Brands that deployed their own AI agents experienced significantly higher growth than brands that did not. Consumers remained resilient despite higher prices and relied heavily on mobile devices and AI agents to find the best deals.
Let’s look at three key insights and what they mean for marketing leaders in the coming months, not to mention this year’s holiday shopping season.
1. Agentic trading is here, from chat to operations
This season’s data confirmed that AI agents have evolved from handling simple customer service queries to fundamental revenue generators while supporting more streamlined operations.
AI agents influenced 20% of global retail sales, and traffic coming from AI-powered searches, such as on ChatGPT or Perplexity, showed incredibly high intent and converted nine times more often than traffic coming from social media referrals. Additionally, companies that use their own agents, such as Pandora and SharkNinja, experienced a 59% higher growth rate than companies that did not.
As Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights at Salesforce, put it, “Agents didn’t just generate $262 billion in revenue through high-quality discoveries. They became the operational heroes of the season.”
AI agents are no longer passive information tools. They are active participants in the commercial life cycle. During the holiday rush, there was a 66% increase in AI-powered agent service calls in December.
“AI is no longer a customer service tool. It is the most efficient new shopping cart engine and the decisive factor in vacation growth,” said Schwartz.
Crucially, these agents handled complex tasks autonomously. They were able to achieve a 142% increase in actions such as initiating returns and updating shipping information, proving their value in scaling operations during peak demand.
Dig Deeper: When AI Agents Become the Customer
2. Mobile dominates discovery and purchasing
The record-breaking 2025 holiday shopping season wasn’t just about AI. This year, mobile devices have cemented their status as the standard for shopping. During the crucial Cyber Week period, 78% of global online traffic and 70% of orders came from mobile devices, and this dominance extended to Black Friday, when almost 70% of global orders were placed via mobile.
Although trends have been pointing in this direction for years, the shopping journey is now largely a hands-on phenomenon, and with 74% of orders in 2025, up from 62% in 2024, it seems likely that this will remain the case for some time to come. With online traffic growing at 13% globally, consumers are browsing heavily before purchasing. They do most of this research on their phones, with 71% of traffic coming from mobile devices.
Payment behavior is also changing on mobile. While buy now, pay later usage was flat or declining in some regions, use of mobile wallets such as Apple Pay increased, reflecting a preference for speed and frictionless payment experiences.
Dig Deeper: Mobile Marketing with RCS: What You Need to Know
3. The expensive, high-return economy still produces winners
While consumers spent more this holiday season, they also bought more selectively. They spent significantly more time on e-commerce sites (up 35% in the US), doing their due diligence before committing to higher-priced items.
Salesforce data shows that average sales price increased 7% globally and in the US, accounting for much of the revenue growth, while order volume increased only 3% globally and 1% in the US. This price increase means that “American consumers continued to feel the pinch of inflation,” Schwartz noted.
Another crucial trend leaders need to look at is rising returns. Approximately $181 billion in merchandise was returned, representing 14% of all purchases. While consumers remained resilient despite rising costs and were more discerning in their spending, spending more time on research, returns still increased by 10% compared to 2024.
In this high-cost, high-revenue economy, consumers appear willing to pay higher prices, but are equally willing to reverse those decisions, increasing 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 need to do in the coming months and how to plan for the 2026 holidays, with three next steps to strongly consider.
Implement an agent’s own 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 stores to drive high traffic and close sales with discerning consumers. Retailers with their own brand agents saw sales grow 32% faster than those without them.
Automate the post-purchase cycle
As returns rise and demand for service increases, brands must deploy AI agents to handle the growing number of low-complexity and high-volume tasks such as address updates and return initiatives. This can help protect margins and free up human agents to solve more complex problems that could impact long-term customer loyalty.
Optimize for mobile discovery and BOPIS
Ensure mobile experiences are seamless, especially for last-minute shoppers switching to buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) in the final days before the holidays. During the 2025 holiday season, BOPIS peaked on Monday, December 22, when 35% of all online orders were placed for in-store pickup.
Dig deeper: build AI agents that go from conversation to conversion
From experimental AI to operational advantage
The holidays of 2025 heralded the end of the era of purely experimental AI and the arrival of operational AI. The most important thing is not only the volume of sales, but also the way in which that revenue is generated. Order volume recorded only a modest gain, with real growth driven by higher average selling prices and the strategic use of technology. AI agents and mobile commerce will dominate retail by 2025, impacting product discovery, conversion, and post-purchase service.
Schwartz summed up 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 shows that retailers that integrate branded AI agents into their ecosystems significantly outperformed their competitors, indicating that agentic capabilities are now a competitive need rather than a novelty.
Dig Deeper: How AI Agents Will Reshape Every Part of Marketing by 2026
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