Data from analytics firm Apptopia has shown that over the 2025 Black Friday shopping weekend, ChatGPT referrals to retailers’ mobile apps rose by 28% year-over-year. Despite the increase, referrals from ChatGPT still account for a small fraction of overall sessions. In 2024, only 0.64% of ChatGPT sessions during Black Friday resulted in retail-app referrals; in 2025, the figure rose modestly to 0.82%. So, while growth is real, ChatGPT-driven shopping is still a niche channel rather than a major engine of e-commerce.
The Giants Are Winning, and the Smaller Retailers Are Left Behind
What stands out is who gets those ChatGPT-driven referrals. This year, more than half the referrals (54%) went to Amazon, up from 40.5% in 2024. Meanwhile, Walmart increased its share of ChatGPT referrals from 2.7% to 14.9%. Combined, these two retail giants now capture nearly 70% of ChatGPT-driven traffic.
That leaves only about 30% of ChatGPT referrals for all other retailers combined, indicating a steep drop from prior years. In other words, the growth in AI referrals isn’t translating into broader opportunities for small or mid-sized sellers. Instead, it concentrates even more power and traffic among already-dominant marketplaces.
Why AI Amplifies the Strong and Not Lift the Weak
Why are large retailers reaping most of the benefits? A few factors help explain this dynamic:
- Infrastructure and visibility: Big platforms already have strong brand recognition, deep product catalogues, robust apps, and streamlined checkout, everything an AI-powered shopping assistant can point to with confidence. For smaller retailers, missing even one of these pieces (poor stock, slow delivery, weak mobile UX) can undermine the AI referral’s value.
- Data bias and convenience: AI systems may gravitate toward large, well-known retailers when recommending shopping options, due to their prevalence in the training data or simply because their offerings are broader and easier to match to generic shopping prompts.
- Entrenched dominance becomes self-reinforcing: As large retailers get more traffic, they improve conversion rates, giving AI even more signals to continue favouring them. This creates a feedback loop that sidelines niche or smaller sellers.
Thus, rather than democratizing e-commerce, AI-driven referrals may be deepening existing inequalities in the retail ecosystem.
What This Means for Retailers And Consumers
For small and mid-sized retailers, the data is a warning. Relying on AI-driven referrals as a growth strategy may be naïve or short-sighted unless accompanied by serious investment in app infrastructure, logistics, inventory, and UX. Without those, they remain invisible in an AI-powered marketplace dominated by a few giants.
For consumers, the promise of AI convenience comes with a cost: shrinking diversity in where they shop. As AI steers more shoppers to the same handful of big stores, marketplace variety may decline, and smaller brands may struggle to reach new audiences.
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