Traffic referred to retail sites from Generative AI sources has skyrocketed this year, with momentum building as the holiday season approaches, according to Adobe’s 2024 UK holiday online spending forecast.
After maintaining steady volumes earlier in the year, GenAI referrals to retail sites have increased tenfold between July and September 2024. Adobe added that given this momentum, referrals from GenAI sites are projected to rise even further throughout the holiday season as shoppers look to new channels for holiday gift inspiration, recommendations and finding the best price for the items they want.
Additionally, both direct traffic and organic search are expected to grow during the holiday period, while paid search traffic will decline – as consumers become more intentional about their online shopping.
Direct Traffic is forecast to grow by 30%-32% year-over-year, suggesting that consumers have a clear idea of what they want to purchase and where to get it from and wait for the best price before acting.
While, Affiliates and Partners (which includes social media influencers) are projected to see a year-over-year growth of 4%-6%, maintaining steady momentum through the holidays. As Natural Search revenue share is expected to rise between 20% and 22% year-over-year.
However, Paid Search revenue share is expected to decrease by 13% – 15% year-over-year, continuing its decline from 2023. Adobe stressed this reflects the uplift in alternative traffic sources, and more specific search behaviour from consumers.
The wider forecast predicts UK shoppers will spend a record of £25.9bn during the holiday season, breaking the previous record set during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 by £300mn, and 6.1% higher than the same period in 2023.
Black Friday (£1.13bn) and Cyber Monday (£940m) will again be the highest spending days of the year, up 9% and 6.7% year-over-year (YoY) respectively, as shoppers plan their spending around major discounting events to get as much value as possible.
“While UK shoppers are spending more freely this holiday season, it’s clear that consumers are still observing the more cautious, value and price conscious habits that emerged during periods of high costs-of-living over the past 18 months,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights at Adobe.
“Deal-hungry shoppers will again concentrate their spending over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend as they take advantage of the deep discounts on offer across all retail categories to stretch their budgets as far as possible.”
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