Holiday Ecommerce Near $260B; AI Drove 20% of Transactions - What Sales Teams Should Do Next
Holiday ecommerce set new records. Adobe reported $257.8B in U.S. online spend from Nov. 1-Dec. 31, up 6.8% year over year. Salesforce pegged U.S. sales even higher at $294B and global online sales at $1.29T. Different measurement methods, same takeaway: demand was strong and buyers were active late into December.
Shoppers spent more, more often. There were 25 days above $4B in online sales (up from 18 last year). Mobile owned the majority with 56.4% of transactions, up from 54.5% in 2024. That means your revenue is riding on how fast your mobile experience feels - and how easy it is to buy without friction.
Discounts did the heavy lifting - and they cut into margin. Peak markdowns hit 30.9% for electronics, 25.1% for apparel, 20.3% for sporting goods and 18.8% for furniture. Great for volume, risky for profit if you don't pair it with mix, bundling and contribution margin guardrails.
AI wasn't a sidekick - it was a channel
Salesforce estimated AI influenced 20% of retail sales and fueled $262B via personalized recommendations. Traffic from third-party AI search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity doubled versus 2024, and those visitors converted 9X more than social referrals. AI agents also absorbed a 142% spike in service tasks - returns, shipping updates, order status - keeping carts moving and queues short.
Salesforce's Caila Schwartz described the season as a shift to "agentic" shopping: high-intent discovery aided by AI plus leaner operations. In other words, buyers are asking smart assistants what to buy - and then buying.
What this means for sales leaders
- Own AI-intent traffic: Treat ChatGPT, Perplexity and similar tools like paid search. Ensure product data is clean, structured and up to date so agents can surface your offers.
- Defend margin while discounting: Set tiered markdown caps by category, bundle high-margin add-ons and use thresholds (free shipping, bonus gifts) to lift AOV without deeper cuts.
- Prioritize mobile conversion: Streamline checkout to 3 steps or fewer, enable express pay, and make PDPs scannable. Every extra field is lost revenue.
- Exploit high-intent windows: The last two weeks of December grew 9% YoY. Plan inventory, expedited shipping, BOPIS and "buy today, deliver by X date" offers around that surge.
- Shift outbound to where buyers are: Test agent-ready product summaries and links your reps can paste into AI chats and SMS. Make it easy for a buyer's assistant to choose you.
- Let agents handle the grunt work: Automate order status, returns and exchanges so reps spend time on upsell, cross-sell and VIP saves.
Practical moves you can deploy this quarter
- Feed optimization: Standardize titles, attributes, availability and pricing across your product feeds; include rich metadata and schema.
- Personalization everywhere: Use recommendation blocks on PDP, cart, email and SMS. Promote profitable substitutes when items are out of stock.
- Offer architecture: Pair modest category-wide discounts with bundles and tiered spend bonuses to protect contribution margin.
- Calendar the "late lift": Pre-build last-minute campaigns, inventory allocations and service scripts for Dec. 18-31.
- AI referral tracking: Create UTM tags for AI sources and compare conversion/LTV to search, email and social. Fund what converts 9X higher.
- Returns as revenue: Turn returns flows into exchanges with instant credits and timed incentives. Measure save rate, not just refund rate.
Benchmarks to watch
- Share of orders via mobile and express pay
- AI-sourced traffic, conversion and AOV versus social and search
- Gross-to-net gap during promos (by category)
- Return rate and exchange/save rate
- Agent deflection rate for WISMO/returns - and the rep hours you get back
Why this matters now
The biggest growth didn't just come from more ads or deeper discounts. It came from meeting buyers where they decide - on a phone, inside an AI assistant, and at the exact moment intent spikes. If your data, offers and service can plug into that flow, you win more often without burning margin.
Sources: Adobe's 2025 Holiday Shopping Trends and Salesforce Shopping Insights.
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