IBM data from October 2023 shows that 86% of adults worldwide want AI to help them research or find information about products to improve their shopping experience, reported Insider Intelligence/eMarketer.

According to Sitecore, over three-quarters of marketers feel AI may help them better understand client wants and get closer to their intended customer experience.

The report noted that AI solutions to tackle customer service challenges, such as providing faster, more accurate replies in many languages, can increase retention rates and convert customers into brand ambassadors.

According to CallMiner statistics from July 2023, 43% of global customer experience and contact center experts fear integrating AI will offer clients incorrect information.

Nearly one-fifth (19.2%) of digital shoppers aged 18 to 34 made a purchase on TikTok in June 2023.

According to an Insider Intelligence/eMarketer survey, US online buyers made the most purchases on Facebook, making up 20.5%.

After Facebook, the top social media platforms for facilitating purchases during the past month were Instagram, followed by YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter.

The demographic of 18-34 year-olds made the most purchases via social media.

42% of retail leaders worldwide believe that the most essential role of physical retail as omnichannel buying advances is to give an in-person component to the customer experience, according to Bain and Aptos statistics for April 2023.

According to Insider Intelligence/eMarketer researchers, to compete with e-commerce behemoths such as Amazon, merchants with physical locations must think more creatively about attracting customers in-store.

Insider Intelligence expects brick-and-mortar shops to continue spending on events, influencer collaborations, and other experiences that build brand loyalty and advocacy.

Physical stores will account for 83.4% of total US retail sales in 2024, down from 84.4% in 2023, according to Insider Intelligence/eMarketer’s November 2023 prediction.

TikTok may have been the world’s most downloaded and consumer spending app in 2023, but it was not the most used.

Last year, Facebook remained the top monthly active user app, followed by fellow Meta-owned apps WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger, which ranked ahead of TikTok at number five, reported TechCrunch.

Now, new data shows that TikTok’s growth has slowed, raising the question of whether the app’s expansion into e-commerce via TikTok Shop is to blame.

According to recent statistics from market research firm Sensor Tower, while TikTok’s growth rate remains positive, it is slowing. In 2022, TikTok’s monthly active users increased by an average of 12% every quarter, but this statistic plummeted to 3% per quarter in 2023.

“Instagram could ultimately benefit from the user frustration around TikTok Shop, given that the Meta-owned app removed its own Shop tab in January of last year and killed off live shopping in March,” noted TechCrunch.

The Pew Research Center conducted a survey in May 2023 and found that 67% of US adults turn off cookies or website tracking to protect their privacy.

This is the second most common method after changing the privacy settings on social media platforms.

This information is important since cookies are being phased out. According to the report by Insider Intelligence/eMarketer, for 1% of Google Chrome users, the deprecation of third-party cookies began in January 2024, with cookies set to be removed entirely by the end of the year.

As third-party cookies disappear, advertisers must discover new ways to contact people without making them feel violated online, the report noted, adding one such way is to pay users to share data.

This year, North America has the most podcast listeners, with 149.4 million, according to a forecast by Insider Intelligence/eMarketer.

By 2027, China will have 178.7 million listeners.

The poor penetration of podcasts in China has contributed significantly to their growth in popularity. According to the forecast in August 2023, podcast listeners in China will account for 9.4% of the country’s population and 12.6% of internet users.

In comparison, 39.6% of the US population and 44.1% of internet users will listen to podcasts by 2024.

The number of podcast listeners in Europe lags behind North America, Latin America, and China.

FedEx, the logistics giant, announced Monday the launch of its own commerce platform dubbed FDX.

The platform will most likely compete with Amazon by providing merchants with services such as demand generation, fulfillment, tracking, and post-purchase experiences such as returns, reported TechCrunch.

Fedex stated that FDX is now under private preview, with a wider launch planned for fall 2024. Businesses can express interest in trying it out by filling out a form. The company did not name any of the brands involved in the test program.

FedEx’s statement contains several marketing buzzwords such as “data-driven,” “digitally-led,” and “end-to-end e-commerce solution for businesses of all sizes.” Still, it lacks details on how it will compete with existing platforms.

According to the firm, retailers may utilize FedEx services such as ShopRunner — an e-commerce platform it purchased in 2020 — to connect customers, offer expected delivery times on websites, handle carts, track items, and manage returns.

71% of US retail decision-makers have put money into data and AI-enabled content for personalization, according to a report from Coresight Research and Obsess in August 2023.

According to the survey reported on by Insider Intelligence/eMarketer, more than three-quarters (77%) of organizations that have invested in data/AI-enabled content for personalization have seen significant or moderate improvements in online sales.

Clickthrough rate, time spent visiting stores, and net promoter score were the top three performance measures that improved after investing in this technology.

TikTok became the first app to cross $10 billion in cumulative consumer spending, propelling mobile app sales to a new high in a year when revenue from games was down, according to data.ai’s latest annual report.

TikTok and Disney+ video-streaming platforms led to an 11% increase in consumer app sales in 2023, demonstrating persistent demand. Meanwhile, the games industry faced a double-digit sales decline in China, dragging worldwide sales down 2%, reported Bloomberg.

The report noted that TikTok’s in-app credit purchases can be used to tip favored creators, and live streamers accounted for most of its income.

Spending on apps, rather than games, increased as consumers increased their spending on streaming, user-generated content, and dating applications. Still, advertising was the stronger revenue driver in 2023, rising 8% to $362 billion and accounting for two-thirds of mobile revenues.

Google’s Search Liaison stated on social media that there is no “perfect page” formula that websites need to adhere to in order to rank highly in search results.

Google stated there isn’t, and no one should feel compelled to follow some imaginary formula.

“There are any number of third party SEO tools that might advise that a page should be a certain number of words long or somehow constructed in a particular way for success in search,” noted the statement.

It pointed out, “Following such advice doesn’t guarantee a top ranking. Moreover, such predictions and advice [are] often based on looking at averages — which misses the point that completely different and unique pages can and do succeed in search.”

Google advises focusing on making websites helpful to readers instead of following advice from third parties.