Consumers set new records for ecommerce sales during the 2025 holiday season, climbing 6.8% YoY for a total of $257.8 billion, according to the Adobe 2025 Holiday Shopping Trends report. During the Nov. 1-Dec. 31 time period, 25 days saw more than $4 billion in online spend, up from 18 days during the previous holiday season, and the majority (56.4%) of online transactions took place on mobile devices, up from 54.5% in 2024.
Higher sales were fueled by aggressive discounts that are likely to shrink retailer margins, peaking at 30.9% off listed price for electronics, 25.1% for apparel, 20.3% for sporting goods and 18.8% for furniture, according to Adobe.
Salesforce’s Shopping Insights HQ has estimated that U.S. online sales reached even higher, hitting $294 billion, contributing to record-breaking global online sales of $1.29 trillion. Shoppers showed resilience throughout the season, according to Salesforce, driving a 9% YoY increase in U.S. online sales during the last two weeks of December, outpacing growth during the first half of the holiday season.
This was also the season when AI began to really flex its retail and shopping muscles, driving 20% of all retail sales and fueling $262 billion in revenue through personalized recommendations, according to Salesforce. The share of global and U.S. online traffic from third-party AI search channels such as ChatGPT and Perplexity doubled compared to the same period in 2024, and shoppers referred to retailer websites from these channels converted 9X more often than those coming from social media referrals.
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“The 2025 holiday season marked a definitive shift to a new era of ‘agentic’ shopping,” said Caila Schwartz, Director of Consumer Insights at Salesforce in a statement. “While shoppers remained resilient in the face of higher prices, the real story was how retailers leaned on AI and agents to navigate the holiday rush. Agents didn’t just drive $262 billion in sales through high-intent discovery; they became the operational heroes of the season — handling a 142% surge in tasks like returns and shipping updates. This wasn’t just a bigger holiday season than last year; it was a more efficient, intelligent one.”
