. Beauty Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025, e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2025: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1600033/000160003325000016/elf-20250331.htm - e.l.f. Beauty Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024, e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2024: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1600033/000160003324000020/elf-20240331.htm - e.l.f. Beauty Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2023, e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2023: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1600033/000160003323000016/elf-20230331.htm - e.l.f. Beauty Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2022, e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2022: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1600033/000160003322000027/elf-20220331.htm - e.l.f. Beauty Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021, e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2021: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1600033/000160003321000030/elf-20210331.htm - e.l.f. Beauty Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2020, e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2020: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1600033/000160003320000023/q42020form10-k.htm - e.l.f. Beauty Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal 2026 Results (May 20, 2026), Exhibit 99.1, e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1600033/000160003326000018/q42026er-991.htm - e.l.f. Beauty Announces First Quarter Fiscal 2027 Results (August 5, 2026), Exhibit 99.1, e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1600033/000160003326000036/q12027er-991.htm - e.l.f. Beauty Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal 2025 Results (May 28, 2025), Exhibit 99.2, e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2025: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1600033/000160003325000013/q42025er-992.htm - e.l.f. Beauty Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire rhode in $1 Billion Deal (May 28, 2025), e.l.f. Beauty via SEC EDGAR, 2025: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1600033/000160003325000013/er991glazemasterpressrelea.htm ### Xenalytics No. 006: Volume or price? How 7 CPG giants grew in Q3 2026 URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/cpg-giants-q3-2026-volume-vs-price Original: https://xenaintelligenceapp.com/xenalytics/cpg-giants-q3-2026-volume-vs-price (XENA Intelligence) Published: 2026-10-28 · Updated: 2026-10-28 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Four of the seven grew mainly by selling more. Three leaned on price. Toggle the chart to see who sold more units and who charged more. ## Two ways to grow, and this quarter you could see both Every big packaged-goods company reports a headline growth number, and every one of them breaks it into two parts: selling more stuff, and charging more for it. For most of 2022 and 2023, price did nearly all the work. The question investors kept asking this October was whether shoppers were back to buying more. The answer from the seven companies in the chart above is: it depends who you ask. Coca-Cola, Unilever, P&G and Nestlé got most of their Q3 2026 growth from volume. Danone, Reckitt and PepsiCo got most of theirs from price. Use the toggle to flip between Organic growth, Volume and Price / mix and watch the order change. A quick word on the numbers before reading too much into them. Each company uses its own definition (organic sales, underlying sales growth, like-for-like), and they don't all measure volume the same way. Nestlé's "real internal growth" includes mix, for example, while P&G splits volume, pricing and mix into three columns. The notes at the bottom spell out every difference. The direction is clear even so. #### The volume-led four Coca-Cola posted the biggest number: organic revenue up 7%, with concentrate sales up 7% and price/mix up just 1%. There is a catch. Concentrate shipments ran two points ahead of unit case volume, which grew 5%, so part of the volume was timing. The price/mix line is more interesting than it looks: Coca-Cola said on its earnings call that it took about four points of pricing, and three of them were eaten by unfavorable mix, mostly geographic. On the earnings call, the company said unit case growth was led by India, China, Mexico and Brazil. North America unit cases were flat. Unilever grew underlying sales 5.2%, with 2.9 points from volume and 2.3 from price. Price picked up on purpose this quarter, as the company passed through higher commodity costs in Home Care and Personal Care. Its Power Brands grew 5.8% with 3.3% volume, and the home and personal care side grew 7.0% with 4.1% volume. Foods was flat. Unilever now expects at least 3% volume growth for the full year. P&G grew organic sales 4% in its July–September quarter: 2.4 points of volume, 1.1 of mix and 0.4 of pricing. All 10 product categories and all six regions grew, and 29 of its top 50 category-country combinations held or gained share. Nestlé grew 4.0% organically, with real internal growth of 2.8% and pricing of 1.1%. That RIG figure is the one Nestlé has been working toward, and it was positive in every zone. Emerging markets grew 6.8% with 4.3% RIG. #### The price-led three Danone is the clearest price story. Like-for-like sales rose 4.0%, but price contributed 3.6 points and volume/mix only 0.4. In North America it was starker still: +3.0% price, −0.6% volume/mix. Core Reckitt grew 3.3%, of which 3.2 points were price/mix and 0.1 was volume. The averages hide a lot here. Emerging markets grew 8.0% with 2.3% volume, while North America fell 1.3% because manufacturing constraints held back Lysol supply even as demand stayed strong. PepsiCo grew organic revenue 3.1%, up from 2.7% for the year to date, and the components in its reconciliation table show about 0.5 points of volume and 3 points of effective net pricing. In North American snacks the pattern ran the other way: savory volumes and volume share improved, but effective net pricing was lower, which PepsiCo ties to its affordability initiatives. ### How much of the growth was volume? Switch the metric to re-sort the seven companies. Sources: The Coca-Cola Company, 2026; Unilever, 2026; Procter & Gamble, 2026; Nestlé, 2026; Danone, 2026; Reckitt, 2026; PepsiCo, 2026; Procter & Gamble via SEC EDGAR, 2026; The Motley Fool, 2026. Note: Volume share of growth is a XENA calculation: reported volume contribution divided by reported organic growth, using the rounded figures shown. Coca-Cola's 100% uses concentrate sales; on unit case volume (+5%) it would be about 71%.Data tableHow much of the growth was volume?ItemVolume share of growthOrganic growthVolumePrice / mix Coca-Cola100%+7.0%+7.0%+1.0% Unilever56%+5.2%+2.9%+2.3% P&G60%+4.0%+2.4%+1.5% Nestlé70%+4.0%+2.8%+1.1% Danone10%+4.0%+0.4%+3.6% Reckitt (Core)3%+3.3%+0.1%+3.2% PepsiCo16%+3.1%+0.5%+3.0% Sort the ranking by Volume share of growth to see the split most plainly. It is our own calculation, volume divided by total organic growth, and it runs from nearly all volume at Coca-Cola to almost none at Reckitt. Which of these companies got the most growth from price in Q3 2026? Answer: Danone. Danone. Its like-for-like sales rose 4.0%, with price contributing +3.6% and volume/mix just +0.4%, per its Q3 2026 release. Unilever's price growth was 2.3%, P&G's pricing was 0.4% (plus 1.1% mix) and Nestlé's was 1.1%. Sources: Danone, 2026; Unilever, 2026; Procter & Gamble, 2026; Nestlé, 2026 #### Inside one portfolio: P&G by category A company-wide number can hide very different businesses underneath. P&G is a good example, because it publishes the split for every segment. ### Inside P&G: which categories sold more units? July–September 2026. Toggle between organic sales growth and organic volume by segment. Source: Procter & Gamble, 2026. Note: From the net sales drivers table in P&G's fiscal Q1 2027 release. Grooming and Health Care grew sales while selling fewer units, on pricing and mix.Data tableInside P&G: which categories sold more units?PeriodOrganic salesOrganic volume Fabric & Home Care+4.8%+4.3% Beauty+5.4%+2.2% Grooming+4.5%−0.4% Baby, Feminine & Family+3.0%+2.3% Health Care+2.7%−2.9% Fabric & Home Care (Tide, Ariel, Dawn) grew organic sales 4.8% on 4.3% more volume. That's real demand. Grooming grew 4.5% while selling 0.4% fewer units, and Health Care grew 2.7% on 2.9% fewer units. Those two segments are growing on pricing and mix, not on more shoppers putting more items in the cart. The same split shows up elsewhere this season. L'Oréal, which doesn't publish a volume-price split and so isn't in the charts, grew like-for-like sales 7.2% in Q3 and says its growth was driven mainly by mix and volume. It also reports e-commerce growth of around 17% for the first nine months, far ahead of its overall rate. Guess: how much did P&G sell in its July–September 2026 quarter? Answer: $23.3B. $23.3 billion in net sales, up 4% from $22.4 billion a year earlier, per P&G's fiscal Q1 2027 release. That is about $253 million a day. Source: Procter & Gamble, 2026 #### What it means for brands When a category grows on volume, the fight is for the extra units: who gets found, who gets picked, whose listing converts. When it grows on price, the fight is over whether shoppers keep paying more, and the cheaper option sitting next to you on the shelf or the search results page becomes the threat. Our store-brand share analysis shows how much of each category has already gone to retailers' own labels. Either way, more of that fight now happens online. A few practical points for brand teams reading these results: - Know which kind of growth your category is getting. If your segment looks like P&G Health Care (prices up, units down), protect the price gap with better content, reviews and claims on every product page. Our AI-ready product listing checklist is a good place to start. - Fight for units where they're being won. Nestlé, Unilever, Coca-Cola and Reckitt all pointed to emerging markets for their volume, and L'Oréal's e-commerce is growing far faster than the group. Marketplaces such as Amazon, Noon and Talabat reward availability, the Buy Box and steady retail media spend more than one-off promotions. - Measure share, not just sales. P&G reports share across its top 50 category-country combinations for a reason. Online, the equivalent is share of search and share of voice in AI answers, and you need them in one place. See why unified marketplace data matters. This is the work XENA's team does with brands through XENA 360: running the marketplace day to day so that a brand's share of the online shelf keeps pace with what the company tells investors. #### Methodology We took each figure from the company's own Q3 2026 earnings release or trading statement, published between October 8 and October 28, 2026, and linked below. Totals and components are shown as reported and rounded, so they may not add exactly. "Volume share of growth" and the "mainly volume" count are our own calculations from those rounded figures. Colgate-Palmolive and Kimberly-Clark had not yet published full Q3 2026 results with a volume and price split when this was written, so they are not included. We'll update the piece as they report. Sources: - P&G Announces Fiscal Year 2027 First Quarter Results (Exhibit 99.1), Procter & Gamble, 2026: https://us.pg.com/newsroom/news-releases/PG-Announces-Fiscal-Year-2027-First-Quarter-Results/ - P&G Q1 FY 2027 Results, earnings release slides (October 22, 2026), Procter & Gamble via SEC EDGAR, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/80424/000008042426000252/slides.htm - Q3 2026 Trading Statement: Continued strong performance in the third quarter, Unilever, 2026: https://www.unilever.com/news/press-and-media/press-releases/2026/continued-strong-performance-in-the-third-quarter/ - Third-quarter and nine-month 2026 sales, Nestlé, 2026: https://www.nestle.com/media/pressreleases/allpressreleases/nine-month-sales-2026 - PepsiCo Reports Third-Quarter 2026 Results (Q3 2026 8-K Exhibit 99.1), PepsiCo, 2026: https://investors.pepsico.com/docs/pepsico-5v9wci20/media/Files/investors/q3-2026-earnings-release.pdf - Coca-Cola Reports Third Quarter 2026 Results and Raises Full Year Guidance, The Coca-Cola Company, 2026: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/media-center/coca-cola-reports-third-quarter-2026-results - Coca-Cola (KO) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript, The Motley Fool, 2026: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/27/coca-cola-ko-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/ - Solid performance in Q3: broad-based growth across categories and geographies, Danone, 2026: https://www.danone.com/content/dam/corp/global/danonecom/investors/en-all-publications/2026/pressreleases/prdanone281026.pdf - Q3 Results 2026: Powerbrands driving continued growth, Reckitt, 2026: https://www.reckitt.com/news/q3-results-2026/ - Sales at 30 September 2026, L'Oréal, 2026: https://www.loreal-finance.com/eng/press-release/sales-30-september-2026 ### Xenalytics No. 005: AI shoppers went from converting 38% worse to 60% better in 16 months URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/ai-shopping-traffic-conversion Original: https://xenaintelligenceapp.com/xenalytics/ai-shopping-traffic-conversion (XENA Intelligence) Published: 2026-10-27 · Updated: 2026-10-27 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Traffic from ChatGPT-style assistants to US retail sites is still growing fast. The bigger story is quality: AI-referred shoppers now buy more often than everyone else. ## From curiosity to customers When shoppers first started clicking links from ChatGPT-style assistants to retail websites, the traffic was large in percentage terms but weak in commercial terms. Adobe, which analyzes more than a trillion visits to US retail sites, found that in March 2025 AI-referred visitors were 38% less likely to buy than visitors from other channels such as paid search and email. Sixteen months later, that had flipped. In July 2026, AI-referred visits converted 60% better than non-AI traffic, the eleventh straight month AI traffic came out ahead. In March 2025, how did AI-referred shoppers convert compared with other visitors? Answer: 38% worse. 38% worse. A year later, in March 2026, they converted 42% better, and by July 2026, 60% better (Adobe). Source: Adobe Digital Insights, 2026 That reversal, from 38% worse to 60% better, is the most important fact in AI shopping right now. It means AI assistants are no longer just a research toy. They send shoppers who are ready to buy. #### Engagement tells the same story Adobe's other measures point the same way. In July 2026, visitors arriving from AI sources spent 59% more time on retail sites, bounced 33% less and added items to their carts 28% more often than other visitors. Adobe also found these visitors generated 53% more revenue per visit. The likely reason is simple. A shopper who asks an assistant for "the best waterproof hiking boots under $150" arrives on a product page with most of the research already done. The assistant has narrowed the choices; the website just has to close the sale. #### Traffic is still growing, just from a bigger base ### Year-over-year growth in AI traffic to US retail sites As reported by Adobe for each period. Periods differ in length, so compare with care. Striped = forecast. Sources: Adobe, 2025; Digital Commerce 360, 2025; Adobe Digital Insights, 2026; Digital Commerce 360, 2026; Adobe Digital Insights, 2026; Adobe via Business Wire, 2026. Note: *Holiday 2026 (Nov–Dec) is Adobe's forecast, not a measurement. Growth rates fall as the base grows: a smaller percentage now means more visits.Data tableYear-over-year growth in AI traffic to US retail sitesPeriodYoY growth Holiday 2024+1,300% Jul 2025+4,700% Holiday 2025+693% Q1 2026+393% May 2026+138% Jul 2026+62% Holiday 2026* (forecast)+130% Adobe's traffic growth figures look dramatic, and they need careful reading. Each bar covers a different period: holiday seasons, single months or a quarter. The very large early figures (+1,300% in the 2024 holiday season and +4,700% in July 2025) reflect a tiny starting base. As the base has grown, the percentages have come down: +393% in the first quarter of 2026, +138% in May and +62% in July. A smaller percentage of a much larger base still means many more visits. Adobe says AI traffic to US retail sites in May 2026 was up 1,324% from October 2024. Adobe forecasts AI traffic will rise another 130% during the 2026 holiday season (November–December), but that is a projection, not a measurement. In Adobe's survey, 39% of US consumers said they had used AI for online shopping, and 85% of them said it improved their experience. The biggest player inside a single store is moving too. Amazon said in October 2025 that 250 million customers had used its Rufus shopping assistant that year. It said customers who used Rufus during a shopping trip were 60% more likely to complete a purchase, and that Rufus was on track to deliver more than $10 billion in additional annualized sales. #### The catch: AI can't read much of the store Here is the problem for retailers and brands. AI assistants can only recommend what they can read. Adobe's AI Content Visibility Checker scores how much of a web page large language models can actually parse. A score of 66% means a third of the page is invisible to AI. ### How much of a retail page can AI actually read? Adobe AI Content Visibility Checker scores: the share of a page's content machines can read. Toggle page type or retail category. Sources: Adobe Digital Insights, 2026; Adobe Digital Insights, 2026. Note: The July 2026 category scores come from an expanded set of retail sites, whose average homepage score was 61%, versus 75% for the April cohort.Data tableBy page type (Apr 2026)ItemBy page type (Apr 2026) Returns/exchanges82% Contact us81% FAQ80% Customer service79% Loyalty/membership78% Homepage75% Category pages74% Store locator73% Product pages66% Homepages by category (Jul 2026)ItemHomepages by category (Jul 2026) Apparel76% Electronics70% Cosmetics68% Sporting goods67% Furniture & home64% General merchandise63% Grocery59% The results are sobering. Across US retail sites in April 2026, product pages, the pages that actually make the sale, scored lowest, at 66%. Homepages averaged 75% and category pages 74%. Help, returns and FAQ pages scored higher, near 80%, which makes sense: they are mostly plain text. Toggle to Homepages by category and grocery stands out at the bottom with 59%, below general merchandise (63%) and well below apparel (76%). For CPG brands, that is a direct warning. The shelf where your products live online is among the hardest for AI to read. Adobe's own numbers move around. The April 2026 cohort averaged 75% for homepages, but when Adobe looked at a broader set of retail sites in July, the average fell to 61%. Whichever figure is closer to the truth, a large share of retail content is still out of AI's reach. #### What brands should do now The data suggests three priorities: - Make product pages readable by machines. Key facts such as price, availability, specifications, ingredients, sizes and reviews should be in clean, server-rendered text and structured data, not locked inside images, scripts or tabs that only load on click. - Measure your AI visibility, not just your traffic. Find out whether assistants mention your brand for the questions your customers ask, which competitors they recommend instead, and which sources they cite. - Treat AI referrals as a premium channel. These visitors convert better than average. Track them separately in your analytics, and build landing experiences that close the sale quickly. #### Reading the numbers carefully All traffic and conversion figures here are from Adobe Analytics and Adobe Digital Insights reports, or from news coverage of those reports. Other analytics companies define AI referrals differently and report different growth rates, so we use only Adobe's numbers to keep the comparisons consistent. Adobe's figures don't always line up between releases. For example, its cumulative growth since October 2024 was 1,324% in May 2026 data and 1,219% in July 2026 data, possibly reflecting changes in its sample. Each number is shown with its own date and source. Sources: - Adobe report: US retailers see surge in AI traffic, but many websites are not entirely readable by machines, Adobe Digital Insights, 2026: https://business.adobe.com/blog/ai-traffic-surge-retail-sites-not-machine-readable - AI Traffic Trends Report, August 2026, Adobe Digital Insights, 2026: https://business.adobe.com/assets/pdfs/resources/sdk/ai-traffic-trends-report-august-2026/ai-traffic-trends-report-2026-08-19.pdf - Adobe: AI-referral traffic spending, converting more than counterparts, Digital Commerce 360, 2026: https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/08/19/adobe-ai-referral-traffic-data-july-2026/ - Adobe: AI-referred traffic to retail sites doubles in a year, Digital Commerce 360, 2026: https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/06/17/adobe-ai-referred-traffic-to-retail-sites-doubles-in-a-year/ - Generative AI-powered shopping up 4,700% in July, Adobe found, Digital Commerce 360, 2025: https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2025/08/21/adobe-generative-ai-powered-shopping-data-july-2025/ - Generative AI-powered shopping rises with traffic to US retail sites, Adobe, 2025: https://business.adobe.com/blog/generative-ai-powered-shopping-rises-with-traffic-to-retail-sites - Adobe: US holiday shopping season to hit record $275.1 billion online (2026 forecast), Adobe via Business Wire, 2026: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260928285775/en/CORRECTING-and-REPLACING-Adobe-U.S.-Holiday-Shopping-Season-to-Hit-Record-%24275.1-Billion-Online-Rising-6.7-YoY - Amazon Q3 2025 earnings call transcript (Rufus metrics), The Motley Fool, 2025: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2025/10/31/amazon-amzn-q3-2025-earnings-call-transcript/ ### Xenalytics No. 004: Shopify merchants sold $378 billion in 2025, 49× more than in 2015 URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/shopify-gmv-growth Original: https://xenaintelligenceapp.com/xenalytics/shopify-gmv-growth (XENA Intelligence) Published: 2026-10-27 · Updated: 2026-10-27 · By Akhil Suresh Nair The platform behind millions of direct-to-consumer storefronts keeps compounding. Here is how big the Shopify economy has become, year by year. ## The Shopify economy, measured Shopify doesn't sell products. Its merchants do. Gross merchandise volume (GMV) is the total value of orders placed through the platform, and it is the best single measure of how much commerce now runs on Shopify. In 2025, GMV reached $378.4 billion, up 29% from $292.3 billion in 2024. Ten years earlier, it was about $7.7 billion. That is 49 times smaller. Press play on the chart above to watch the decade unfold. Guess: how much merchandise did Shopify merchants sell in 2025? Answer: $378.4B. $378.4 billion in gross merchandise volume, up 29% from 2024 and about 3× 2020, per Shopify's Q4 2025 release. Source: Shopify Inc. via SEC EDGAR, exhibit 99.1, 2026 #### Three phases of growth Switch the chart to YoY growth and three phases appear. 2016–2019: doubling, then compounding. GMV doubled in 2016 (+99%) and kept growing between 49% and 71% a year as small businesses and direct-to-consumer brands moved onto the platform. 2020–2021: the pandemic surge. With stores closed, GMV nearly doubled in 2020, from $61.1 billion to $119.6 billion, then grew another 47% in 2021 to $175.4 billion. Few companies benefited more from the shift online. 2022–2026: slowdown, then re-acceleration. After the reopening, growth fell to 12% in 2022. Then it did something unusual for a platform of its size: it sped up again. Shopify reports GMV growth of 20% in 2023, 24% in 2024 and 29% in 2025. In the second quarter of 2026, GMV was $115.6 billion, up 32% from $87.8 billion a year earlier. ### Compare any two years How many times bigger is the Shopify economy? Sources: Shopify Inc. via SEC EDGAR, exhibit 99.1, 2026; Shopify Inc., 2023.Data tableCompare any two yearsPeriodValue 2015$7.7B 2016$15.4B 2017$26.3B 2018$41.1B 2019$61.1B 2020$119.6B 2021$175.4B 2022$197.2B 2023$235.9B 2024$292.3B 2025$378.4B Use the comparison tool to choose any two years. From 2020 to 2025, GMV grew about 3.2 times. Shopify itself describes 2025 GMV as "3x greater" than 2020. #### Where the growth is coming from Shopify's 2025 results point to several engines beyond its core of small online stores. ### What grew fastest at Shopify in 2025 Growth versus 2024, as reported by Shopify. Source: Shopify Inc. via SEC EDGAR, exhibit 99.1, 2026. Note: Shopify notes that B2B is still a very small portion of total GMV. Offline revenue covers Shopify Payments for offline, POS Pro and Retail plans and POS hardware.Data tableWhat grew fastest at Shopify in 2025Item2025 growth B2B GMV+96% Shop Pay GMV+62% Gross payments volume+37% International revenue+36% Total revenue+30% Total GMV+29% Offline revenue+27% - B2B (wholesale sales by brands to businesses) grew GMV 96%. Shopify notes it is still a very small part of total GMV, but it is the fastest-growing line. - Shop Pay, Shopify's accelerated checkout, grew GMV 62%. It now helps carry shoppers across many independent stores, not just one. - International revenue grew 36%, so growth is no longer mainly a North American story. - Offline revenue, from in-store point-of-sale (POS) payments, plans and hardware, grew 27% as merchants use one system for stores and websites. - Gross payments volume grew 37%, faster than GMV, as more merchants use Shopify Payments. #### Share of US e-commerce Shopify estimates that its merchants accounted for more than 14% of US e-commerce in 2025. That is a company estimate, not an independent measurement. Shopify builds it from unadjusted Census data and internal estimates, and it excludes merchants' in-store POS sales. Still, if it is roughly right, Shopify-powered stores together are one of the largest online "retailers" in the country, made up of millions of independent businesses. For context, the US Census Bureau puts all US e-commerce at 17.1% of total retail sales in Q2 2026. See Xenalytics No. 001 for the full 27-year history. #### GMV is not revenue One common misunderstanding: GMV is the value of merchants' sales, not Shopify's income. Shopify's 2025 revenue was $11.6 billion, about 3% of GMV, earned mainly from subscriptions and from merchant solutions such as payments. The comparison still matters. Shopify earns more when its merchants sell more, so the company is built to make independent brands grow. #### What it means for brands The Shopify chart is, in a sense, a chart of brands taking control of their own sales channels. Each order counted in GMV happened on a storefront the brand controls: its own design, its own customer relationship, its own data. That independence comes with responsibility. A marketplace listing benefits from the marketplace's traffic; a brand's own store has to bring in its own visitors. Three implications follow: - Discovery is the bottleneck. A brand's store can convert well and still be invisible. Search engines, social platforms and, increasingly, AI assistants decide which brands shoppers ever see. - First-party data is the advantage. Shopify merchants own their customer data. The brands that use it well, for retention, lifecycle email and new products, compound faster. - Channel mix is a strategic choice. Most growing brands sell in several places: their own store, Amazon, Walmart, social commerce and wholesale. You need to see how all of them perform together, not one dashboard at a time. #### Methodology GMV figures come from Shopify's annual results releases and SEC filings. Shopify defines GMV as the total dollar value of orders facilitated through the Shopify platform, including certain apps and channels where a revenue-sharing arrangement is in place, net of refunds, and including shipping and handling, duty and value-added taxes. The 2015 figure ($7.7B) is derived from Shopify's statement that 2016 GMV of $15.4 billion was up 99%. Growth rates after 2016 are calculated from GMV rounded to the nearest $0.1 billion and match Shopify's reported rates to within a point. GMV is global; Shopify does not report total GMV by country. Sources: - Shopify Q4 and full-year 2025 financial results, Shopify Inc. via SEC EDGAR, exhibit 99.1, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1594805/000159480526000006/exhibit991pressreleaseq420.htm - Shopify Q2 2026 financial results, Shopify Inc. via SEC EDGAR, exhibit 99.1, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1594805/000159480526000046/exhibit991pressreleaseq220.htm - Shopify Q4 and full-year 2024 financial results, Shopify Inc., 2025: https://www.shopify.com/investors/quarterly-results - Shopify announces fourth-quarter and full-year 2022 financial results, Shopify Inc., 2023: https://www.shopify.com/news/shopify-announces-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2022-financial-results - Shopify announces fourth-quarter and full year 2017 financial results, Shopify Inc., 2018: https://www.shopify.com/news/shopify-announces-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2017-financial-results - Shopify announces fourth-quarter and full year 2016 financial results, Shopify Inc., 2017: https://www.shopify.com/news/shopify-announces-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2016-financial-results ### Xenalytics No. 003: Store brands now take 21.3% of US grocery-aisle spending URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/store-brands-market-share-2025 Original: https://xenaintelligenceapp.com/xenalytics/store-brands-market-share-2025 (XENA Intelligence) Published: 2026-10-27 · Updated: 2026-10-27 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Private label grew nearly three times faster than national brands in 2025. Find out how exposed your category is. ## A record year for the store's own brands US store brands, also called private label, retailer brands or own brands, had their best year on record in 2025. According to Circana Unify+ data published by the Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA), store brands sold $282.8 billion across all US outlets. That is 21.3% of dollar sales in the categories measured, up from 19.1% in 2021. Measured in units, store brands did even better: 23.5% of items sold carried a retailer's brand. That is roughly one in four products. The gap between those two numbers is the point. Store brands usually cost less than national brands, so their unit share runs ahead of their dollar share. Toggle the chart above between Dollar share, Unit share and $ sales to see the five-year run: up every year, on every measure. #### Growing nearly three times faster In 2025, store-brand dollar sales grew 3.3%, while national brands grew 1.2%. Total sales across all channels rose 1.5% to $1.33 trillion. In units, the contrast is sharper: store brands sold 0.6% more items, while national brands sold 0.6% fewer, a loss of 1.43 billion units. PLMA calculates that store brands captured 47% of all dollar sales gains in US retailing in 2025, about $9 billion of the industry's $19.4 billion growth. On PLMA's rounded figures that works out closer to 46%, but the message is the same. Store brands make up about a fifth of the market, yet they took close to half of its growth. Over five years, store-brand revenue rose by $64.8 billion, or 30%, from 2021 to 2025. #### Find your category Averages hide the real story, which is how differently categories are exposed. Pick your category in the finder below. ### Find your category Pick a category or department. Each square is 1% of its 2025 dollar sales; pink squares went to store brands. Source: Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA), 2026. Note: Categories are PLMA's 2025 Top 20 food and Top 20 nonfood categories by store-brand dollar sales. Departments cover all categories.Data tableTop categoriesNameGroupStore-brand $ shareStore-brand sales Adult IncontinenceNonfood32.7%$0.88B Baking NeedsFood39.1%$2.2B Bottled WaterFood31.2%$8.3B Breakfast MeatsFood27.5%$2.5B Butter/Butter BlendsFood48.0%$2.4B CandlesNonfood57.7%$1.2B CoffeeFood17.6%$2.4B CookiesFood20.7%$2.7B CulinaryNonfood33.4%$1.3B Cups & PlatesNonfood61.1%$3.7B Dairy MilkFood55.5%$9.2B DiapersNonfood14.6%$0.86B Disposable TablewareNonfood88.6%$1.0B Dog FoodNonfood13.3%$1.4B Dog Treats & ChewsNonfood23.1%$1.2B Entrees - RfgFood41.5%$2.4B First Aid AccessoriesNonfood41.1%$0.97B First Aid TreatmentNonfood37.2%$0.74B Food & Trash BagsNonfood46.9%$2.6B Fresh Bread & RollsFood25.4%$4.5B Fresh EggsFood67.0%$9.4B GastrointestinalNonfood34.6%$1.8B Home Health Care/KitsNonfood48.3%$0.78B Internal AnalgesicsNonfood29.6%$1.4B Kitchen StorageNonfood44.3%$2.0B Luncheon MeatsFood28.3%$2.1B Meat - RfgFood58.1%$6.4B Natural CheeseFood51.1%$9.9B Paper TowelsNonfood40.3%$2.9B Pastry/DoughnutsFood32.0%$2.5B Poultry - Fz/RfgFood38.1%$2.3B Salty SnacksFood7.1%$2.8B Seafood - FzFood65.0%$4.5B Shortening & OilFood45.3%$2.8B Snack Nuts/Seeds/Corn NutsFood38.0%$2.2B SocksNonfood34.5%$0.75B Spices/Extracts/SaltFood28.8%$1.9B Toilet TissueNonfood31.5%$3.4B Upper RespiratoryNonfood25.5%$2.8B VitaminsNonfood20.8%$2.3B DepartmentsNameStore-brand $ shareUnit shareStore-brand sales$ change vs 2024 Refrigerated36.6%38.4%$60.8B+6.1% General Merchandise36.0%44.4%$25.0B+0.9% Frozen26.4%27.9%$22.4B+2.4% Health20.6%25.2%$18.1B−2.3% General Food18.2%22.9%$52.9B+1.6% Pet Care17.2%18.1%$5.6B+3.7% Beverages10.0%12.3%$15.1B+4.8% Household Essentials9.9%15.1%$3.3B−0.4% Beauty7.3%13.3%$3.9B+2.8% Liquor0.1%0.1%$0.07B+3.6% Some patterns stand out: - Commodity staples are store-brand strongholds. 67.0% of fresh-egg dollars and 55.5% of dairy-milk dollars went to store brands in 2025. Frozen seafood was 65.0%, refrigerated meat 58.1% and natural cheese 51.1%. - Paper and plastics are nearly as exposed. Disposable tableware reached 88.6%, cups and plates 61.1%, and candles 57.7%. - Brand-loyal categories hold up. Salty snacks were just 7.1% store brand, coffee 17.6% and dog food 13.3%. Taste, habit and emotional attachment still protect national brands here. - Health is in the middle. Gastrointestinal remedies (34.6%), pain relievers (29.6%) and vitamins (20.8%) show that shoppers will trade down even in categories where trust matters, as long as the product is equivalent. #### Departments: where store brands win and lose ### Store brands by department, 2025 Sort by dollar share, unit share, store-brand sales or growth. Source: Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA), 2026. Note: Liquor store-brand sales were $68.7M. Automotive ($1.0B, −0.5%) is reported separately by PLMA without share data and is not shown.Data tableStore brands by department, 2025ItemDollar shareUnit shareSB sales$ growth Refrigerated36.6%38.4%$60.8B+6.1% General Merchandise36.0%44.4%$25.0B+0.9% Frozen26.4%27.9%$22.4B+2.4% Health20.6%25.2%$18.1B−2.3% General Food18.2%22.9%$52.9B+1.6% Pet Care17.2%18.1%$5.6B+3.7% Beverages10.0%12.3%$15.1B+4.8% Household Essentials9.9%15.1%$3.3B−0.4% Beauty7.3%13.3%$3.9B+2.8% Liquor0.1%0.1%$0.1B+3.6% By department, Refrigerated had the highest store-brand dollar share in 2025, at 36.6%, and was also the biggest in dollars, at $60.8 billion. It also grew the fastest, up 6.1%. General Merchandise came close on dollar share (36.0%) and led on unit share (44.4%). At the other end, Beauty was 7.3% store brand by dollars and Beverages 10.0%. Growth was not universal. Health store-brand sales fell 2.3%, Home Essentials fell 0.4% and Automotive fell 0.5%. Even in a record year, private label has to earn its place category by category. Which department has the highest store-brand share of dollar sales? Answer: Refrigerated. Refrigerated: 36.6% of its 2025 dollar sales went to store brands, led by eggs, milk and natural cheese. General Merchandise is close behind at 36.0%, and it is the leader on units (44.4%). Source: Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA), 2026 #### Why it's happening Three forces are behind this run, according to the industry voices quoted in PLMA's report. Price-conscious shoppers. After years of inflation, shoppers have made comparing prices a habit, not an emergency measure. Many now mix premium national brands in some categories with store brands in others. Better products. Retailers have moved well beyond the generic "value" tier. GlobalData's Neil Saunders, quoted by PLMA, points out that since 2021 the premium store-brand tier has grown faster than the value tier. Retailers now launch on-trend items under their own names. Retailer strategy. For retailers, store brands mean differentiation, loyalty and usually better margins. Some are setting public targets; PLMA cites Albertsons aiming for a 30% private-label share. #### What it means for national brands For CPG brand owners, the "find your category" tool is a risk map. If your category sits above 40% store-brand share, the retailer is your biggest competitor as well as your customer. It controls the shelf, the price gap, the search results on its website and, increasingly, the retail media placements around your listing. That shifts where brands have to win: - Justify the price gap. Content, reviews and claims on every product page must make clear why your product is worth more than the store brand next to it. - Win discovery before the shelf. More shopping journeys now start in search engines, marketplaces and AI assistants. A brand that isn't recommended there arrives at the shelf as just another option next to a cheaper house brand. - Measure by category, not in aggregate. A 21.3% national average tells you little. Your exposure depends on your category's share and trend. #### A note on the data All figures are Circana Unify+ all-outlet data published by PLMA in its 2026 Private Label Report, covering the 52 weeks ending December 28, 2025. Other providers, notably NielsenIQ, use different store panels and category definitions, so their store-brand shares differ. Compare trends within a single source, not numbers across sources. The finder includes PLMA's top 20 food and top 20 nonfood categories by store-brand dollar sales, so it is not an exhaustive list of every category. Sources: - PLMA 2026 Private Label Report: A Statistical Guide to Today's Store Brands (Circana Unify+ data, 52 weeks ending Dec 28, 2025), Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA), 2026: https://plma.com/sites/default/files/files/2026-01/plma-2026-report.pdf - US private label industry reached $282.8 billion in sales in 2025, PLMA, 2026: https://www.plma.com/article/us-private-label-industry-reached-2828-billion-sales-2025 ### Xenalytics No. 002: Amazon's ad business made $68.6 billion in 2025 URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/amazon-revenue-mix-advertising Original: https://xenaintelligenceapp.com/xenalytics/amazon-revenue-mix-advertising (XENA Intelligence) Published: 2026-10-27 · Updated: 2026-10-27 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Advertising is now Amazon's fastest-growing major business line. It is bigger than Prime and other subscriptions, and it is built on the same shelf your brand competes on. ## A retailer with a media company inside Most people still think of Amazon as a store. Its income statement tells a more complicated story. In 2025, Amazon reported $716.9 billion in net sales. Its own online-store sales, the products Amazon buys and sells itself, were $269.3 billion, or 37.6% of the total. The rest came from businesses built around that store: fees from third-party sellers ($172.2B), Amazon Web Services ($128.7B), subscriptions such as Prime ($49.6B), physical stores including Whole Foods Market ($22.6B), and advertising ($68.6B). Drag the year slider on the donut above and watch the pink advertising slice grow. In 2019 it was $12.6 billion, 4.5% of net sales. By 2025 it was 9.6%. Guess: how much did Amazon earn from advertising in 2025? Answer: $68.6B. $68.6 billion, per Amazon's 2025 10-K. That is 9.6% of Amazon's net sales and more than it made from Prime and other subscriptions ($49.6B). Source: Amazon via SEC EDGAR, 2026 #### Ads are the fastest-growing major line Over six years, advertising revenue grew 5.4 times, a compound annual growth rate of about 32.6%. No other major Amazon business grew as fast: AWS grew 3.7 times, third-party seller services 3.2 times, and Amazon's own online-store sales 1.9 times. ### The growth race, 2019 → 2025 Sort Amazon's business lines by growth multiple, compound annual growth, 2025 growth, or 2025 size. Sources: Amazon via SEC EDGAR, 2026; Amazon via SEC EDGAR, 2022. Note: Multiples and CAGR (compound annual growth rate) are XENA calculations from reported net sales.Data tableThe growth race, 2019 → 2025ItemGrowth multipleCAGR2025 growth2025 size Online stores1.9×11.4%+9.0%$269.3B Third-party seller services3.2×21.4%+10.3%$172.2B AWS3.7×24.2%+19.7%$128.7B Advertising services5.4×32.6%+22.1%$68.6B Subscription services2.6×17.1%+11.8%$49.6B Physical stores1.3×4.6%+6.3%$22.6B Other4.1×26.3%+9.4%$5.9B Growth hasn't slowed much as the business has grown. Advertising revenue rose 22.1% in 2025, nearly twice as fast as Amazon's total net sales (+12.4%). In the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, Amazon reported $21.3 billion of ad revenue, up 23% from a year earlier. A useful milestone: 2022 was the first year Amazon earned more from advertising ($37.7B) than from subscriptions ($35.2B), Prime included. The gap has widened every year since. By 2025, ads brought in $19 billion more than subscriptions. ### Each business line, year by year Tap the legend to show or hide a line. Switch to indexed to compare growth rates. Sources: Amazon via SEC EDGAR, 2026; Amazon via SEC EDGAR, 2023; Amazon via SEC EDGAR, 2022.Data tableEach business line, year by yearPeriod$ billions: Online stores$ billions: Third-party seller services$ billions: AWS$ billions: Advertising services$ billions: Subscription services$ billions: Physical storesIndexed (2019 = 100): Online storesIndexed (2019 = 100): Third-party seller servicesIndexed (2019 = 100): AWSIndexed (2019 = 100): Advertising servicesIndexed (2019 = 100): Subscription servicesIndexed (2019 = 100): Physical stores 2019$141.2B$53.8B$35.0B$12.6B$19.2B$17.2B100100100100100100 2020$197.3B$80.5B$45.4B$19.8B$25.2B$16.2B14015013015713194 2021$222.1B$103.4B$62.2B$31.2B$31.8B$17.1B15719217824716599 2022$220.0B$117.7B$80.1B$37.7B$35.2B$19.0B156219229299183110 2023$231.9B$140.1B$90.8B$46.9B$40.2B$20.0B164261259372209117 2024$247.0B$156.1B$107.6B$56.2B$44.4B$21.2B175290307445231123 2025$269.3B$172.2B$128.7B$68.6B$49.6B$22.6B191320368544258131 Switch the line chart to Indexed (2019 = 100) and the story is plain. Every line starts at the same point, so you can compare growth directly. Advertising pulls away from the pack, AWS follows, and the online-stores line rises much more slowly. #### Why Amazon's ads grew so fast Amazon's "Advertising services" line covers sponsored product listings, display ads and video ads, sold to sellers, vendors, publishers, authors and others. Three things make this business different from most media companies. The ads sit at the point of purchase. A sponsored listing on an Amazon search results page reaches a shopper who has already typed what they want to buy. That makes Amazon's ad inventory unusually valuable to brands, and unusually easy to measure. The marketplace creates the demand. Amazon said independent sellers accounted for 61% of units sold in Q4 2025. Millions of sellers competing for the same search results is exactly the condition that drives up demand for sponsored placement. Seller fees and ad revenue grow together. The audience keeps growing. Amazon has extended its advertising beyond its own store, including video ads on Prime Video. That adds reach outside the shopping search results. #### What it means for e-commerce and CPG brands For brands that sell on Amazon, these numbers point to an uncomfortable fact: visibility on the world's largest marketplace is increasingly something you buy. Every dollar in the advertising slice of the donut was paid by a seller, vendor or other advertiser, often the same brands that also pay referral and fulfillment fees. That has three practical consequences. - Organic visibility is harder to earn. Sponsored placements take up a growing share of the most valuable positions on a search results page. Product listings need stronger content, reviews and conversion rates just to hold their ground. - Retail media is now a core marketing budget line. It is no longer an experiment funded from trade spend. It needs the same planning, measurement and creative discipline as search or social. - Measurement matters more than ever. When most visibility is paid, brands need to know which keywords, products and placements actually drive profitable sales, and which just buy back traffic they would have earned anyway. #### A note on what these numbers are All figures are net sales as reported in Amazon's annual 10-K filings, grouped the way Amazon groups them. "Third-party seller services" counts the commissions and fulfillment and shipping fees Amazon collects from sellers. It does not count the full value of the goods those sellers sell. AWS is shown for context, though it has nothing to do with retail. It is also Amazon's profit engine, earning $45.6 billion of Amazon's $80.0 billion total operating income in 2025. Shares of total, growth multiples and compound annual growth rates are XENA calculations from the reported figures. Exact values for every year and segment are in the data table below each chart and in this page's dataset. #### The takeaway Amazon has become, among other things, one of the world's largest advertising businesses, and its ad inventory is the digital shelf itself. For brands, winning on Amazon now means managing three things together: catalog content that converts, advertising that is measured carefully, and a clear view of which channels drive profitable growth across Amazon, Walmart, your own site and the search and AI tools where shopping journeys start. Sources: - Amazon.com, Inc. Form 10-K for 2025: net sales by groups of similar products and services, Amazon via SEC EDGAR, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872426000004/R33.htm - Amazon.com, Inc. Form 10-K for 2022: disaggregation of revenue, Amazon via SEC EDGAR, 2023: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872423000004/R84.htm - Amazon.com, Inc. Form 10-K for 2021: disaggregation of revenue (2019–2021), Amazon via SEC EDGAR, 2022: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872422000005/R81.htm - Amazon.com announces fourth quarter results (Q4 2025), Amazon via SEC EDGAR, exhibit 99.1, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872426000002/amzn-20251231xex991.htm ### Xenalytics No. 001: Online shopping now takes 17.1% of US retail sales URL: https://searchpanelapp.com/xenalytics/us-ecommerce-share-of-retail Original: https://xenaintelligenceapp.com/xenalytics/us-ecommerce-share-of-retail (XENA Intelligence) Published: 2026-10-27 · Updated: 2026-10-27 · By Akhil Suresh Nair Twenty-seven years of US Census data show online's share of retail rising steadily, jumping during the pandemic, then dipping, and now setting new records again. Before you look: what share of US retail sales happened online in Q2 2026? Answer: 17.1%. The answer is 17.1% (US Census Bureau, seasonally adjusted). Online keeps setting records, but more than 4 of every 5 US retail dollars are still spent offline, and the total includes cars and gasoline. Source: US Census Bureau via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2026 #### The long climb, in one line In the fourth quarter of 1999, when the US Census Bureau started tracking online retail every quarter, e-commerce came to 0.6% of US retail sales. That is about half a cent of every dollar. In the second quarter of 2026 it was 17.1%, the highest share on record. For most of that time, the line on the chart above barely wiggles. Online's share rose about a percentage point every two years through the 2000s and early 2010s. The 2008 financial crisis paused the climb but didn't reverse it: share held at 3.6% for four straight quarters, then started rising again. Scrub the chart to 2010 and you will see 4.6%; by the end of 2015 it was 7.4%. That steadiness matters. E-commerce growth was never mainly a fad or a stimulus effect. It was a slow change in habits, one category at a time: books and electronics first, then apparel, then household goods, and finally groceries and other everyday purchases. #### The pandemic spike, and the hangover Then came the second quarter of 2020. With stores closed and people at home, online's share jumped from 11.9% to 16.3% in one quarter. That is more than four percentage points in three months. Before then, gaining that much had taken about four years. What happened next is just as revealing. As stores reopened, online's share fell back to 14.2% by mid-2022. Shoppers didn't abandon e-commerce: seasonally adjusted online sales kept growing in dollar terms. Switch the chart to $ sales to see it. But in-store spending came back even faster, likely helped by higher prices in categories still bought mostly in person, such as cars, fuel and groceries. It took until the third quarter of 2025 for online's share (16.4%) to beat the pandemic peak, 21 quarters later. Since then it has kept rising: 16.7% in Q4 2025, 17.0% in Q1 2026 and 17.1% in Q2 2026. ### Online cents in every US retail dollar Fourth quarter of each year, seasonally adjusted share of total retail sales. Tap a bar. Source: US Census Bureau via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2026.Data tableOnline cents in every US retail dollarPeriodShare 20001.0% 20052.6% 20104.6% 20157.4% 202015.0% 202516.7% #### What 17.1% does and doesn't mean This number is often misread, so here are three points to keep in mind. It is a share of all retail, including cars and gas. The Census Bureau divides e-commerce sales by total retail sales, which includes motor vehicle dealers and gas stations. Those are huge categories that are still mostly sold offline. Measures that leave them out show a higher online share, which is one reason you will see larger figures quoted elsewhere. Neither figure is wrong; they answer different questions. It counts where the order was placed, not where it was picked up. Census treats a sale as e-commerce when the order or the price and terms are agreed online. A buy-online, pick-up-in-store order counts as online. A product researched on a phone and then bought at the register does not, even though digital clearly shaped the purchase. It is seasonally adjusted and revised. Holiday quarters naturally spike online, so the chart uses the seasonally adjusted series to show the trend. The Census Bureau also revises earlier quarters as better data comes in. We use the values published on FRED as of October 2026, and we will update this page when they change. #### The dollars behind the share Seasonally adjusted e-commerce sales reached $340.2 billion in Q2 2026, up from $303.3 billion a year earlier, a gain of about 12.2%. Online keeps growing faster than retail as a whole, so its share keeps rising, slowly. Every quarter, a little more of the "shelf" moves to the screen. ### Compare any two quarters Pick two quarters to see how far online's share moved. Source: US Census Bureau via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2026.Data tableCompare any two quartersPeriodValue 1999 Q40.6% 2000 Q10.8% 2000 Q20.9% 2000 Q31.0% 2000 Q41.0% 2001 Q11.1% 2001 Q21.1% 2001 Q31.1% 2001 Q41.2% 2002 Q11.3% 2002 Q21.4% 2002 Q31.5% 2002 Q41.5% 2003 Q11.6% 2003 Q21.7% 2003 Q31.8% 2003 Q41.9% 2004 Q12.0% 2004 Q22.0% 2004 Q32.1% 2004 Q42.2% 2005 Q12.3% 2005 Q22.4% 2005 Q32.5% 2005 Q42.6% 2006 Q12.7% 2006 Q22.8% 2006 Q32.9% 2006 Q43.1% 2007 Q13.2% 2007 Q23.3% 2007 Q33.5% 2007 Q43.5% 2008 Q13.6% 2008 Q23.6% 2008 Q33.6% 2008 Q43.6% 2009 Q13.8% 2009 Q23.9% 2009 Q34.1% 2009 Q44.1% 2010 Q14.2% 2010 Q24.4% 2010 Q34.6% 2010 Q44.6% 2011 Q14.7% 2011 Q24.8% 2011 Q34.9% 2011 Q45.1% 2012 Q15.2% 2012 Q25.3% 2012 Q35.5% 2012 Q45.6% 2013 Q15.6% 2013 Q25.8% 2013 Q35.9% 2013 Q46.1% 2014 Q16.2% 2014 Q26.3% 2014 Q36.5% 2014 Q46.6% 2015 Q16.9% 2015 Q27.0% 2015 Q37.2% 2015 Q47.4% 2016 Q17.7% 2016 Q27.8% 2016 Q38.0% 2016 Q48.2% 2017 Q18.4% 2017 Q28.7% 2017 Q38.9% 2017 Q49.1% 2018 Q19.4% 2018 Q29.6% 2018 Q39.7% 2018 Q49.9% 2019 Q110.0% 2019 Q210.3% 2019 Q310.8% 2019 Q411.2% 2020 Q111.9% 2020 Q216.3% 2020 Q314.9% 2020 Q415.0% 2021 Q114.9% 2021 Q214.6% 2021 Q314.5% 2021 Q414.6% 2022 Q114.4% 2022 Q214.2% 2022 Q314.5% 2022 Q414.6% 2023 Q115.0% 2023 Q215.3% 2023 Q315.4% 2023 Q415.5% 2024 Q115.9% 2024 Q216.1% 2024 Q316.2% 2024 Q416.2% 2025 Q116.0% 2025 Q216.3% 2025 Q316.4% 2025 Q416.7% 2026 Q117.0% 2026 Q217.1% Use the comparison tool to measure any stretch you like. Q4 2019 to Q2 2026 is a good one: from 11.2% to 17.1%, a 5.9-point gain. That is roughly what the pandemic added in one burst, but this time it came as steady, lasting growth. #### Why this matters for brands For e-commerce and consumer brands, the share line is a guide to where competition for attention is moving. Three practical takeaways: - The digital shelf is the shelf. At 17.1% of all retail, and a much bigger share of many non-auto, non-fuel categories, your product detail pages, marketplace listings and retail media are now a primary storefront, not a side channel. - Discovery is changing faster than purchasing. The share chart measures where the transaction happens. More and more of the research behind both online and in-store purchases now starts in search engines, marketplaces and AI assistants. If your brand isn't visible there, the purchase can be lost before the shopper ever reaches a checkout. - Steady beats spiky. The pandemic spike faded, and the slow trend won. Brands that planned for 2020's numbers to last over-invested; brands that ignored the long trend are still catching up. Plan for steady, compounding growth. There is one more thing to watch. Shopify estimates that its merchants alone made more than 14% of US e-commerce sales in 2025. That is the company's own estimate, built partly from Census data, but it shows how much of online retail now runs through platforms and marketplaces rather than through brands' own technology. #### Methodology All figures come from the US Census Bureau's Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales program, retrieved through the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED series ECOMPCTSA and ECOMSA). Percentages are seasonally adjusted e-commerce sales as a share of seasonally adjusted total retail sales. Dollar values are seasonally adjusted quarterly sales in billions. Growth rates and multiples marked as XENA calculations are computed directly from those series. The full quarterly table is below the chart and in this page's downloadable dataset. Sources: - Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales, 2nd Quarter 2026, US Census Bureau, 2026: https://www.census.gov/retail/ecommerce.html - E-Commerce Retail Sales as a Percent of Total Sales (ECOMPCTSA), US Census Bureau via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2026: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECOMPCTSA - E-Commerce Retail Sales (ECOMSA), millions of dollars, seasonally adjusted, US Census Bureau via FRED, 2026: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECOMSA - Shopify Q4 and full-year 2025 results (US e-commerce market share estimate), Shopify Inc., SEC exhibit 99.1, 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1594805/000159480526000006/exhibit991pressreleaseq420.htm