3 Black Friday & Cyber Monday Strategies to Win in the AI Search Era
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are evolving: Shoppers are spending less, researching more, and relying on LLMs like ChatGPT to help them to decide what to buy. Are your product pages ready?
Around the world, Black Friday is one of the busiest dates in the ecommerce calendar.
AT&T Business’ 2025 Holiday Shopping Survey found that 40% of Gen Z and 32% of millennials plan to do most of their shopping on Black Friday this year. In 2024, US consumers spent a total $10.8 billion in Black Friday shopping online alone, making it the most popular day for shopping in the entire year. (Cyber Monday, the Monday that follows Black Friday, came in second.)
However, this November, revenue forecasts might look a little different. For the first time in years, shoppers are planning on spending less. According to Deloitte, Black Friday spending will see a 4% pullback after 4 years of growth, despite rising prices, with shoppers looking to stretch every penny. A similar report from Lendingtree found that 39% of shoppers will be spending less this year, citing higher prices as the cause. Consumers are more likely to dwell and deliberate on purchases, rather than impulse shopping as we’ve come to expect. AI search tools like ChatGPT are seeing a surge in use around holiday season, as shoppers use the LLMs to help shortlist potential purchases.
What does this mean for retailers? Well, with shoppers being more intentional with their purchases, it’s more important than ever to grab and hold your customers’ attention. After all, each individual might only be making one significant purchase this Black Friday weekend – and ideally, that purchase will be on your site.
You need to find a way to stand out. And, perhaps more importantly, you need to make sure your customers find you quickly. Because what’s the point of a creative, compelling product page if no one’s ever going to see it?
Retailers have historically relied on massive budgets for paid ads and highly competitive SEO to get their products viewed and bought by shoppers . But this Black Friday weekend, the battleground is shifting. Ranking high on organic search isn't the be-all-and-end-all anymore. Your brand's visibility is no longer a matter of ranking first on Google for a single keyword.
Consumers are using AI search tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity to shortlist products, or skimming through AI overviews on Google. The game has changed: before you convert customers, you must now win over AI algorithms. LLMs are acting as a powerful pre-screening layer, helping shoppers shortlist the wheat and filter out the under-optimised chaff. To capture a consumer’s single, critical purchase, your entire strategy must be built for this new environment.
Here are 3 tips that will help your brand make the most of the Black Friday holiday – and win in the era of AI search.
Strategy 1: Write Copy for Both Humans and Algorithms
Include Use-Cases and Keywords
The best product copy speaks to two audiences: the human buyer and the AI scraping your page for information.
AI Search is a conversation, far more so Google Search ever was. AI users ask longer, more specific questions – often 10+ words – compared to traditional organic search queries of 3-6 words.
For example, a user might ask ChatGPT: “Suggest comfortable blouses I can wear to the office but also fit into my everyday wardrobe.”
ChatGPT will focus on recommending products that explicitly answer the question, incorporating keywords from the user’s original query. That’s why it’s important to incorporate use-cases into your product pages: it could be the difference between getting seen, and being passed over.
Incorporating use cases is straightforward, if time consuming: Just imagine how your audience might use your product. If your product works well as office-wear, make sure to say it – and ideally, use the same language your customer would.
The Rule of Independent Sentences
AI engines extract individual sentences from your copy to answer queries. This means every sentence must be independently understandable without surrounding context.
Here are some examples of good and bad PDP copy from the perspective of an LLM.
| ✅ Good (AI-Ready) | ❌ Bad (Context-Dependent) |
|---|---|
|
|
In the AI era, it’s vital for product page copy to work well as standalone sentences.
Strategy 2: Get Mentioned Across Platforms
AI engines pull from diverse sources to create comprehensive answers. You can increase the likelihood of your products being mentioned, cited, and summarised across the web by making sure your products appear across a wide range of platforms.
For example…
Did you know that Reddit leads AI citations at 40.1%, with Reddit citations in ChatGPT surging 87% in July 2025? Try taking advantage of this by encouraging real, verified customers to share their experiences and reviews on relevant subreddits. Authentic conversation drives AI-visibility.
Blog Mentions
Mention your products in your own blog and seek out guest blogging opportunities. Themed lists (e.g., "Top 5 Hiking Gifts") with seasonal keywords tend to work well here.
Video
Upload tutorials, product demos, or unboxing videos to YouTube and TikTok. AI tools are increasingly summarising video content – especially in Google’s AI Overviews. There’s rich potential here to turn your visuals into valuable text mentions and citations.
Strategy 3: Don’t Forget About SEO
Though AEO and GEO are the new kids on the block, Google remains the most popular way to search. Your foundational SEO elements are ultimately your first line of defence.
Here are two quick wins:
1. Refresh Your Meta Data
Update meta descriptions and meta titles for the holiday. Ensure they are SEO optimised and reflect your most compelling Black Friday deals. Let the traffic come to you!
2. Strengthen Your Internal Linking
Help customers (and Google!) discover more of your products. Add relevant internal links between complementary items, categories, and bestsellers so shoppers naturally flow deeper into your catalogue. This boosts crawlability, improves keyword relevance, and keeps buyers browsing for longer.
In 2025, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a battle for visibility across an entirely new landscape: one where AI algorithms influence purchasing decisions long before a shopper ever reaches your site.
To win, this means writing product copy that answers real shopper questions, ensuring your products are mentioned across the platforms AI pulls from, and tightening up your SEO foundations so you’re discoverable everywhere that matters.
Shoppers may be spending more cautiously, but they’re also searching more intentionally. If your product pages are clear, comprehensive, and AI-ready, you’ll be the brand they find, and the brand they trust enough to buy from.
About Ocula
Ocula is an AI tool built to help every product page be seen across every channel. Delivering automated copy optimised for AEO, SEO and more, Ocula helps retailers improve discoverability, boost traffic, and deliver world-class PDP experiences across every channel. Brands use Ocula to streamline workflows, unlock performance gains, and stay ahead in the era of AI Search.
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