Walmart says shoppers who use its Sparky assistant spend 35% more per order than shoppers who don’t, according to Lauren Johnson at ADWEEK. Sensor Tower found the same pattern at Amazon, where 44% of July app sessions using Alexa for Shopping ended in a sale, up from 34% a year earlier under Rufus. Retail media analyst Andrew Lipsman credits those results to tech-forward shoppers who were heavier online buyers to begin with, and says nobody knows yet whether the assistants are catching on more widely. Six big retailers including Kroger, Albertsons, Instacart, and DoorDash have built assistants in under a year to keep ChatGPT from taking the transaction, and most already sell ads inside them. Ad loads stay light for now, though Lipsman expects the surface to work like search eventually.
