MARKET REPORT: eCommerce

AI Visibility Report: Which Retailers Win When Shoppers Ask AI Where to Buy

Online shopping is the category where AI assistants are rewiring behavior fastest. Adobe Analytics measured a 1,300% year-over-year surge in traffic arriving at US retail sites from generative AI sources during the 2024 holiday season, and the growth has continued since. When shoppers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity where to buy electronics, clothes, or groceries, the answer names specific retailers, and most shoppers stop there.

We analyzed the major eCommerce platforms across five high-intent shopping topics and hundreds of real-world prompts to see who owns those answers. The result is the most one-sided market we've measured: Amazon appears in 83.3% of AI shopping responses, more than Target (49.7%) and eBay (15.9%) combined, and it leads every single topic we tracked.

The Landscape: Amazon Owns the Conversation

The overall AI visibility leaderboard:

• Amazon: 83.3%
• Target: 49.7%
• Walmart: 41.6%
• eBay: 15.9%
• Etsy: 10.3%

The 33.6-point gap between Amazon and Target is the widest lead we've seen in any vertical we've measured, wider than BMW's lead in automotive or Netflix's in streaming. When a shopper asks an AI assistant where to buy something, Amazon is in the answer more than 8 times out of 10.

The bottom of the table is just as striking. eBay and Etsy, two of the most recognizable names in online retail, appear in fewer than 1 in 6 responses. Etsy's case is particularly telling: a brand with a distinct, defensible niche (handmade and vintage goods) barely registers in general shopping conversations. Niche strength in the real market doesn't automatically translate into AI visibility.

Topic by Topic: A Clean Sweep

We tracked five shopping topics, each tested with prompts real buyers use. Amazon leads all five:

• Best places to buy: prompts like "What is the best platform to buy books, movies, and subscriptions all in one place?"
• Fast shipping: "Best e-commerce platform for reliable fast shipping of groceries?"
• Deals and discounts: "Which online retail platform offers the best deals and discounts on electronics and household items?"
• Best customer support: "Which e-commerce platform offers the best customer support for fast delivery and easy returns?"
• Trust: "Which reliable e-commerce companies offer trustworthy payment options?"

In most verticals, topics fragment: one brand owns performance, another owns safety, a third owns value. In eCommerce there is no fragmentation. Amazon's operational reputation (delivery speed, returns, selection) has become the default frame AI models reach for on every shopping question, even ones where competitors have a genuine claim, like Target on customer experience or eBay on deals.

Where AI Gets Its Information

The sources behind these answers explain a lot:

• reddit.com: 26.5% of citations
• shopify.com: 12.9%
• pcmag.com: 9.6%
• aboutamazon.com: 6.5%
• forbes.com: 5.8%
• kiplinger.com: 4.7%

Two findings stand out. First, Reddit is the single biggest source of retail answers by a wide margin. AI models treat community threads, where people compare delivery experiences, returns, and scams in blunt language, as the ground truth about retailers. No retailer controls that narrative; they earn it, thread by thread.

Second, Amazon's own newsroom (aboutamazon.com) captures 6.5% of citations. That's a brand publishing its way directly into AI answers, while its competitors rely almost entirely on third parties to describe them. The presence of shopify.com at 12.9% shows the same dynamic from another angle: a platform whose buying guides and merchant content shape how AI talks about the entire category.

What This Means If You Sell Online

For the retailers in this data, the playbook follows the sources. Reddit presence, honest and non-promotional, matters more than press releases. Owned newsroom-style content demonstrably gets cited. Editorial reviews on sites like PCMag and Kiplinger still carry weight on "best of" questions.

For everyone else in eCommerce, from DTC brands to regional marketplaces, the more important lesson is that this measurement is repeatable for your own niche. "Where should I buy running shoes online?" and "best online store for craft supplies" produce very different leaderboards than the general prompts above, and those are the answers your buyers actually see. You can browse the full cross-industry data on our AI visibility rankings page.

Methodology

We tracked the five major eCommerce platforms across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity using hundreds of prompts spanning five shopping topics. Visibility is the share of relevant AI responses that mention the brand. Source citation share is the percentage of cited pages by domain across the tracked responses.

See Your Own Numbers

If shoppers might ask an AI assistant about your category, you can measure your position the same way we measured this market: generate a free AI visibility report for your domain, or start a free trial to track your niche's prompts daily across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.