The AI Traffic Lie: Why ChatGPT E-Commerce Referrals Are Failing to Live Up to the Hype

Affiverse Media covers landmark research by Maximilian Kaiser (University of Hamburg) and Christian Schulze (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management) examining ChatGPT’s impact on e-commerce traffic. The study, published in October 2025 on SSRN, analyzed 973 e-commerce sites generating $20 billion annually, examining over 50,000 ChatGPT-originated transactions alongside 164 million transactions from traditional channels over 12 months. Key findings reveal that ChatGPT referrals account for less than 0.2% of e-commerce sessions—roughly 200 times smaller than organic search. Affiliate links convert 86% more frequently than ChatGPT referrals, and organic search outperforms ChatGPT by approximately 13%. The research shows ChatGPT dominates LLM traffic with over 90% market share, while competitors like Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot capture minimal shares. The authors conclude that narratives positioning LLMs as imminent ‘Google killers’ lack empirical support, though long-term channel evolution remains possible.