Insider info: The robots are taking over Cyber Week
Another month, another tsunami of announcements from OpenAI.
Filtering the hype from the impact, I think the most pressing development is the trend towards agentic commerce.
In Exploding Topics, we noticed that Instant Checkout searches are picking up.
Granted, this search volume is low. But just look how our systems already tracked discussions on social media (particularly LinkedIn and X). That’s what has helped push that hockey-stick growth.
When this chart updates at the end of October, I expect to see this volume explode further.
Instant Checkout is OpenAI’s attempt to bring the checkout flow into ChatGPT. In the US, customers will soon be able to purchase from Shopify stores without leaving their conversation.
And the timing is perfect, because we’re about 5 weeks out from the biggest shopping event of the year.
According to Klaviyo, 54% shoppers intend to use AI this Black Friday. Use cases include product comparisons, summarizing customer reviews, and price comparisons.
James looked at this in his article on the impact of AI on Black Friday 2025.
Amazon got ahead of this last year (and had its biggest Black Friday to date).
This may mean traditional Black Friday marketing tactics need to change.
Relying on a short campaign with a deep discount is risky when the lead time to build mentions in ChatGPT is longer than the time needed to rank in Google. And if you launch a week-long campaign, there likely isn’t enough lead time to get those offers in front of people via ChatGPT, given the short timeframe of Cyber Week.
Instead, brands need to look at building long-term trust and positive recommendations that ensure they’re top of mind when sales come around.
This all points to a new era of e-commerce where searches are diversifying across multiple search engines. If you’re planning campaigns now:
Joli wrote some super actionable tips that you can use to work on your AI visibility ahead of the holiday shopping season.
And if you’re still planning this year’s campaigns, check out Daisy’s new video on 10+ market analysis tools that are worth looking at.
Updates from the Exploding Topics team
Finishing strong with a few things we’ve been working on:
Osama compared popular AI search tools from Semrush AI SEO vs. SE Ranking to see what insights each of them can provide.
James updated Keri’s list of SEO conferences and gave the info a refresh for Q4. The article now covers in-person and virtual events from October 2025 to June 2026.
I uncovered new research that suggests ChatGPT 4o was 94.7% accurate when it talked to several copies of itself in a so-called “Council of AIs”.
Fabio has AI company statistics a lick of paint. Interestingly, 35% of companies now say they use some form of AI.
Bonus from my Watch History: if you have a spare couple of hours… I highly recommend you check out this interview with the “Godfather of AI”, Geoffrey Hinton.
On agentic commerce, whats the long-term impact on consumer autonomy?