Walmart released its Q3 earnings results on Tuesday, and the retail giant is firing on all cylinders as its heads into the heart of the holiday season. Comp sales were up 5.3%. E-commerce sales increased 27%. Advertising revenues were up 28%, and membership income was 22%.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the report:

Bigger tickets: While Walmart in recent quarters has prioritized volume over price, there was a slight slowdown in volume growth in Q3. Transactions slowed from 3.4% to 3.1%, while average ticket size increased 2.1%, up from 1.5% in the same period last year.

As for the increase in ticket size, Walmart US President and CEO John Furner told shareholders that it was the result of getting its assortment right for the fall season. “Seasons are important,” he said. “We ended October with a strong Halloween.”’

Fashion-forward: Relatedly, executives acknowledged that Walmart is moving into new categories that it had previously left to its competitors.

Keep reading here.—AV

Google’s holiday shopping tweaks just keep on coming.

On Tuesday, Google said it is making Google Lens more akin to in-store shopping.

Google’s Lilian Rincon, VP of consumer shopping product, said shoppers can use Lens—the little camera button beside the text box on Google Search—when shopping in-store to find details like product information, similar products in stock, whether a store’s price is competitive, and reviews by clicking an image of the product.

“This new update is made possible by major advancements in our AI image recognition technology,” Rincon said in a blog post. “This new feature can give shoppers the information and confidence they need to make a decision on the spot.”

Keep reading here.—VC

There’s power in a good recommendation.

According to recent data from influencer platform Mavely, a quarter of consumers, and nearly half of Gen Z consumers, said they have used a gift guide to make a holiday shopping decision.

As the founder of PR agency Dreamday and co-founder of product recommendation website The Quality Edit, Lauren Kleinman has experience seeing both sides of the gift guide pitching process. In her experience, she said the majority of her clients’ press coverage is published in November.

Kleinman starts pitching legacy gift guides that have long lead times (like, for instance, Oprah’s Favorite Things) in June and targets digital-first outlets that tend to have shorter lead times in September, she told us, but pitching for gift guides is an ongoing process. In other words, it’s never too late for brands to jump in—especially if they’re looking to land on a last-minute shopping list or pitch a creator’s gift guide.

We spoke with Kleinman and Mavely CEO and co-founder Evan Wray about some strategies brands can use to help their chances of making the cut.

Keep reading here on Marketing Brew.—KH