Mobile

Retail sales rose at their slowest pace in nearly a year in October as American consumers showed signs of strain from high prices, according to the latest CNBC/NRF Retail Monitor. Total retail spending on a seasonally adjusted basis came in at $561.7 billion in October, a 0.2 percent increase from a month prior and 3.6…

Mobile has transformed the way consumers shop. A purchase can start anywhere, often with a few taps while someone is commuting or waiting in line. Yet the payment experience hasn't always kept pace. One of the most overlooked challenges is what happens after a customer successfully authenticates a purchase. Picture a shopper checking out on…

Retailers tend to judge loyalty success by penetration, which measures the share of transactions tied to a member account. It’s an easy number to report and an easy one to feel good about. However, penetration mostly counts people who were already coming in. It doesn’t show whether the program created a new visit, held off…

The holidays are often treated as an exceptional period in the marketing calendar. In reality, they tend to amplify the trends already underway. The season puts the year’s marketing practices under stress. Customer journeys become denser. Media spending rises. More consumers enter the market at once, and the consequences of weak measurement or disconnected customer…

You have to be living under a rock if you haven’t heard about the tremendous growth of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude. Though early adopters are using LLMs for their shopping search and discovery, my money is on mobile apps dominating Q4 holiday shopping in 2026. History Doesn’t Lie According to research…

For retailers, the mobile inbox has become an extension of the storefront. Promotional alerts, order updates, loyalty rewards and curbside pickup confirmations increasingly reach customers through text messaging. SMS continues to outperform email in engagement, and consumers routinely open and act on messages delivered directly to their phones. Yet as retailers rely more heavily on…

U.S. consumers spent nearly $258 billion online during the holiday season lasting from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, according to new data from Adobe. The company said in a press release that was a new record — and beat expectations of $253.4 billion — with consumers spending more than $4 billion in a single day…

U.S. retail sales remained unchanged from September to October as consumers moderated their spending ahead of the holiday season. The U.S. Census Bureau provided the October sales numbers earlier this week; the report was delayed more than a month because of the 43-day government shutdown that occurred earlier this fall. Americans spent $732.6 billion in…

For e-commerce and shopping app marketers, the fourth quarter is make-or-break: large marketing budgets meet high shopping intentions compressed into a few frenzied weeks. Whether you increase spend or not, success and increased conversions during this period are about planning smarter and testing earlier. Adjust’s 2025 Shopping App Insights report found that installs for shopping…

Consumers spent a record $11.8 billion online on Black Friday, up 9.1 percent year-over-year (YoY) and above Adobe’s initial forecast ($11.7 billion, up 8.3 percent YoY). More than half of online sales (55.2 percent) came through a mobile device (vs. desktop), representing $6.5 billion (up 10.2 percent YoY). According to Salesforce data, the top performing…