The 2025 holiday shopping season set new records, according to Salesforce data, with $1.29 trillion in global sales driven by a definitive shift toward AI-driven agentic shopping. A resilient consumer base drove global online sales up 7% from last year, with U.S. sales at $294 billion, up 4% from 2024.
Brands that deployed their own AI agents saw significantly higher growth than those that did not. Consumers remained resilient amid higher prices, leaning heavily on mobile devices and AI agents to find the best deals.
Let’s look at three big takeaways and what they mean for marketing leaders in the months ahead, not to mention this year’s holiday shopping season.
1. Agentic commerce is here from chat to operations
The season’s data confirmed that AI agents have moved beyond handling basic customer service queries to becoming fundamental drivers of revenue while supporting more streamlined operations.
AI agents influenced 20% of global retail sales, and traffic from AI-powered searches, such as on ChatGPT or Perplexity, showed incredibly high intent, converting nine times more often than traffic from social media referrals. Additionally, companies deploying their own agents, such as Pandora and SharkNinja, experienced a 59% higher growth rate than those that did not.
As Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights at Salesforce, put it, “Agents didn’t just drive $262 billion in sales through high-intent discovery. They became the operational heroes of the season.”
AI agents are no longer passive informational tools. They are active participants in the commerce lifecycle. During the holiday rush, there was a 66% jump in agentic AI-powered service conversations in December.
“AI is no longer a customer service tool. It is the most efficient new engine for the shopping cart and the definitive factor in holiday growth,” Schwartz said.
Crucially, these agents handled complex tasks autonomously. They managed a 142% surge in actions such as initiating returns and updating shipping details, proving their value in scaling operations during peak demand.
Dig deeper: When AI agents become the customer
2. Mobile dominates discovery and purchase
2025’s record-breaking holiday shopping season wasn’t solely about AI. This year, mobile devices cemented their status as the default for shopping. During the critical Cyber Week period, 78% of global online traffic and 70% of orders originated from mobile devices, and this dominance extended through Black Friday, when nearly 70% of global orders were placed via mobile.
While trends had been pointing in this direction for years, the shopping journey is now overwhelmingly handheld, and with 74% of orders in 2025, up from 62% in 2024, it appears likely to remain that way for some time. With online traffic growing 13% globally, consumers are browsing heavily before buying, and they are conducting the majority of this research on their phones, with 71% of traffic coming from mobile devices.
Payment behaviors are also shifting on mobile. While “buy now, pay later” usage remained flat or declined in some regions, the use of mobile wallets, such as Apple Pay, increased, indicating a preference for speed and friction-free checkout experiences.
Dig deeper: Mobile marketing with RCS: What you need to know
3. The high-cost, high-return economy still produces winners
While consumers spent more this holiday season, they also purchased more selectively, spending significantly more time on ecommerce sites, up 35% in the U.S., conducting diligence before committing to higher-priced items.
Salesforce data show that the average selling price rose 7% globally and in the U.S., accounting for much of the revenue growth, while order volumes grew only 3% globally and 1% in the U.S. This price increase means “U.S. shoppers continued to feel the bite of inflation,” Schwartz noted.
Another critical trend for leaders to watch is the rising rate of returns. Some $181 billion in merchandise was returned, representing 14% of all purchases. While consumers remained resilient despite rising costs and more discerning in their spending, with additional time spent researching, returns still increased by 10% compared to 2024.
In this high-cost, high-return economy, consumers appear willing to pay higher prices, yet they are equally willing to reverse those decisions, placing increased pressure on reverse logistics.
Dig deeper: How to balance customer experience and returns in ecommerce
What this means for marketing leaders
This brings us to what leaders should do in the months ahead and how the 2026 holiday season should be planned, with three next steps to strongly consider.
Deploy owned agentic AI
While there is a parallel need to focus on generative engine optimization to appear in AI-based searches, brands should not rely solely on third-party AI search engines. Instead, brands must integrate proprietary AI agents into their digital storefronts to capture high-intent traffic and close sales with discerning consumers. Retailers with their own branded agents saw sales grow 32% faster than those without them.
Automate the post-purchase loop
With returns rising and service demands spiking, brands should deploy AI agents to handle the growing number of low-complexity, high-volume tasks, such as address updates and return initiations. This can help protect margins and free up human agents to handle more complex issues that may affect long-term customer loyalty.
Optimize for mobile discovery and BOPIS
Ensure mobile experiences are seamless, particularly for last-minute shoppers who switch to “buy online, pick up in store” (BOPIS) in the final days before the holiday. During the 2025 holiday season, BOPIS peaked on Monday, Dec. 22, when 35% of all online orders were placed for in-store pickup.
Dig deeper: Building AI agents that move from conversation to conversion
From experimental AI to operational advantage
The 2025 holiday season signaled the end of the era of purely experimental AI and the arrival of operational AI. The primary takeaway is not just the revenue volume, but how that revenue was generated. Order volume posted only modest gains, with real growth fueled by higher average selling prices and the strategic deployment of technology. AI agents and mobile commerce dominated retail in 2025, influencing product discovery, conversion and post-purchase service.
Schwartz summarized the season by saying that “the 2025 holiday shopping season demonstrated that AI agents are now the backbone of the retail ecosystem, acting as both a new revenue engine for discovery and a critical resource for customer service.”
The data show that retailers integrating branded AI agents into their ecosystems significantly outperformed their peers, signaling that agentic capabilities are now a competitive necessity rather than a novelty.
Dig deeper: How AI agents will reshape every part of marketing in 2026
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