(Reuters) – After weak spending at U.S. stores on a deal-packed Black Friday, retailers will do their best with sweet promotions on their websites and apps to entice people to buy holiday gifts and other goods after the long Thanksgiving weekend .

Retailers are luring wary U.S. shoppers on Cyber ​​Monday with push notifications, emails and other ads touting deeply discounted cosmetics, electronics, toys, clothing and other products. Many companies, including Walmart and Amazon, are using AI-powered chatbots on their websites and apps to help customers with questions and get them to click “buy.”

Just 23 days before Christmas, discounts are higher this year as shoppers await busy days, experts say.

For example, on Cyber ​​Monday, America’s traditionally biggest Internet shopping day, Target announced that it was offering 50% off thousands of items as part of a “two-day Cyber ​​Monday” sale that began on December 1st, including video games, home accessories and other technology.

The promotions follow a mixed holiday season so far, with muted spending in stores on key shopping days such as Black Friday.

According to preliminary estimates from payment processor Mastercard, sales at brick-and-mortar stores rose just 0.7% year-over-year on Black Friday and were lower, according to data firm Facteus.

“However, (consumers) are being more strategic about their purchases and prioritizing promotions that they believe have the most value — opening their wallets but with more targeted distribution,” said Michelle Meyer, chief economist at the Mastercard Economics Institute.

Online spending on Monday in the U.S. is expected to reach $13.2 billion, up 6% from Cyber ​​Monday a year earlier, according to preliminary estimates from Adobe Inc. This spending would equal the approximately $10.8 billion Americans spent online on Black Friday, according to Adobe.

With many Americans carrying higher levels of debt lately, shoppers are also expected to spend a record $18.5 billion on holiday shopping through third-party buy now, pay later services in the final quarter of the year, according to forecasts from Adobe, which tracks devices that use its software to power more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites.

This year, major retailers like Walmart and Amazon also turned to generative AI customer service and search capabilities to help shoppers find products on websites and mobile apps.

Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights at Salesforce, a cloud computing company that tracks global purchasing data from more than 1.5 billion consumers, said GenAI tools such as chatbots are used to answer basic questions from online shoppers, such as questions about Products that would have helped retailers protect their profit margins despite rising costs.

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