AI Overview Trends: What to Watch for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Recent trends in Google AI Overviews (AIOs) are giving us fascinating insights into what we might expect for Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year. Our BrightEdge Generative Parser™ has been tracking important shifts that will impact how brands approach these crucial shopping dates. For all the detailed data points and visualizations referenced in this post, here’s our guide to the trends we saw in September.

Key developments you need to know about:

1. YouTube Citations Are Exploding This is huge! We’re seeing an absolutely massive increase in YouTube citations within AIOs. What makes this particularly interesting for marketers is that the AI (Gemini) isn’t just looking at video descriptions – it’s actually pulling information from the spoken content within videos. This opens up a whole new avenue for brands looking to influence AIOs during the holiday shopping season.

2. Shopping Queries Are Increasingly Stabilizing Here’s some good news for everyone planning their holiday campaigns: Shopping-related queries with AIOs are becoming much more predictable. This means what you’re seeing now is likely what you’ll get during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. For marketers using BrightEdge’s Data Cube X or Keyword reporting, you can be much more confident that the AIOs you’re tracking today will still be there during the big shopping days.

3. E-commerce AIOs Are Changing Shape While we’re seeing fewer AIOs overall for e-commerce queries, the ones that do appear are getting bigger. The AI is allocating more space for product details and comparisons when it does show an AIO. This is particularly important as we head into the holiday season, where detailed product information becomes crucial for shoppers.

What This Means For Your Holiday Campaigns:

1. With YouTube citations skyrocketing, you absolutely need to think about your video strategy. This isn’t just about having product videos – it’s about creating content that can serve as an authoritative source for AIOs. Unboxing videos, product reviews, instructional videos- all of these can be used to help influence how AIO’s help your customers shop.

2. Don’t Put All Your Eggs in the AIO Basket Even though AIOs are important, we’re seeing them appear less frequently for e-commerce queries. Make sure you’re still optimizing for traditional search results – they’re going to be crucial during the holiday shopping rush.

3. Go Deep on Product Details. When AIOs do appear, they’re getting bigger and more detailed. Make sure your product content is rich with comparisons, specifications, and clear benefits that can be pulled into these expanded AIOs

Looking Ahead to Black Friday and Cyber Monday

All these trends point to a holiday shopping season where AI will play a bigger role than ever, but maybe not in the way we originally expected. The focus seems to be on deeper, richer content rather than just quick answers.

The landscape of AI Overviews is evolving fast, but now we’ve got a pretty clear picture of what to expect for the biggest shopping days of the year. The key is acting on these insights now, while there’s still time to optimize your content for both traditional search and AIOs. Want to dig into all the numbers behind these trends? Check out our full guide for September’s Data here!