Online holiday shopping is exploding, and new data from Algolia shows just how big the surge really was. Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, shoppers generated 33.5 billion search queries, up 13% from last year. November overall hit 184 billion searches, a massive 61% YoY spike.

Algolia kept everything running with 99.999% uptime, even as traffic reached nearly 120,000 queries per second at peak.

So what were people looking for?

The top search growth came from:

• Pet Products: up 81% (the biggest surprise of the season)

• Apparel & Fashion: up 51%

• Health & Wellness: up 41%

• Home Goods: up 16%

Pets officially took over Cyber Weekend—shoppers might be cutting back on luxury splurges (down 49%), but not on spoiling their furry family members.

Algolia’s CEO Bernadette Nixon says the trends show consumers aren’t spending less—they’re spending smarter, focusing on comfort, wellness, value, and everyday joy.

How people shop is changing too. Nearly half of consumers now use AI tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT to compare products, find deals, or discover gift ideas. Only 23% are ready to buy directly inside AI tools, but that number is expected to grow as GenAI shopping gets smoother.

Another major insight: 72% of shoppers want retailers to use AI ethically, and say it will influence where they choose to shop. That puts pressure on brands to modernize their tech infrastructure for the “agentic AI era,” especially as peak season traffic gets even heavier.

Algolia says relevance and speed in search directly translate into revenue—every millisecond saved helps shoppers find what they want, boosts conversions, and keeps customers loyal.

Postmedia Network Inc. has introduced Tails Told, a digital platform designed to help pet owners honour the animals that shaped their lives. The launch expands Postmedia’s growing portfolio of consumer-facing storytelling tools and builds on the success of Lives Told, the company’s biography service.

Tails Told converts personal memories into polished digital tributes. Users can submit photos and stories, and Postmedia’s team turns them into crafted narratives that capture each pet’s personality. The concept feels familiar to anyone who has seen the rise of digital memorial platforms, yet it stands out because of its focus on pets and its use of narrative craft rather than automated templates.

Aleya MacFayden, Vice President of Product Innovation & Partnerships at Postmedia Elevate, says the platform offers a direct way for people to celebrate the animals that shaped their daily lives. The service aims to make remembrance less overwhelming and more accessible for families who want something lasting but simple.

The launch comes with a charitable component. Postmedia will donate ten per cent of all Tails Told stories sold in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia to the provincial SPCAs. The timing matters, as the winter months typically strain shelter resources. The move offers a way for the platform to contribute beyond engagement metrics and early adoption.

Tails Told also supports gifting. For the holiday season, the company expects stories to become an option for pet lovers searching for something more meaningful than a typical pet accessory or treat. With digital storytelling gaining momentum across consumer categories, Postmedia is positioning Tails Told as both a keepsake creator and a marketing channel with emotional depth.

The platform is available now at TailsTold.com.

Category Communications, one of Canada’s emerging PR agencies, has promoted Rachael D’Amore to Vice President and Partner. The move marks a strategic leadership expansion as the firm positions itself as a top choice for changemakers across technology, real estate, and financial services.

The agency launched in 2024 and has been scaling at a notable pace. It has secured clients such as Clutch, Xanadu, Merchant Growth, Singlekey, and Nextdoor—an impressive lineup for a firm not yet two years old. Equally telling is the talent it continues to attract. Recent hires include veterans like former BetaKit and The Logic journalist Jessica Galang, along with communications professionals Rachel Caria and Kirstie Bowman. With these additions, the team now stands at 11.

D’Amore, who spent a decade in traditional journalism before shifting into PR, will continue shaping senior-level strategy while accelerating team development and business growth efforts. Her storytelling background gives the agency an edge in a market where narrative, credibility, and clarity increasingly separate standout brands from the noise.

She says joining the partnership alongside co-founders Chantel Cassar and Lauren Arnold is a milestone that reflects the agency’s ambition. Her focus remains on supporting innovators across Canada and strengthening the firm’s impact-driven approach.

The co-founders point to her leadership over the past year as a catalyst for the agency’s upward trajectory. From overseeing flagship accounts to mentoring rising talent, D’Amore has played a central role in shaping Category Communications’ model—one that blends newsroom instincts with PR execution.

With rapid growth, a sharpening client mix, and a leadership team built on editorial and strategic depth, the agency is positioning itself as a competitive force in Canada’s evolving communications landscape.

Attentive reports its strongest Cyber Week ever, driving nearly $2B in revenue as AI-powered personalization boosts performance across SMS, email, and push.

Attentive has capped Cyber Week with its strongest performance to date, delivering nearly $2 billion in revenue for more than 8,000 brands. The AI-driven marketing platform pushed out 5.7 billion SMS, email, and push messages, marking a 46% jump in volume year-over-year—all while maintaining zero downtime during the industry’s most pressure-packed week.

The surge reflects a year of strategic expansion across enterprise clients, deeper investment in email and push, and significant platform optimization. In an ecosystem where reliability is non-negotiable, Attentive’s uninterrupted performance helped brands cut through the noise with targeted, transactional messaging.

Amit Jhawar, Attentive’s CEO, credits real-time intent understanding as the differentiator. AI enabled marketers to deliver tailored content at scale, turning billions of signals into moments of conversion. In a Cyber Week defined by shifting consumer patterns and constant competition, precision mattered more than promotion volume.

The numbers back it up. Brands using Attentive’s agentic AI grew twice as fast as those not using the technology. Smart segmentation and channel optimization ensured messages landed where customers were most likely to act. The result: higher engagement, fewer missed opportunities, and stronger omnichannel consistency.

Attentive’s CMO, Keri McGhee, says the winners this season were the brands that prioritized relevance over broad reach. AI stitched together individual preferences—timing, product interest, channel selection—and turned them into conversion-ready workflows. With consumer attention fragmented across every device, this level of responsiveness proved essential.

Omnichannel orchestration was another story driver. Record performance spanned every channel. SMS revenue rose 42%, while email climbed 29%, supported by a 4.7% increase in click-through rates and a 17% reduction in opt-outs. Even as inbox competition intensified, Attentive’s tooling helped brands sustain engagement without sacrificing consumer trust.

CTO Antonio Silveira underscores the achievement as a proof point for platform scalability. Many companies promise personalization at scale, but few deliver it during Black Friday–Cyber Monday, when message spikes and unpredictable demand can break even seasoned systems. Attentive’s stability under peak load signals its readiness for the next evolution of AI-powered marketing.

With AI now firmly embedded in the shopping experience, Cyber Week 2025 showed a clear shift: brands that adopted intelligent orchestration accelerated, while others played catch-up. Attentive is betting that the next retail cycle will deepen this divide as marketers push harder for efficiency, automation, and real-time personalization.

Klaviyo’s 2025 BFCM Report shows loyalty and AI personalization driving $3.8B in revenue as discounts fall and intentional shopping surges.

Klaviyo has released its 2025 BFCM Recap Report, and the results upend years of retail assumptions. Instead of aggressive markdowns fueling demand, this year’s record-setting performance was powered by repeat buyers, AI-driven personalization, and a more intentional shopper mindset.

Across Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, Klaviyo delivered 22.7 billion messages, a 25% year-over-year jump. Those interactions generated more than $3.8 billion in attributed revenue, cementing Klaviyo’s influence across BFCM. And while discounting across ecommerce declined 10% year-over-year, consumer spending actually climbed 11%, giving brands clear proof that trust beat promotions.

One of the most striking insights: one in every twenty dollars spent online in the US during BFCM originated from a Klaviyo-delivered experience. Health & Beauty and Apparel led growth, with 14% and 11% year-over-year increases.

Loyalty wasn’t just a talking point—it was the engine. Same-site sales rose 11% year-over-year, powered by a 13.5% surge from repeat customers. Brands leaned into VIP access, early drops, and personalized offers rather than broad, margin-cutting discounts. Shoppers responded by spending more time evaluating purchases too, with product views up 41%. Average selling price and order value increased as consumers deliberately bought from brands they trusted.

Discounts, meanwhile, played a supporting role. Daily markdowns never crossed the 30% threshold for Klaviyo brands, a notable shift from previous years. Brands offering the lightest discounts saw the fastest growth at 14% year-over-year. Only Home & Garden bucked the trend, as larger-ticket items still needed deeper cuts to move. Across most categories, restrained promotions didn’t dampen demand, underscoring how confidence in a brand can outweigh the appeal of a bargain.

Klaviyo CEO Andrew Bialecki said the data confirms a broader consumer shift: people want meaningful, relevant experiences—not transactional blasts. AI helped marketers meet that shift at scale, delivering smarter segmentation and personalized timing across every channel. Trust mixed with intelligent targeting turned out to be the winning formula.

AI’s impact extended well beyond message delivery. This BFCM, more than half of consumers planned to use AI assistants to compare products and identify deals. That behavior powered what Klaviyo calls “agentic commerce”—shopping journeys guided by automated research and curated suggestions. Brands met that moment with a 45% jump in AI-driven recommendations, driving a 71% spike in revenue tied to those messages.

Onsite behavior changed as well. Personalized pages built with Customer Hub brought together product recommendations, fit guidance, and even shipment tracking. Visitors who interacted with these pages viewed 2.4 more pages per session, signaling stronger purchase intent and deeper exploration.

Klaviyo Service matured into a conversion driver too. Apparel, beauty, swimwear, and athletic brands relied on the AI Customer Agent to handle fit questions, product guidance, and gifting decisions. By reducing uncertainty, brands converted more curious shoppers into confident buyers.

The channel mix also shifted. Mobile messaging surged as consumers bounced between screens and stores. Text revenue climbed 25% year-over-year as send volume grew 34%, boosted further by early RCS adoption. Across Klaviyo’s ecosystem, email and SMS generated 42% of total revenue—and rose to 43% on peak days. Even more compelling: customers receiving messages across both channels placed 11% more orders and viewed 71% more products.

For brands like Filson, the week wasn’t about volume alone. Zach Solomon, Director of Ecommerce and CRM, noted that BFCM is a chance to reinforce brand values while driving sales. With Klaviyo, Filson blended loyalty-driven access with intentional storytelling, treating each touchpoint as an opportunity to build trust—not just ring up a transaction.

Klaviyo’s report makes the takeaway clear. AI and loyalty are rewriting the rules of BFCM. As shoppers become more selective, brands that combine relevance, restraint, and personalization won’t just win Cyber Week—they’ll win the year.

AI’s rapid acceleration isn’t just reshaping B2B marketing workflows—it’s forcing organizations to rethink how decisions get made. That’s the premise behind ChatB2B, a new weekly podcast designed for B2B practitioners who want sharper clarity and stronger perspectives as the industry moves through a pivotal technological shift.

Hosted by Andrew Au, Co-CEO of Intercept and a recognized technology expert featured in Forbes, Bloomberg, BNN, and Business Insider, the show aims to cut through hype and focus on real operational change. Each episode features candid conversations with B2B marketing leaders who explain what’s working now, what’s noise, and how AI is altering campaigns, content creation, and go-to-market operations.

ChatB2B debuts with three conversations that reflect the breadth of AI’s influence across the B2B ecosystem:

Episode 1 — Mike Thibodeau, Google Cloud

Sales Enablement in the Era of AI: Are We in an AI Bubble?

Au and Thibodeau break down how AI is reshaping sales enablement, particularly as revenue teams face content overload and longer, more complex buyer journeys. The discussion explores whether AI is driving efficiency or inflating expectations—and what “enablement” will really mean in 2025 and beyond.

Episode 2 — Jonna Bell, Qualcomm

The New Partner Marketing Playbook

As channel programs become more content-heavy and resource-intensive, AI is changing how global partner teams operate. Bell explains how Qualcomm is personalizing content, simplifying workflows, and scaling partner support in ways traditional systems couldn’t handle.

Episode 3 — Josh Chiavaroli, Intel

What AI Really Means for Your Marketing Career

For marketers assessing their future skill sets, Chiavaroli offers a grounded perspective. Drawing on experience across OEM and silicon businesses—and teaching—he outlines which capabilities are rising in value and what responsibilities humans should continue to own, even in an AI-first environment.

With AI transforming everything from message orchestration to organizational decision-making, ChatB2B enters the market as a guide for practitioners still trying to make sense of this rapid evolution. Early episodes suggest a show focused not on theory, but on practical frameworks B2B leaders can apply immediately.

ICR is strengthening its global governance advisory business, and Latin America is now front and center. The strategic communications and advisory firm has appointed Mónica Jiménez González as Principal for Latin America, deepening its regional expertise as demand grows for sophisticated governance and sustainability counsel.

Jiménez will be based in Bogotá and reports to Gabriel Hasson, Global Head of Governance and Shareholder Advisory. Her mandate spans governance strategy, investor engagement, ESG integration, and activism readiness—areas that have become essential for companies navigating tighter regulations and higher investor expectations.

With more than 20 years of cross-border corporate leadership across Latin America and Canada, Jiménez brings a portfolio that reads like a blueprint for modern governance. She previously served as Chief Strategy, Sustainability & Legal Officer at GeoPark and held senior leadership roles at Ecopetrol. Her tenure on the ICC International Court of Arbitration and her ongoing board responsibilities across energy, financial services, retail, and infrastructure further diversify her expertise.

Her appointment signals a targeted push by ICR to expand capabilities in a region where corporate governance standards are rapidly modernizing. Investor scrutiny is rising, and companies are under pressure to demonstrate clear sustainability pathways, transparent decision-making, and credible engagement with stakeholders. Jiménez arrives with experience that blends regulation, strategy, and boardroom dynamics—a combination that is increasingly rare and highly valued.

Hasson noted that Jiménez’s arrival elevates the firm’s ability to guide companies through evolving expectations from global investors. He emphasized her decades of board-level insight as a differentiator in an advisory landscape where ESG and governance expectations continue to accelerate.

Michael Fox, Managing Partner at ICR, reinforced the strategic importance of this move. He highlighted ICR’s long-standing work supporting Latin American companies pursuing US IPOs and expanding into North America. Jiménez’s network and regional knowledge, he said, will strengthen the firm’s position as a trusted partner for companies navigating governance complexities across borders.

For Jiménez, the role offers a natural extension of her work at the intersection of sustainability, legal strategy, and corporate leadership. She praised ICR’s disciplined governance approach and expressed enthusiasm for advising clients navigating rapid market shifts. Her focus will include board performance, sustainability integration, activism preparedness, and governance under stress—core issues for both public and private companies under rising institutional investor scrutiny.

ICR’s move reflects broader industry trends. Governance and sustainability are no longer siloed functions; they are now intertwined with growth strategy, risk management, and valuation. As global markets tighten expectations, advisory firms that combine deep regional insight with global expertise stand to shape the next phase of corporate transformation.

Jiménez’s appointment underscores that direction. Latin American companies are increasingly competing on global stages, and a sophisticated governance strategy is becoming a prerequisite. With ICR expanding its international footprint, this move positions the firm to meet rising demand from regional companies looking to strengthen trust, credibility, and long-term resilience.

Her academic background is as global as her professional portfolio, with degrees and executive training from Universidad de Los Andes, Universidad Externado, the London School of Economics, Harvard Business School, and Kellogg Executive Education.

As governance challenges grow more complex, ICR is clearly betting on seasoned leadership to help clients navigate what’s next.

Proofpoint is upping its marketing firepower. The cybersecurity and compliance heavyweight has named Joyce Kim as its new Chief Marketing Officer, a move that signals the company’s intent to scale faster and sharpen its position in the rapidly evolving AI-driven security landscape.

Kim steps in immediately and reports directly to CEO Sumit Dhawan. Her mandate is broad: elevate Proofpoint’s global brand presence, strengthen demand acceleration programs, and advance the company’s go-to-market strategy at a time when AI is reshaping the security ecosystem. Proofpoint is leaning heavily into what it calls the “agentic workspace”—a future where humans, data, and intelligent agents operate in a tightly connected digital environment that requires a new class of protection.

Dhawan described Kim as a rare blend of cybersecurity insight and global brand expertise. He noted that her experience with C-suite buyers and her track record of building large-scale marketing engines make her an ideal fit as Proofpoint doubles down on its ambition to lead the human- and agent-centric security category.

Her résumé backs that up. Before joining Proofpoint, Kim served as CMO at Zscaler, where she ran global marketing and communications during a pivotal growth period. She previously held CMO roles at Twilio and Genesys and built high-impact marketing strategies at Wrike, Arm, Google, and Microsoft. She also serves on the board of Quicklogic Corporation and supports early childhood literacy through her nonprofit work at Stanford.

The move comes as AI continues to reshape enterprise security priorities. Companies are now balancing the promise of intelligent automation with the reality of increased risk. Proofpoint sees this tension as an opportunity. By fortifying its leadership bench with a seasoned marketer who understands both cyber risk and digital transformation, the company is aiming to frame itself not just as a security vendor but as a strategic partner for AI-era resilience.

For her part, Kim made the mission clear. She emphasized that AI is rewriting how businesses operate and that secure data and trusted systems are essential for sustainable innovation. Her focus will be on amplifying Proofpoint’s leadership narrative—particularly in data security—and shaping the company’s message around enabling organizations to innovate safely.

The appointment also arrives at a moment of intensifying competition. Cybersecurity vendors are racing to define security frameworks that protect AI agents and large-scale data workflows. With Proofpoint expanding its capabilities across people-centric and agent-centric security, Kim’s role will be critical in differentiating the company in a crowded and rapidly shifting market.

If the next chapter of cybersecurity hinges on trust, Proofpoint is betting that strong storytelling and sharper strategic marketing will help drive its message home. Kim’s arrival marks that shift—and raises the stakes for the company’s next phase of growth.