AI fuels $263B in holiday orders, pushing 2025 digital sales to $1.25T

AI Will Drive $263B in Holiday Orders. Here's How Sales Leaders Can Win 2025

Salesforce projects $1.25 trillion in global digital sales for November-December 2025, up 4% year over year. The US share is expected to reach $288 billion, a 2% lift.

The standout driver: AI and agent-led shopping. These journeys are set to influence $263 billion in global holiday orders - 21% of total sales.

Why this matters for sales

AI-assisted traffic jumped 119% in H1 2025. Conversion rates from AI-led sessions are over 700% higher than social and 200% higher than search or direct. Consumer trust in AI recommendations surged to 86% (up from 46% in May).

Seventeen percent of shoppers used AI assistants or LLMs for product search in the past year. If your products aren't optimized for AI surfaces, you will miss high-intent demand.

What to do now: Action plan for Q4

• Prioritize AI discovery (GEO/AIO): Optimize feeds, titles, and attributes for natural language queries. Add structured data. Create concise product summaries and FAQs that LLMs can parse. Track "AI-assisted sessions" as a source.
• Build agent-led selling: Deploy on-site guided shopping and chat agents. Connect first-party data, inventory, and promos so agents can recommend in-stock bundles and upsells. Route warm traffic from agents to human reps for high-value carts.
• Shift budget to high-converting sources: Rebalance spend from low-ROI social clicks into AI-referred traffic and agent experiences. Test CPA caps based on the 200%-700% conversion lift benchmarks.
• Own Cyber Week: With 77% of shoppers waiting, stage offers and inventory for that window. Use waitlists, price-drop alerts, and BOPIS to capture intent before competitors.
• Tune discounts for margin: Expect 2% fewer orders with promo codes due to cost pressure. Use targeted offers, loyalty pricing, and value bundles rather than blanket markdowns.
• Lean into resale: Resale is projected to add $64B this season, with 46% planning to gift second-hand. Add certified pre-owned, trade-ins, and "open box" deals to convert price-sensitive buyers.
• Win Gen Z in-store: Three in four plan to shop in stores, spending roughly $3 offline for every $1 online. Enable BOPIS/curbside, local inventory visibility, and clienteling. Tie store visits to digital retargeting.
• Automate service where it counts: AI-powered service is set to grow 39%, helping reduce total cases by 2.5%. Use bots for status, returns, and policy. Escalate complex issues to human agents with context and order history.
• Forecast for late demand: Hold inventory for Cyber Week, staff fulfillment for spikes, and streamline returns to protect contribution margin.

KPIs to track weekly

• AI-assisted traffic, conversion rate, and revenue share
• Agent-engaged AOV, upsell/attach rate, and recovery of abandoned carts
• Promo utilization vs. gross margin by channel
• Cyber Week sell-through, fill rate, and OOS rate
• Store-to-online revenue ratio for Gen Z cohorts
• Resale contribution to total orders and new customer acquisition
• Service deflection rate, CSAT, and time to resolution

What this means for your 2025 playbook

AI is now a primary path to purchase. Integrate it across discovery, promotions, and support. Build for speed: fast answers, clear offers, fewer clicks.

Salesforce's dataset spans 1.5 billion shoppers across Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and Agentforce, underscoring the shift. For deeper context on retail benchmarks, see Salesforce's Shopping Index here.

Next step: Skill up your team

Equip your sales and CX teams to work with AI agents, prompts, and AIO tactics. For structured training by role, explore Complete AI Training: Courses by Job.