Marketing

There's a lip gloss that tingles like hot sauce. It sold out. If that line made you pause, that's the point. The Sephora x TABASCO collaboration launched earlier this year and immediately went out of stock. Its success wasn’t due to massive media buying or celebrity endorsements, but because it was unique enough to stop…

In the time of distributed commerce, the traditional attribution model of last-click measurement breaks down. Brands need to adapt at the infrastructure level. Walmart embedded its own artificial intelligence layer, Sparky, into third-party interfaces while keeping the transaction anchored in its own environment.

During the holiday season, retailers’ online traffic numbers skyrocket, but so does their competition. With standard site navigation, Black Friday and Cyber Week shoppers must click through product pages to find what they’re looking for. If they can’t easily find it, shoppers abandon their carts and visit other sites. However, modern artificial intelligence commerce agents…

Retail has spent the past two years asking the same question: Which AI model should we use? It's an understandable place to start. New foundation models continue to arrive, each promising faster insights, better recommendations, and more efficient operations. Yet many retailers are discovering that deploying AI is much easier than generating consistent business value…

Online shopping behavior in 2026 is being reshaped in real time. Consumers are experiencing a fragmented, AI-driven landscape where discovery happens everywhere: from social feeds and creator content to large language models (LLMs) that surface recommendations in a single response. In fact, more than 70 percent of consumers want generative AI integrated into their shopping…

Retail sales rose again in July, marking the 10th consecutive month of gains, according to the CNBC/NRF Retail Monitor, powered by Affinity Solutions, and released today by the National Retail Federation (NRF). “Retail sales maintained their steady upward momentum in July as consumers kept shopping despite ups and downs in other economic indicators,” NRF President and…

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. is changing the company name to Neighborhood Intelligence, relocating its corporate headquarters to Nashville, and moving the stock listing from NYSE to Nasdaq. These moves are all part of CEO Marcus Lemonis' vision of an “everything home” ecosystem built around three interconnected pillars — omnichannel retail, home services and home…

Retailers spent the last decade optimizing a familiar e-commerce path: homepage to category page to product detail page (PDP). Brand story first. Product decision last. That sequence is getting compressed. Artificial intelligence-driven discovery is increasingly delivering shoppers directly to PDPs, often from a single prompt like “best white sneakers for wide feet” or “what jeans…

Personalization isn’t coming back. It’s being reinterpreted by a new generation. We’re now seeing fun, custom pieces that mean monograms are a must-have. As back-to-school shopping enters crunch time, we’re seeing a surge across the board. From elementary school backpacks to college dorm rooms, customization is the essential finishing touch, and retailers that treat it…

The most significant shift in the history of performance marketing is happening right now, and most of the industry is responding by doing more of the same. Artificial intelligence isn't just changing how ads get delivered. It's changing the nature of the buyer journey itself. Answer engines are replacing search, agentic shopping tools are beginning…