There was only a 2% increase in return on ad spend during the Cyber 5 in 2025 for Draco Diamond, according to founder Garrett McMartin.

He told Digital Commerce 360 he couldn’t attribute the increase to the Cyber 5 “because it’s not enough of a move.” The Canada-based lab-grown diamond seller has “plenty of months” where sales and return on ad spend are up 2% or down 4% from the average, he said.

But what he has learned from the holidays is how to time sales. Draco Diamond makes the vast majority of its products to order, McMartin shared.

“Being a made-to-order brand, the 14- to 21-day wait is already an eternity to somebody, especially when they just spent $3,000,” McMartin said.

That wait time includes production, International Gemological Institute (IGI) diamond-grading certification and delivery, he noted.

As McMartin plans for the holidays, he has been diving into the details of Draco Diamond’s traffic to understand trends tied to artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search results. McMartin said his focus on answer engine optimization (AEO) in the spring this year has helped increase Draco Diamond’s traffic 31x in three months.

Draco Diamond’s share of traffic from AI answer engines increased to 5.45% after McMartin’s AEO push, from 0.18% before. At the same time, the online retailer’s traffic mix has shifted from paid toward organic and AI-powered. Plus, buyers who arrived on Draco Diamond’s website from an AI referral spend 20% longer on-site than those who do not, McMartin noted.

LLM traffic trends among Draco Diamond’s consumers

In May and July, respectively, that AI-based share of sessions on Draco Diamond’s website rose to 7.3% and 6.6%. And as of the end of July, eight of Draco Diamond’s top 10 web pages by view come from “earned” or organic traffic and AI-powered search.

McMartin also spotted a correlation between his AEO push and Draco Diamond’s year-over-year revenue increases. In April and May 2026, respectively, Draco Diamond revenue rose 5% and 10% compared to the same months in 2025. Then, in June and July, after he had completed that push, revenue grew 78% and 195% year over year in June and July, respectively.

And ChatGPT alone accounts for 84% of all AI-referral traffic to Draco Diamond. McMartin shared that consumers who arrive at Draco Diamond’s website from AI sources add items to their cart five times as often as Google Ads visitors, and at more than double the rate of the site average. It’s the highest-intent subset of traffic the brand has, he said.

In addition, returning customers who arrive from AI sources add to their carts 3.7x more than first-time visitors. Buyers research, leave, and then return to purchase, McMartin shared — AI and organic do the discovering.

“It seems that a lot of our AI traffic is at the end of that research funnel, and they’re almost ready to buy, so that’s why we’re getting such a high add to cart from these users,” McMartin said. He later added that, “I personally thought it would be a little bit of the other way where it would be like people using ChatGPT are at the end of the buying stage and they’re ready to buy and they just want that confirmation, but that’s not what the data is showing.”

How Draco Diamond plans for holidays, Cyber 5

For Draco Diamond, the Cyber 5 could play out similarly to Valentine’s and Mother’s days. Ahead of those holidays, Draco Diamond hyper-focused on specific products “at a very affordable price” relative to the retailer’s other jewelry pieces.

This year, the online retailer launched its sale two months before those holidays. It starts early to accommodate consumer research, which can take longer for higher-ticket products such as jewelry, he explained.

Then, Draco Diamond ended its sale three weeks before those holidays to ensure it could deliver each order in time.

“I don’t even come close to it,” he said, referring to each holiday. He said he’s “begging for a bad review” if he lets a customer buy a product for a holiday and then delivers it after that holiday.

McMartin said he can’t let that happen and has to be “as proactive as possible because at the end of the day, there are things that happen that are out of your control. Maybe something gets stuck at customs or something gets lost and rerouted. I can’t do anything about that. I’ll defend that to the day I die. But if your package is 40 days late because I just got an influx of 100 sales in one day and I can’t keep up with it, then that’s on me.”

Draco Diamond has built an occasion guarantee into its sales. As long as the retailer confirms an order by email, it will offer the piece for free if it doesn’t arrive on time, McMartin said. The caveat, he said, is when orders are too close to realistically fulfill in time.

Consumers have messaged Draco Diamond three days before holidays asking if a product will arrive in time. As much as he would love that sale, he said, it’s not going to happen.

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