From Digital Shelf to Discovery Engine

AI assistants are already shaping what shoppers buy, and they aren’t relying on the pages most brands expect. In just nine months, AI’s share of organic traffic to shoppable landing pages grew 295.7%. Online grocery delivery took eight years to reach that level. To see how these systems decide, SPINS Foundry spent 13 weeks tracking 925 real shopper questions across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, logging 347,488 citations and every brand and retailer behind them.

The findings point to a new kind of shelf: retailer product pages now earn 50% of AI citations, while brand websites earn 24%. That doesn’t shut out innovative brands. Brands with richer product attributes show up in AI recommendations more often, whatever their size. This report gives brands and retailers a data-backed plan for owning their product truth wherever AI finds it.

IN THIS REPORT YOU’LL LEARN:

• Why retailer sites earn twice the AI citations of brand websites, and why that gap widens as brands grow
• How attribute breadth connects to AI recommendations, giving emerging brands a way to compete on differentiation instead of budget
• How ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity each “shop” differently, from mass retail to natural to reviews first
• Where the assistants agree: 90% of qualifying brands were recommended by all three
• What brands, retailers, and algorithms each control in AI-mediated discovery