Plus: How Google’s AI Is Shifting The Holiday E-Commerce Playing Field |
| The holiday spending season is officially here. Shoppers are tapping mobile phones, typing on keyboards, and yes, even going into actual stores in search of gifts to make the darkest part of the year more festive. It’s also the time of year when many businesses see one of their largest sales bumps. According to the National Retail Foundation, the holiday season has driven an average of 19% of total annual sales for the last five years for retailers. But it’s not just retailers. Businesses that make all kinds of goods also benefit. Shipping companies keep busy. Food service businesses provide refreshments to large and small parties. Even nonprofits and charities see the dollars flow during the holiday season, as people tend to feel more generous overall. Companies have recently been offering employees more automatic charitable giving options, writes Forbes’ Maria Gracia Santillana Linares. These programs, often run through platforms that let employees choose the charity of their choice, are seen as a way for workers to both give to causes they feel passionately about and feel that their companies’ values reflect their own. Benevity, a fintech that processes donations, processed $3.2 billion in donations to 265,000 to unique causes last year, a 14% increase from 2023. The company says it expects to grow again this year by double digits. We’re using today’s Forbes CFO newsletter to look at what the holiday season means for businesses. We’ve got statistics and projections about what consumers are likely to spend and how it can impact the economy. I also talked to Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge, about how Google’s AI is impacting e-commerce this holiday season.
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Until next time. |
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| In today’s CFO newsletter: |
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| It’s high shopping season now, but the projections about how people were likely to spend have been coming out since August. The good news: All predictions have shown more spending this year. The not-so-great news: Many see slower growth than in the past. According to the National Retail Federation’s annual holiday sales predictions in October, total retail sales are expected to increase 2.5% to 3.5% over 2023 levels. Forbes senior contributor Joan Verdon wrote this is a modest increase but still would be a spending record, with shoppers expected to spend at least $25 billion more than last year. NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said retailers are fairly upbeat and optimistic about the holidays, even though they’re concerned that shoppers will be more price-conscious. Deloitte made a similar projection in September, expecting holiday spending to increase between 2.3% and 3.3%. Michael Jeschke, leader of Deloitte’s Retail & Consumer Products Practice, told Verdon in an interview about this forecast that they see a “return to normal spending” in 2024—more in line with the last 10 to 15 years in terms of growth than the previous three, which were all deeply impacted by the pandemic and its after effects. But still, Deloitte found that consumers plan to spend an average of $1,778 this holiday season—8% more than in 2023—with the largest increases on experiences, decor and holiday clothing. In August, Salesforce predicted online global holiday sales of $1.19 trillion, growth of just 2% from 2023’s $1.17 trillion, wrote Verdon. Adobe’s online forecast, made about a month later in September, predicts a record $240.8 billion in online spending in the U.S., an increase of 8.4% over 2023. Patrick Brown, Adobe’s vice president of growth marketing and insights, told Verdon that they anticipate consumers will do more splurging on bigger ticket items—with more deep discounts on them this year. The buying spree got off to a rousing start last week. As people waited for their turkey thermometers to pop up on Thanksgiving Day, they spent more than $6 billion online. Black Friday online sales approached $11 billion—an increase of more than 10%, Verdon reported from Adobe Analytics and Salesforce data. But there was a loser on Black Friday: actual stores. There was an 8.2% drop in in-store traffic, according to Sensormatic Solutions. Grant Gustafson, Sensormatic’s head of retail and analytics, told Verdon this was likely caused by retailers improving their online shopping experiences and spreading sales to the entire week. The totals for yesterday’s shopping event—Cyber Monday—aren’t in yet, but it was likely enormous. CapitalOne predicted holiday shoppers would spend $13.2 billion on Monday. In 2023, 94 million people shopped online on Cyber Monday, a 26.5% bigger shopping day than Black Friday. |
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| While analysts predict that more money will be spent this year, consumers have also borne the brunt of inflation for the last several years. Prices of most items, from food and fuel to gifts and experiences, are still a little more expensive—something that could make a big difference in what people spend. Forbes senior contributor Sharon Edelson reported on a survey from ESW at the beginning of October that found 61% of consumers said they planned to spend more than $600 this holiday season, but 47% said the high prices of food and fuel would lead them to spend less than they would otherwise. While inflation has abated somewhat, prices are still high, and the Commerce Department’s personal consumption expenditures index rose 2.3% in October, compared to 2023. Salesforce predicted back in August that value will be top-of-mind for consumers this year, with one in five online purchases expected from a Chinese-headquartered shopping app: namely Temu, Shein and TikTok. In August, 63% of consumers had made purchases from one of these apps during the previous six months, and half had already planned to buy from them during the holiday season. Salesforce said TikTok was likely the big winner; its customer base increased 24% between April and August. Amazon hopes to get a piece of that pie, launching a new “Amazon Haul” storefront last month to offer goods directly from Chinese warehouses—meaning they have lower prices but longer shipping times. Deloitte’s Jeschke said in September that inflation is likely to have both a positive and negative impact on holiday spending. With decreased inflation comes an ability to spend more, but the prolonged period of inflation has eaten into many households’ savings, which could lead to more credit card debt. An overwhelming majority of consumers—85.1%—said they expect to use credit or borrowing to make holiday purchases, according to Coresight Research’s Holiday 2024 Consumer Survey and Retail Outlook, Verdon wrote last month. Four in 10 expect to put the majority of their spending on credit, and more than a third are using credit cards more than last year, according to Salesforce. |
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| | | How Google’s AI Is Shifting The Holiday E-Commerce Playing Field |
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| It’s hard to miss the changes that Google has been making to its search results pages this year, especially when it comes to shopping. As the tech giant continues to improve its AI-powered search results, it’s doing more to impact what it shows to consumers. I talked to Jim Yu, CEO of SEO and content marketing firm BrightEdge, which keeps close tabs on what Google and other search engines are doing. I spoke to him about some of the changes, what they mean for businesses, and the best ways to translate those changes into sales. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity. What are some new things Google is incorporating in its e-commerce search results? Yu: Google’s doing a lot in some of these commerce shopping queries [with] experimentation around YouTube. It makes sense if you think about multimodal content. If you are shopping for the new Sonos, buying a new iPhone or looking for a big screen TV, a lot of times people go to YouTube and find reviews. But it takes a lot of time to watch those videos. Google’s AI overview automatically goes and looks at the video, watches the video, transcribes the video, then figures out what query is relevant for in search and summarizes. For example, if there are some pros and cons to buying something, it automatically looks at the video, along with regular reviews, and then summarizes that into the AI overview. This is a very interesting hint into the future of AI. The last 18 months has been around large language models, which have been about just text. From a shopper perspective during the holiday season, you don’t have to watch all that stuff and spend a ton of time researching. Is it doing a good job of picking credible reviews? I mean, anybody who wants to do a product review can, but I imagine that an editor at Consumer Reports' review might carry more weight than one from my neighbor. They’re doing a relatively good job with this. It’s an interesting dynamic because on YouTube they have a lot more signals around content moderation. Bigger picture, you saw this evolution with AI overviews, where in the beginning it was using a lot of Reddit and Quora content—user-generated, creator-generated content, but with maybe less on moderation and authority. With YouTube, there are better controls and guardrails around the authority they ascribe to a creator. What else has Google changed and added for the shopping season in terms of AI and search results? There are larger AI overview panels. And by larger, I mean the real estate the AI overview takes now. We have not seen a lot of ads appear. I know they're talking about that, [and because] the space that the AI overview is taking is increasing, that may be a precursor to having more real estate to add ads into that format. You’re seeing more of the introduction of AI overviews at the top of search results, and a lot of times, integrating more details around the product so it’s a richer experience if you have a high-intent shopping query. The product carousel, where in the AI overviews you can actually see different products, went up 300%. It’s not just describing products, describing attributes to consider, talking about the latest trends and things like that, but [it can] go ahead and show you the products that you can click through and buy. Those are going to be very important aspects heading into the holiday season. How much do you think this will transform e-commerce shopping, both during the holidays and afterward? Based on what we’re seeing, the retailers and sites that have a lot more related information that help guide the shopper are going to win more. It’s not just, ‘Hey, I’m looking for the Samsung TV.’ It’s actually all the other things that surround that. Having more of that shopping guide, different products to consider, things to think about when you’re buying. Companies [that] are doing a good job of that as opposed to just pure: Here’s the product and I’ve got the best price are going to be the winners. I think also ones that have done a good job with the multimedia aspect—the image aspects and the feed accuracy that they’re giving to Google—will also do better. A lot of times, people just think about these things as silos: I’ve got my website, I’ve got my feed, I’ve got my ads. But the more integrated and accurate information, and the more you have a comprehensive set [of information], the more you’ll win. Getting all that stuff up to the quality bar is going to be really important. |
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| Constant Contact polled 500 small and medium businesses last year in a variety of industries, as well as 500 consumers, about how the holidays impact them. |
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73% | Proportion of small and medium retail businesses that get at least a quarter of their annual revenue from holiday shoppers | |
| 84% | Share of consumers who are likely to visit a small business they’ve never purchased from before during the holidays | |
| ‘Attract new customers, hit revenue goals and plan for the year ahead’ | What Constant Contact CMO Laura Goldberg said small businesses are trying to do during the holidays |
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