We're still spending, and AI is helping us do it.

From Marketplace, I'm Sabri Beneshore, in for David Brancaccio.

Black Friday was pretty okay.

Online consumers spent a record $11.8 billion, that is, over 9% more than last year, according to Adobe Analytics. MasterCard

says from what it can see in credit card swipes, sales overall were up more than 4%. And by the way,

we are leaning more and more on AI to help us shop. Adobe Analytics says traffic to retail websites

that originated from AI tools like chatbots

was up 805% compared to last year.

And those visits are much more likely to convert to an actual sale.

Julia Coronado is founder and president of macro policy perspectives and a professor

at UT Austin.

She joins us to talk more about it.

Hi, Julia. Good morning.

So what do you make of the fact that consumers got out there and spent despite, you know,

a lot of negative consumer sentiment? What we know is that online sales were pretty strong. It does

seem like in-store sales were pretty sluggish. And overall, we got

moderate year-on-year gains. You have to keep in mind, part of that increase reflects higher

prices. So I think overall it looks like not a disaster, but not a boom either. And as long as

consumers have jobs, they will do some Christmas shopping.

You think that's going to keep going for the rest of the holiday shopping season, just kind of like chugging along, nothing amazing, nothing terrible?

We never really know. It can take a turn, timing of things like Thanksgiving and where Christmas

lands. All of these things can affect spending. So it can twist and turn between now and Christmas.

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