U.S. online holiday sales for the 2025 season will reach $253.4 billion, a 5.3% year-over-year increase, Adobe Analytics projects.
Themes that will define the 2025 holiday shopping season include shoppers using artificial intelligence search platforms to find gifts, an increase in social media advertising and thrifty shoppers.
Adobe’s estimates include all online sales in November and December, and are based on analysis of 1 trillion web visits to U.S. retailers and 100 million SKUs.
Consumers use AI to Find Gifts
This year more consumers will turn to AI conversational platforms, like ChatGPT, to look for gifts, both Adobe and ecommerce technology provider Salesforce project.
Adobe expects traffic to retail sites from AI to rise by 520% this holiday season compared with last holiday season, peaking in the 10 days leading up to Thanksgiving.
More than one in three consumers say they have used an AI-powered service for online shopping, according to a September survey of 5,000 U.S. consumers by Adobe. Of these shoppers, the top uses cases were for research (53% of consumers), product recommendations (40%), finding deals (36%) and gift inspiration (30%).
Salesforce estimates AI platforms and agents will play a role in 21% of global holiday sales, such as suggesting gifts and referring traffic. That is roughly $263 billion in sales AI will influence, according to Salesforce estimates. (Salesforce estimates that global online sales from November 2025-January 2026 will reach $1.25 trillion, a 4% year-over-year increase. U.S. online holiday sales will reach $288 billion, a 2% year-over-year increase.)
In the first six months of the year, conversion rate from shoppers visiting from AI channels was 700% higher than the traffic referred from social media, according to Salesforce, which demonstrates the high purchase intent of these shoppers and how highly qualified they are.
Shoppers are increasingly trusting AI chat agents, with 86% of consumers saying they trust recommendations from these sources in a Salesforce survey of 5,400 global shoppers, up from 46% in May.
Thrifty Shoppers for the 2025 Holiday Season
As always during the holiday season, shoppers will be on the hunt for deals, especially during the Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday period. That five-day stretch will account for 17.2% of holiday season sales, a 6.3% increase over last year, according to Adobe.
In fact, 77% of shoppers say saving money is the reason why they will wait until the Cyber Monday period to make the majority of their holiday purchases, according to a Salesforce survey.
Adobe projects discounts will be up to 28% off list price, which is on-par with the 2024 season. Salesforce projects that the average discount rate throughout the holiday season (which it categorizes as November through January) as 22% off list price.
Salesforce also forecasts that merchants will be more judicious with promotions this season, with consumers purchasing with promotional codes decreasing by 2% this year.
“Retailers are trying to hold onto margins,” said Caila Schwartz, Director of Strategy and Consumer Insights at Salesforce. “While they will still give out discounts and deals, they will be more strategic about how they give them out. This may take the form of personalized promotions sent to certain customer segments as well as promotions that apply to certain product lines rather than site-wide discounts.”
To pay for purchases, shoppers are using buy now, pay later buttons more than ever before. Consumers will spend $20.2 billion online using these financing buttons during the 2025 holiday season, which is an 11% increase over the 2024 holiday season.
Beyond discounts, another way consumers plan to save money is to gift a previously owned item. According to Salesforce, 46% of shoppers plan to give a resale item as a gift this holiday season with saving money as the No. 1 reason why.
Shoppers and Marketers Turn to Social Media Even More
Beyond AI platforms, shoppers are continually going to social media platforms to discover products, and that means marketers are following suit.
Adobe estimates purchases attributed to social media is expected to increase 51% year over year. It estimates that advertising across social media platforms will also grow substantially.
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