SYDNEY, Aug. 26, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- More than three-quarters (76%) of Australians trust AI shopping recommendations as much as or more than advice from a retail sales assistant, according to new research revealing how artificial intelligence is challenging the traditional role of retail staff.
The study, commissioned by global leader in supply chain commerce, Manhattan Associates Inc. (NASDAQ: MANH), found nearly half of Australians (47%) trust AI recommendations more than those provided by a retail sales assistant, while a further 29% place about the same level of trust in both.
The shift is also reflected in where Australians turn for help when researching a significant purchase. Nearly one in four (23%) use AI as their first source of information, compared with just 7% who first seek advice from an in-store sales assistant.
Raghav Sibal, APAC Vice President at Manhattan Associates, said consumers are increasingly using AI to inform purchase decisions, changing the information they may have before they do reach a retailer and what they need from sales staff.
"Consumers are using AI for product discovery, to compare options and inform their purchasing choices. These are some of the many things they might previously have relied on a retail sales assistant for," Sibal said.
"This doesn't make retail staff irrelevant, but it does change what customers expect from them. Shoppers might now arrive in-store already knowing which products they are considering, what alternatives are available and what they expect to pay. Retailers and their teams need to be ready to add value beyond information the customer can now find for themselves."
The changing role of retail staff comes as AI becomes a more established part of how Australians research purchases. More than four in five Australians (83%) have used an AI assistant such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot for shopping research, with 36% doing so regularly.
Value and convenience drive AI adoption
The growing use of AI comes as Australians continue to balance convenience with a greater focus on value. Separate research from PayPal found price comparison is now the most common way Australians use AI when shopping, with 57% of AI shoppers saying the technology helps them save money.
Manhattan Associates' research suggests convenience is another important part of AI's appeal. When asked why they would choose AI over speaking to a retail sales assistant, 42% of respondents said for its 24/7 availability, followed by speed (20%) and the ability to compare products more easily (19%).
Sibal said the speed and ease of AI-led research is raising expectations for the experience retailers provide through to purchase and fulfilment.
"AI can make it easier for consumers to reach a decision, but that puts more pressure on retailers to deliver when they move from research to purchase. Knowing a product exists isn't good enough. Customers need to know whether it's available, where it's available, what it will cost and how quickly they can get it," he said.
AI expands the path to purchase
Despite the rapid uptake of AI, Australians are not abandoning retailer-owned channels. Even if AI could accurately answer every product question, 84% of Australians said they would still be likely to visit a retailer's website before, while 81% would still be likely to visit a physical store.
"AI can help a customer decide what they want, but it can't compensate for a poor experience when they are ready to buy. If the price they find is different, the product isn't available or the fulfilment options don't meet their expectations, retailers still risk losing that customer at the point that matters most," Sibal said.
"As AI becomes more influential earlier in the journey, retailers need to ensure they deliver a connected experience through to purchase. Consumers are arriving better informed and with clearer expectations, putting greater importance on the retailer's ability to turn that intent into an accurate and reliable purchase and fulfilment experience," he concluded.
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Methodology:
Manhattan Associates surveyed 500 Australian consumers.
About Manhattan Associates
Manhattan Associates is a global technology leader, providing supply chain and omnichannel commerce solutions with unmatched AI capabilities. We design, build and offer best-in-class, AI-powered, cloud-based solutions that drive resilience and efficiency for businesses. We enable enterprises to uniquely unify front-end sales with back-end supply chain execution.
Our commitment to innovation, cloud-native platform and API-first architecture create simpler experiences and faster paths to value for our customers. We empower them to preempt and react to emerging trends and global disruptions with technical expertise and operational confidence, transforming challenges into competitive advantage. For more information, please visit www.manh.com.
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Nearly half of Australians trust AI shopping recommendations more than retail staff
SINGAPORE, Aug. 26, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- JOYY Inc. (NASDAQ: JOYY) ("JOYY" or the "Company"), a leading global technology company, today announced its unaudited financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026.
In the second quarter, JOYY generated total revenues of US$590.8 million, up 16.3% year over year and 6.3% quarter over quarter. Social entertainment revenue was US$422.7 million, up 7.4% year over year and 5.6% quarter over quarter. BIGO Ads revenue reached US$133.7 million, up 53.1% year over year. SHOPLINE revenue reached US$34.4 million, with year-over-year growth further accelerating to 28.6%. Non-livestreaming revenue accounted for 31.8% of total revenues for the quarter, further increasing as JOYY's diversified ecosystem continued to advance. Non-GAAP1 operating profit reached US$49.1 million, up 28.2% year over year and 29.4% quarter over quarter, while non-GAAP1 EBITDA reached US$56.9 million, up 18.1% year over year and 24.4% quarter over quarter. Operating cash inflow for the quarter was US$64.9 million. As of June 30, 2026, the Company held US$3.06 billion in net cash.
Supported by a better-than-expected operational performance in 1H26 and enhanced operating leverage from improved efficiency across its business segments, JOYY now expects the Group's non-GAAP1 operating income growth to accelerate to approximately 20% year over year for the full year 2026.
In May, JOYY updated its three-year shareholder return plan, establishing a US$1.5 billion shareholder return program running through the end of 2028. Since the start of this year, the Company has accelerated its capital returns. From January 1 to August 21, 2026, JOYY repurchased US$216.4 million of shares and paid US$142.4 million in dividends, returning a total of US$358.8 million to shareholders.
Ms. Ting Li, Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of JOYY, commented, "Building on a strong start to the year, we delivered another solid result in the second quarter, recording revenue growth both year over year and quarter over quarter. Our Social Entertainment, BIGO Ads, and SHOPLINE businesses all advanced in tandem, while our globally diversified ecosystem continued to unlock growth momentum. AI is a foundational technology driving broader application and deeper integration across our core operations, fueling our multi-engine growth strategy. Looking ahead, as we continue to strengthen the core competitiveness and profitability profile of our three business segments, we expect to drive JOYY's long-term value creation into its next phase."
Second Quarter 2026 Financial Highlights
- Net revenues in the second quarter of 2026 were US$590.8 million, representing an increase of 16.3% from US$507.8 million in the second quarter of 2025 and an increase of 6.3 % from US$555.7 million in the first quarter of 2026.
- Social Entertainment revenue was US$422.7 million, representing an increase of 7.4% from US$393.8 million in the second quarter of 2025 and an increase of 5.6% from US$400.4 million in the first quarter of 2026.
- BIGO Ads revenue was US$133.7 million, representing an increase of 53.1% from US$87.3 million in the second quarter of 2025 and an increase of 7.1% from US$124.8 million in the first quarter of 2026.
- SHOPLINE revenue was US$34.4 million, representing an increase of 28.6% from US$26.7 million in the second quarter of 2025 and an increase of 12.5% from US$30.5 million in the first quarter of 2026.
- Operating income was US$13.8 million, representing an increase of 138.1% from US$5.8 million in the second quarter of 2025, and an increase of 102% from US$6.8 million in the first quarter of 2026.
- Non-GAAP1 operating income was US$49.1 million, representing an increase of 28.2% from US$38.3 million in the second quarter of 2025 and an increase of 29.4% from US$38 million in the first quarter of 2026.
- Non-GAAP1 EBITDA was US$56.9 million, representing an increase of 18.1% from US$48.2 million in the second quarter of 2025 and an increase of 24.4% from US$45.7 million in the first quarter of 2026.
- Net cash as of June 30, 2026 was US$3,059.3 million.
- Net cash from operating activities was US$64.9 million.
Second Quarter 2026 Business Highlights
Social Entertainment Business
In the second quarter, the Company's social entertainment business continued its steady growth momentum, with revenue increasing 7.4% year over year and 5.6% quarter over quarter. Within this segment, livestreaming revenue grew 7.3% year over year and 5.9% quarter over quarter. The number of core livestreaming paying users grew 3.9% year over year and 1.7% quarter over quarter, while ARPPU increased 2.4% year over year and 3% quarter over quarter. In terms of the overall user scale, JOYY's global average mobile MAUs reached 277.1 million, up 5.5% year over year.
Bigo Live, the Company's flagship product, recorded stronger sequential growth in the second quarter. This momentum was driven by ongoing enhancements to its streamer-incentive and growth mechanisms, a richer content ecosystem, and AI-powered improvements to content distribution and payment experiences. Together, these efforts effectively drove user engagement and greater willingness to pay. In the second quarter, Bigo Live's average daily active streamers increased 4.4% quarter over quarter, while newly signed streamers going live increased 5.4% quarter over quarter.
Bigo Live continues to develop and refine its AI-driven content understanding capabilities. In particular, its focus is on improving onboarding content for new users and deepening user consumption. Through effectively identifying and distributing high-quality content across regions, Bigo Live can better match content with users' interests, improving their consumption experiences. To improve payment experience, Bigo Live has been expanding its AI-generated content and interactive virtual gifts. In May, these gifts accounted for 34.3% of total virtual gift consumption.
On the operating side, Bigo Live has continued to strengthen its global ecosystem by leveraging cultural events, local activities, and content partnerships. During the second quarter, Bigo Live launched integrated online and offline campaigns around major cultural celebrations, including Thailand's Songkran Festival, Cinco de Mayo in Los Angeles, and the Atlanta Juneteenth Festival, facilitating multicultural exchanges and strengthening connections across diverse communities. Meanwhile, Bigo Live successfully hosted MISS BIGO 2026 in Vietnam and launched BIGO Miss America 2026, spanning North America and Latin America. These initiatives further reinforced Bigo Live's commitment to empowering women by providing a platform for them to express confidence, embrace diversity and showcase their individuality.
In the MENA region, Bigo Live entered into a strategic partnership with MLBB to exclusively restream MPL MENA Season 9, further expanding its esports content portfolio and strengthening engagement with regional gaming communities. During the summer football season, Bigo Live launched a dedicated interactive content zone, leveraging football-themed content and creator-led activities to drive user engagement and foster greater community participation.
BIGO Ads Advertising Technology Business
In the second quarter, BIGO Ads generated revenue of US$133.7 million, up 53.1% year over year and 7.1% quarter over quarter. Notably, its third-party Audience Network ad revenue maintained strong momentum, delivering 74.1% year-over-year growth and 9.3% quarter-over-quarter growth.
On the supply side, BIGO Ads' developer ecosystem and global traffic coverage continued to expand. Its SDK traffic maintained a steady increase, up 37.7% year over year in the second quarter. On the demand side, BIGO Ads' strategic presence across multiple verticals, combined with AI-driven algorithm iterations, growing traffic scale, and regional market expansion, drove strong advertiser demand. As a result, performance advertising demand across multiple channels, including Web and IAA, delivered standout results. Web-based demand grew 91.7% year over year, while IAA demand recorded 70.6% year-over-year growth.
On the algorithm side, continued investments in algorithm and engineering infrastructure, platform algorithmic capabilities, and cost efficiency are compounding into a positive cycle that will drive the next stage of BIGO Ads' development. As it accumulates more advertiser feedback data and continues to refine its multi-channel attribution capabilities, its user profiling and targeting capabilities are improving. Building on this, BIGO Ads continues to iterate its vertical-specific models and strengthen its platform capabilities. The business is focusing on traffic segmentation and budget matching, traffic bidding, and post-campaign optimization. Together, these efforts are improving the matching efficiency between budget and traffic, and overall monetization efficiency. At the same time, BIGO Ads is advancing upgrades to its algorithm and engineering systems and continuously optimizing compute scheduling and server costs, which allows it to manage infrastructure costs more efficiently even as request volumes grow rapidly.
As BIGO Ads builds out its three-layer system of vertical algorithms, platform algorithm capabilities, and engineering infrastructure, the data accumulated from a growing customer and traffic base is expected to further feed back into model optimization. This will help drive a virtuous cycle across delivery performance, advertiser budgets, and traffic monetization efficiency, providing stronger technological momentum for the next stage of BIGO Ads' scaled growth.
SHOPLINE E-Commerce Business
In the second quarter, SHOPLINE generated revenue of US$34.4 million, up 28.6% year over year and 12.5% quarter over quarter, with revenue growth speeding up from the first quarter. Business from cross-border merchants sustained strong growth of 73.5% year over year, driving the acceleration in overall revenue expansion.
As AI opens up new traffic and transaction entry points, commercial scenarios are becoming increasingly diverse and fragmented, driving growing demand among merchants for a unified, open, and connectable e-commerce infrastructure. This trend further highlights SHOPLINE's value as an omnichannel commerce infrastructure. SHOPLINE has expanded its integrations with multiple leading AI Agents. This enables merchants to capture the traffic and transactions from these new entry points, while converting orders, customer relationships, and operating data across channels into a lasting asset for merchants. In the first half, for SHOPLINE merchants, page views from AI channels grew nearly 15-fold year over year and order volume grew over 35-fold year over year. In addition, SHOPLINE Copilot is being rolled out in phases and has entered closed beta testing, enabling merchants to manage their online stores more efficiently using natural language. This marks another step in SHOPLINE's efforts to gradually integrate AI across the entire merchant operating journey and help merchants connect with consumers, manage operations, and drive business growth more efficiently.
SHOPLINE's long-term growth is aligned with merchant success. High-retention subscription services provide a stable revenue foundation. Value-added services such as payments and marketing allow SHOPLINE to participate more deeply in merchant GMV growth. As its merchant base and GMV continue to increase, value-added services are expected to deliver stronger operating leverage and contribute more momentum to SHOPLINE's business growth.
1.This press release includes certain non-GAAP financial measures as additional clarifying items to aid investors in further understanding the Company's performance and the impact that these items and events had on the financial results. The non-GAAP financial measures provided above should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. For details of the non-GAAP measures, including the reconciliations of GAAP measures to non-GAAP measures, please refer to the press release titled "JOYY Reports Second Quarter 2026 Unaudited Financial Results" issued by the Company on August 26, 2026.
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JOYY Reports Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results: Total Revenues Increase to US$590.8 Million, Driven by Growth Across Core Businesses
