During this year’s four-day Prime Day sales event, consumers were more likely to search for products using AI, and consumers who were steered to retail sites by AI were more likely to make a purchase, according to Prime Day data released today by Adobe.
Adobe, which analyzed digital transactions on U.S. retail sites during the four Prime days, saw a marked shift this year in the ability of AI-powered chat and browsers to drive sales.
Shoppers who used AI to find product information and deals had a 40% better conversion – or purchase – rate, than non-AI channels such as paid search, email, and social media. That is in sharp contrast to last year’s Prime event, when conversion from AI-directed traffic was 23% worse than other channels.
While AI still generates a modest volume of online traffic compared to other channels, the new figures show AI is “shortening the time it takes for consumers to confidently get the information they need,” Adobe reported.
“AI-powered chat services and browsers have cemented their role in the online shopping experience, providing utility for shoppers who value the speed and convenience,” Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights, said when releasing Adobe’s report on the first day of Prime Day.
But, Pandya noted, a big problem for retailers is that “sizable portions of retailer’s websites, up to 46 percent in some cases, are not readable by machines.”
That problem, Pandya said, “limits their visibility across AI surfaces and will push brands to invest in more AI-friendly content such as tutorials, how-to guides, customer service pages, and more.”
Prime Day also highlights the importance of retailers being able to meet the increased demands of a sales event like Prime Day, and to deliver the corrent items in the promised timeline – something that has become more important in the age of AI, Omar Qari, CEO of ecommerce and supply chain platform Logicbroker, said.
“The same connected data infrastructure that allows retailers to manage inventory, suppliers, orders and fulfillment in real time during Prime Day is what makes products discoverable and trustworthy in AI-driven commerce,” Qari said. “Yet many retailers remain too focused on how to get recommended by AI when the bigger question is whether they’ve earned the trust to keep being recommended at all.”
Adobe has been tracking the growth in AI-directed traffic to retail sites for more than a year. During the first five months of this year, through May, AI traffic to U.S. retail sites increased by 235%, year-over-year. During the Prime Day period, June 23 to 26, AI-directed traffic was up 89%. year-over-year.
Consumers spent $26.4 billion online during the four sale days, up 9.3% over Prime Day 2025. That was up slightly from Adobe’s forecast of 9 percent growth.
The summer Prime Day event is beginning to rival the peak holiday sales period, from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, in terms of spending.
During the peak holiday sales period in 2025, online sales were $32.45 billion.
Five categories show the biggest increases in sales during the Prime event: Electronics, up 120% compared to average daily sales in June; appliances, up 90%; tools and home improvement, up 70%; home and garden, up 65%; and furniture and bedding, up 55%.
Use of Buy Now, Pay Later (BPNL) financing increased during this year’s Prime event, up 9.5% over last year. BPNL was used for 6.6% of online orders, amounting to $2.1 billion in spending.
