AI chatbots talked most AI users out of a purchase

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In today's MarketingShot:

🤖 AI chatbots talked most AI users out of a purchase

🎒 Back-to-school spending is stretching your TikTok reach

🛒 Google is putting shopping ads inside AI Mode

🛍️ Anthropic's new blueprints put your brand in AI carts

📺 YouTube's co-viewing metric could inflate your creator deals

Plus: 💡 4 strategies & tactics, 🎁 6 other news you might like, and 🧰 6 tools.

🤖 AI chatbots talked most AI users out of a purchase LINK

A new Exploding Topics survey of more than 2,300 people in the U.S. found that over half of AI users have decided against buying a product because of information a chatbot gave them.

Among people who name chatbots as a purchase source, 80.93% have called off a buy on AI guidance, and 74.15% of all consumers would be less likely to buy if a chatbot flagged mixed or negative reviews.

Chatbots also drive purchases, with 41% of consumers buying something on an AI recommendation, while 59.27% of AI users have discovered a brand or product they did not know through a chatbot.

🎒 Back-to-school spending is stretching your TikTok reach LINK

Advertisers raised their TikTok spending by 20-40% across the summer as they tried to draw shoppers during the back-to-school sales period, which runs from late July through early September.

Tinuiti reported TikTok spend up about 20% year over year for July and August, with the platform's share of client social spending rising 55% between the two months, driven partly by TikTok Shop sales.

Go Fish Digital saw TikTok spending climb 41% year on year among brand clients, while the number of advertisers using the channel during back-to-school rose 160% as Walmart and Amazon grew saturated.

🛒 Google is putting shopping ads inside AI Mode LINK

Google is testing shopping ads placed directly inside the text of its AI-generated answers, with a sponsored product carousel running between the generated response and the follow-up questions, plus a second sponsored block at the bottom of the page.

The test runs on AI Mode, which now reaches more than a billion monthly active users, and a single inline unit for a Temu Beats listing carried four generated bullet points describing the product, with a disclosure line saying ad responses are generated independently.

Google Ads gives no segment that separates AI Mode delivery from the rest of a Search, Shopping or Performance Max campaign, so impressions and clicks from an inline carousel land in the same rows as a conventional top-of-page unit, leaving the placement invisible in an account's own data.

🛍️ Anthropic's new blueprints put your brand in AI carts LINK

Anthropic has released open-source blueprints that let retailers build shopping and merchant agents running on its Claude models, placing brands inside AI-driven carts ahead of the holiday season.

Early tests show carts growing as much as 35 percent larger, with shoppers finishing purchases 60 percent more often, and Adobe Analytics found AI-driven site visits convert at rates 60 percent higher than other traffic.

The agents search catalogs, compare options and add items to carts but stop short of completing purchases, handing off to the retailer's checkout, with Shopify, Priceline, Accenture, Mastercard and Visa among partners.

📺 YouTube's co-viewing metric could inflate your creator deals LINK

YouTube added a private metric called views co-viewed to YouTube Studio on September 5, 2026, estimating how many people watched together on a television, a figure creators can hand to advertisers during sponsorship talks.

The metric relies on statistical modeling based on demographic patterns, video genre, and viewing times to predict shared watching, with no sensor or panel in the room, and it leaves public view counts and Partner Program payouts untouched.

The number takes up to 48 hours to process, so any date range covering the last two days, including the last 28 days and this month presets, shows a figure lower than it will finally settle at.

💡 Strategies & Tactics

> Meta Tags for SEO: What They Are, Why They Matter, and How to Use Them: Prioritize the title tag, canonical, and robots meta tags since these directly affect rankings, while descriptions and social tags help indirectly through clicks and sharing.

> Turn Off New Creative Workflow (Multimedia Experience): Switch buggy Meta ads back to the old single-media setup while you still can, avoiding creation and reporting glitches from its new multi-image tool.

> Google Can Lose Faith In Sites Based On Low Value Programmatic SEO: Mass-producing template pages that combine data without adding real value can make Google distrust a whole site, taking months to recover.

> Do We Still Need Google Disavow?: Skip Google's Disavow tool unless Search Console confirms an actual manual penalty, since spammy links now just quietly lose value rather than triggering site-wide penalties.

Other news you might like

• AI Tools Now Drive Almost Half of Local Business Discovery, BrightLocal FindsLINK

• New Google Ads Automated PromotionsLINK

• Google opens YouTube personalized ads to alcohol advertisersLINK

• TikTok Shop bans review-bait inserts in 10 packing rulesLINK

• The big winners and losers in U.S. website traffic over the past yearLINK

• Google Video campaigns gain the Lookalike reach controls Demand Gen lostLINK

🧰 Trending tools

ChatCut: edits videos through plain-language commands that handle cutting, motion graphics, scripts, and music without touching a manual timeline.LINK

JustVibe: turns plain-text task descriptions, like planning a Tokyo trip, into working interactive apps instantly, so you skip writing code entirely.LINK

PlugThis: turns plain-English prompts into complete Manifest v3 Chrome extensions, generating permissions, popup UI, background workers, and Supabase backend in about two minutes.LINK

ZooData: converts webpages into structured JSON to cut LLM token usage by 75%, with pre-analyzed Amazon and TikTok e-commerce data for AI agents.LINK

Effects SDK: adds AI video effects like background blur, noise suppression, and lighting correction to apps, processing client-side across web, mobile, and desktop.LINK

warmbly: an open-source platform that automates cold email outreach and warms up email accounts to improve deliverability and inbox placement.LINK

See you tomorrow for a new dose of ☕️ MarketingShot!