Every Black Friday, retailers pour millions into the same playbook. Increase ad spend. Optimize the homepage. Send more emails. Fight for traffic. And every Black Friday, they lose to the same fundamental problem: their entire business is trapped on one website.

The empire is crumbling and most retailers don't even realize it yet. 2025 isn't just another year in retail. It's the year the old guard fell. For two decades, Amazon reigned supreme as the undisputed king of eCommerce, setting the rules that everyone else scrambled to follow. But something seismic has shifted in the digital shopping landscape, and the numbers tell a story that should terrify traditional omnichannel retailers.

The grocery industry stands at a remarkable inflection point. While other sectors have gradually embraced digital transformation, grocery retail, traditionally one of the most relationship-driven and tactile commerce experiences, is rapidly evolving into a sophisticated, AI-powered ecosystem. The latest data on Grocery Trends reveals not just an adoption trend, but a fundamental reimagining of how grocery businesses operate, compete, and serve customers.

TL;DR; Omnichannel retailers that make each physical store and its product catalog discoverable to AI and search engines can capture a wave of unserved, hyperlocal product demand. That’s not hypothetical, it’s measurable: close to half of searches have local intent and local queries routinely turn into store visits. The play: build store-level product footprints (pages + structured data + product catalog) so AI/search can surface your products where and when people need them.

AI-powered search has created two distinct optimization approaches: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). While both address the shift toward AI-generated results, they solve fundamentally different problems for brands.

While brands scramble to optimize their online presence, a massive shift in consumer behavior is quietly reshaping how customers discover and purchase products. The data tells a story that most retailers are missing, and it's costing them millions in untapped revenue.

AI readiness in retail makes it clear: Amazon and Alibaba aren’t just a little ahead, they’re in a completely different league. While most retailers are still patching together partnerships with Google, Microsoft, or AWS, these two giants have been quietly building their own AI foundations, custom chips, proprietary models, and massive commerce graphs that make them not just retailers, but infrastructure companies.

For years, digital marketing revolved around a single moment: the click. A click was a visit, a lead, a conversion waiting to happen. Not anymore.

How the world's largest retailer proved that product-location visibility isn't just about SEO, it's about unlocking revenue that's...

The best local marketing infrastructure is the one that runs itself, invisible, autonomous, and effective without requiring your constant attention.