How AI is reinventing the holiday gift guide

Lauren Kleinman, founder at the public relations agency Dreamday, said gift guides are a key holiday strategy for more than 20 brands her team is working with this year. Many are using it to bolster their GEO strategies, she said, since AI-powered recommendations are increasingly drawing on third-party sites and editorial content to inform the results surfaced to users. Put simply, the more mentions a brand gets in trusted publications, the more likely it is that a ChatGPT user might see it.

“They’re now a key signal in the broader discovery ecosystem,” she said. “A Vogue or Strategist mention doesn’t just drive clicks in December, but it’s going to shape how AI surfaces that brand year-round.”

Gift guides are a particularly critical Q4 strategy for newer brands that are looking to get on shoppers’ radars, with the biggest payoffs potentially coming after the fourth quarter.

Samantha Gold, founder of children’s and women’s pajama brand Motette, said she’s pitching editors directly to help score gift guide mentions, rather than relying on an agency. She’s in her first holiday season as a brand, and she’s aiming to position her products as gifts for moms. She also said some of the real payoff from gift guides can come not just from sales generated by the listing, but also from the credibility it brings.

“Five years ago, the traffic from a gift guide mention would shut down people’s websites,” she said. “Now, it’s more about how you as a brand leverage that to say, ‘Oh, you were featured in GQ.’”

A more specific, data-driven approach

From the brand side, gift guides have become more than just one-off editorial opportunities. These days, bands are also increasingly looking outside mainstream publications. Kleinman from Dreamday said many of her clients want to pitch individual Substack publications this year.

“They’re approaching Substack mentions just as much as they would a traditional publication,” she said. “Depending on which Substack it is, it might be even more than a traditional publication.”

Marilyn Olmstead, vp of growth and partnerships at the fragrance brand Snif, said the brand deploys gifting and strategic seeding of its products to help secure mentions in holiday roundups. But it is more focused on influencers, as well as Substack creators. “We’ve had a lot of success with collaborators and creators who have a Substack because you can tell the story a little bit more,” she said.”

Katy Lubin, the vp of brand at global fashion marketplace Lyst, said the gift guide world has “exploded” in recent years. Lyst works with more than 27,000 brands and reaches around 160 million shoppers. The company starts publishing its fashion and accessories gift guides in early November. This year, it’s putting out at least 12 gift guides on its website, plus surfacing personalized seasonal edits for its 24 million members via its app.

Lubin said that, given how subjective gift-giving can be, Lyst’s guides aim to highlight unique and standout products. Last year, for instance, the most popular guide was a collection of “subversive statement gifts,” which included a pigeon-shaped handbag.

“There used to be a ‘gifts-for-her’ category back in the day,” she said. “But now you can go more toward ‘Hanukkah gift for a woman who loves minimalist design and just joined a running club.'”

Lyst is also able to better target customers based on user data. “If someone has repeatedly been browsing Loro Piana, we probably show them something different than the shopper who’s looking at lots of H&M,” she said. Once live, the recommendations tend to drive more sales and interest: After a fashion product is featured in a Lyst gift guide, it sees an average increase of 115% in “purchase intent,” an internal metric the company uses to track signals like clicks, browsing, additions to wishlists and sales.

When it comes to how gift guides are made, Lubin said there’s been a shift toward more dynamic lists that can be updated. The company, which was acquired in April by the Japanese e-commerce platform Zozo for $154 million, uses its own AI tools to gauge shopper behavior on its website, as well as to track price shifts and stock changes. The company also looks at search data to see which key trend may be the hottest at any given moment. Then, closer to the holidays, Lyst releases a Gift Index that crunches the demand signals across the marketplace.

“The gift guide used to be a frozen-in-time editorial story, like, ’10 best handbags under $300,’ that we would write in November,” Lubin said. “But maybe these items go out of stock, or maybe trends change. Now, with the use of AI, we have the opportunity to do dynamic product selection so that we can make sure we always have the best in-stock products and the freshest pieces.”

Despite the data-driven assists, a crucial part of Lyst’s strategy is using human editors “at every step of the process,” she said. That includes reviewing lists before they go out to ensure the suggestions are as on-trend and fashionable as the Lyst customer would expect.

“We can, as a team, look at these edits and go, ‘OK, I’m going to buy all of these for my friends,’ or, ‘Absolutely not,'” she said. “It’s really about that combination of using technology and AI, but with this deep fashion intelligence.”