Joe Keenan interviews experts from OLLY and Contentsquare on the rise of AI-driven search.

The Commerce Department's latest U.S. retail sales report — delayed because of last year's government shutdown — shows that Americans spent more than expected in February following three consecutive months of decline. The report comes at a time of extreme consumer wariness: gas prices have reached a national average of $4 a gallon as the…

Shoptalk 2026 had little choice when creating the theme for this year’s show: “Retail in the Age of AI.” But what artificial intelligence actually means to the thousands of retailers and brands that will be attending the show varies significantly. Some brands and retailers care about intelligence, some about automation, while others want to improve…

While dealmakers aren't stepping back from consumer mergers and acquisitions (M&A), they are getting more selective. New data from KPMG shows deal value jumped 52 percent in 2025, even as deal volume fell 7 percent. Early 2026 looks similar. New global consumer deals in the first two months of the year fell 6 percent year-over-year…

The search bar isn’t dead, but it’s no longer running the show. For years, retail marketing teams optimized content for search engines that crawled text and hunted for keywords. Now, generative artificial intelligence tools, including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, answer shoppers' questions directly, drawing from a much wider pool of user-generated signals. They determine which…