Optimove Insights today published its Holiday Shopping Report 2026, and the headline number cuts both ways: 72% of surveyed United States consumers now consult AI assistants for gift ideas, yet a majority say they will not shop anywhere they did not shop last year.

Optimove Insights, the analytical and research arm of marketing technology vendor Optimove, released the study today from New York over GLOBE NEWSWIRE. The report rests on a survey of 648 United States consumers conducted in Spring 2026, covering discovery, decision-making, messaging, payments, multichannel behavior and the use of artificial intelligence in shopping.

The central claim is that AI has stopped being a forecast and become a measurable part of the consideration stage. According to Optimove, 72% of respondents regularly or occasionally consult tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for shopping ideas and gift recommendations. The chart accompanying the release splits that figure: 49% answered "Yes, regularly" and 23% answered "Yes, occasionally." A further 12% said they do not use such tools but are open to it, while 16% said they prefer to research on their own.

That 49% regular-use figure is not new. Optimove reported the same number in April, when its 2026 Mother's Day Shopping Report found 49% of surveyed consumers using AI tools for gift recommendations. The holiday report draws on the same panel size and the same income and age screen, which makes the two studies comparable and suggests regular AI consultation has held steady across two seasonal occasions three to four months apart.

What the survey actually measured

Respondents were adults aged 18 and over with household incomes of 75,000 dollars or more, according to the release. The sample skews toward higher-income households by design, which matters when reading the spending intent figures.

One inconsistency in the source material deserves noting. The narrative text of the release describes a survey of 648 consumers aged 18 and over. The footnote on the AI consultation chart describes a 2026 survey of 647 United States consumers aged 18 to 65 with household incomes above 75,000 dollars. Optimove does not reconcile the difference between the two base descriptions. The same panel size of 648 appeared in the company's 2026 Summer Shopping Report published on May 6, which found 52% of respondents planning higher summer budgets.

A second wording gap appears in the trust findings. The body of the release states that almost three-quarters of consumers trust AI-generated recommendations as much as or more than other sources. The key findings list states three-quarters. Neither passage gives the underlying percentage.

AI features already in use

Beyond general consultation, the report measures which AI-driven shopping features respondents have actually used. Product recommendation features lead at 55%. Chatbots follow at 41%, visual search at 31%, personalized deals at 26% and size or fit recommendations at 23%.

The spread is instructive. Recommendation engines have been embedded in retail sites for well over a decade and are frequently invisible to the shopper, which helps explain the gap between that category and the more deliberate act of opening a chatbot. Visual search at 31% sits roughly where image-based discovery tools have been positioned since Amazon Lens, Pinterest Lens and Google Lens moved image search into mainstream retail workflows.

Whether stated AI usage translates into measurable platform share is a separate question. A Smarty Marketing survey covered in May found that AI platforms captured roughly 7% of stated shopping search preference while Google retained the lead, a gap between how consumers describe their habits and which destinations they actually choose.

Trust runs ahead of the data comfort

Optimove reports that data privacy is the leading factor that would increase willingness to use an AI personal shopping assistant, cited by 37% of respondents. That single number sits inside a body of research that has pointed the same direction for eighteen months.

Usercentrics research published on June 27 found that one in four consumers had canceled a service over how a brand handled AI and data, with more than half willing to pay a premium for transparent handling. Earlier, a March survey documented that 81% of respondents were concerned about AI systems accessing personal data even as daily usage climbed. A Cloaked study covering 1,009 United States adults found only 18% trusted AI to keep personal data secure.

Optimove's own regulatory record is part of that landscape. France's Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertes imposed a one million euro fine on the company on December 11, 2025 for data processor violations under Articles 28, 29 and 30 of the General Data Protection Regulation, connected to a breach that exposed Deezer customer records including 9.8 million French users.

Spending intent, and the loyalty split

Fifty-five percent of respondents expect to spend more than last year. Another 30% plan to keep the same budget. Taken together, 85% of the surveyed group is holding or increasing holiday outlay, a figure Optimove characterizes as a strong commercial opportunity for retailers.

The counterweight is where that money goes. Fifty-three percent plan to shop exclusively at stores they used last year. Forty-seven percent expect to explore new brands during the season. Optimove frames the result as loyalty conferring an advantage without guaranteeing one.

For acquisition-focused marketers, the 53% figure sets a practical ceiling on the addressable pool. Slightly more than half of higher-income holiday shoppers are, by their own stated intent, closed to new retailers before the season begins. The remaining 47% is the contested territory, and it is the segment that AI-assisted discovery is most likely to influence, since consumers using a chatbot to find gift ideas are by definition not starting from a fixed retailer list.

Retailer preference concentrates at the top

Amazon leads consumer preference at 81%, followed by Walmart at 71% and Target at 58%. Optimove notes that preferences fragment beyond those three, which the company reads as leaving room for specialty retailers to compete on distinct products, relevance or differentiated experience.

The concentration figures land against a retail media market where the same three names dominate advertiser budgets. Walmart reported in February that its global advertising business reached nearly 6.4 billion dollars for fiscal year 2026, with Walmart Connect in the United States growing 41%. Amazon disclosed in the same month that its Rufus shopping assistant drove close to 12 billion dollars in sales during 2025, with more than 300 million customers using it across the year.

Quality outranks price, even for unfamiliar brands

Quality was selected by 81% of consumers as a top factor in holiday purchase decisions, ahead of price at 70% and brand reputation at 46%. When the question shifts to trying a new brand, quality would persuade 85% and price would influence 80%.

The narrowing gap is the notable part. Quality outranks price by eleven points for general purchase decisions but by only five points when the decision involves an unfamiliar brand, which suggests discounting retains more weight as a switching lever than as a general purchase driver.

Gifting and timing

Seventy-five percent of respondents say they always or usually buy holiday gifts. Sixty-seven percent will spend mostly on relatives, and 24% will divide budgets equally between family and friends.

On timing, the report records a split that has recurred across seasons. Sixty-six percent indicate willingness to begin shopping between July and October, yet 63% say they may wait for Black Friday or Cyber Monday before starting holiday purchases. The two figures are not mutually exclusive, and the overlap describes shoppers who browse early but hold purchase until the discount window opens.

Discounted prices are cited by 78% as a reason to shop earlier, followed by availability of desired items at 67% and shorter shipping times at 40%. Marketing fatigue arrives quickly: 27% say they are tired of holiday marketing before July, and by November more than seven out of ten report tiring of holiday messages.

That fatigue curve intersects with measured ad delivery patterns. An IAS analysis covered in July found that impressions served alongside holiday shopping content rose 219% between November 2 and December 5, 2025 compared with October, and that made-for-advertising traffic expanded during the Christmas period. Message volume peaks precisely when stated tolerance for it is lowest.

The infrastructure argument underneath

Optimove pairs the survey with a broader position on marketing technology. In a whitepaper produced with the Customer Data Platform Institute, the company argues that AI applications in a CDP divide into two categories: data management, covering integration, feature extraction, data quality, transformations, identity management and privacy classification; and activation, covering segmentation, predictive models, audience optimization, journey development, performance measurement and content creation.

The whitepaper states that most of these applications currently use AI as an assistant to human workers rather than an autonomous operator, with chatbots as an exception where the system already works independently. It also sets out design requirements for a platform intended to support AI workloads, including a time dimension on records so that events such as ad impressions can be correlated with subsequent purchases, testing tools that compare training inputs against hold-out samples, and real-time APIs able to accommodate near-continuous changes in data sources and parameters.

Those requirements describe the same problem other vendors have been addressing structurally. Databricks launched CustomerLake in June with Integral Ad Science as a partner, an agentic customer data platform built to link media signals to first-party profiles inside the governed data layer.

Pini Yakuel, Founder and CEO of Optimove, framed the report's conclusion in the release. "AI is no longer a future layer of holiday shopping. It is already part of how consumers discover products, compare options, and decide what to buy," Yakuel said. He added that the opportunity lies not in using AI more but in using it "responsibly and relevantly," and that consumers "expect recommendations that respect their needs, their trust, and their time."

Optimove has been positioned as a Visionary in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs for two consecutive years, according to the release. The company says it embedded AI in its platform beginning in 2012. Its product line includes Optimove Engage and Orchestrate for cross-channel decisioning, Optimove Personalize for digital personalization, and Optimove Gamify for loyalty mechanics, with an MCP connector exposing platform data to external AI tools.

Why this matters for marketers

Three findings carry practical weight beyond the vendor framing.

First, the 72% AI consultation figure describes influence at the consideration stage, not at checkout. Nothing in the report claims AI assistants are completing transactions. That distinction matters for attribution, because a recommendation surfaced inside a chatbot leaves no referral trace in most measurement stacks. Reporting covered in March found that AI bots crawl retail sites 198 times more often than Google's crawler, and that most AI bots cannot read content rendered in JavaScript, meaning product data behind client-side rendering is effectively invisible to the systems generating those recommendations.

Second, the 53% exclusivity figure is a constraint on prospecting budgets in a season where media costs peak. Retention spend and acquisition spend are competing for the same calendar, and the survey suggests the returns are structurally asymmetric.

Third, the privacy finding at 37% is the variable most under a marketer's control. It is the stated condition for wider adoption of AI shopping assistants, and it is the one point where the report's commercial argument and the regulatory record covered across PPC Land converge on the same operational requirement.

The full report is available on Optimove's website.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Optimove Insights, the analytical and research arm of Optimove, a marketing technology company incorporated as Mobius Solutions Ltd. and led by Founder and CEO Pini Yakuel. The findings concern United States consumers aged 18 and over with household incomes of 75,000 dollars or more, and affect retailers, retail media networks, e-commerce marketers and measurement providers.

What: The Holiday Shopping Report 2026, a survey-based study finding that 72% of respondents regularly or occasionally consult AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for shopping ideas, that 55% expect to spend more than last year and 30% expect to spend the same, that 53% plan to shop exclusively at stores used last year, and that Amazon, Walmart and Target hold consumer preference at 81%, 71% and 58% respectively. Data privacy was cited by 37% as the leading factor that would increase willingness to use an AI personal shopping assistant.

When: Released today, August 5, 2026, from New York. Fieldwork was conducted in Spring 2026 among 648 respondents, with the chart footnote citing 647.

Where: The survey covers the United States market. Optimove operates from New York, Tel Aviv and London.

Why: The report quantifies how far AI-assisted discovery has moved into the holiday consideration stage while documenting the limits around it: entrenched retailer loyalty among slightly more than half of higher-income shoppers, privacy as the stated condition for wider AI assistant adoption, and a marketing fatigue curve that peaks alongside seasonal ad volume.