AI-driven traffic to US retail sites grew 693% during the 2025 holiday season — and now converts up to 54% better than traditional traffic

Online retail hit a new spending record in the 2025 holiday season, but the more consequential number in this year's e-commerce data isn't the topline total — it's what's driving an increasing share of the traffic behind it. Generative AI tools went from a rounding error in retail referral traffic to a channel converting better than search and social within about a year, and the trend has kept accelerating into 2026. This page covers both stories: the overall scale of e-commerce and retail spending, and the specific, measured rise of AI-driven shopping traffic.

The 2025 holiday season set a new record

US consumers spent $257.8 billion online between November 1 and December 31, 2025, a 6.8% increase over 2024 and a new e-commerce record, according to Adobe's Digital Insights data. Adobe's report specifically flagged the role of AI shopping assistants in that growth: traffic to retail sites from generative AI tools grew 693.4% year-over-year across the season overall, and surged 670% on Cyber Monday alone — though Adobe cautioned "the base of users remains modest" relative to total retail traffic. The categories with the highest AI-assisted shopping activity during the season were video games, toys, appliances, electronics, and personal care.

AI-referred traffic kept accelerating through 2026

The growth didn't stop after the holidays. Adobe's ongoing tracking of AI-referred retail traffic — covering more than 1 trillion visits to US retail sites — shows continued, if gradually decelerating, year-over-year growth as the base of AI traffic itself gets larger:

Since October 2024, Adobe estimates AI-referred traffic to US retail sites has grown more than 14-fold (1,324% cumulative growth) — a trajectory that makes the slowing year-over-year percentage a sign of a maturing, larger channel rather than a cooling trend.

AI traffic went from underperforming to outperforming — in about a year

The more striking shift is in quality, not just volume. In March 2025, AI-referred traffic converted 38% worse than traffic from other sources. By March 2026, it converted 42% better — and generated 37% more revenue per visit than non-AI traffic. Engagement moved the same direction: AI-sourced shoppers in March 2026 spent 48% more time on-site and browsed 13% more pages per visit than other visitors. By May 2026, the conversion advantage had widened further to 54% better than non-AI traffic, with visitors 15% more engaged, spending 53% more time on-site, and browsing roughly double the pages per visit compared to March. A year earlier, in May 2025, AI-referred traffic had converted at roughly half the rate of non-AI sources — making this one of the sharper channel-quality reversals in recent retail-analytics history.

The 2026-27 holiday season: forecast to grow faster than retail overall

Deloitte forecasts US holiday e-commerce sales of $316.1 billion to $318.9 billion for November 2026 through January 2027 — growth of 7.5% to 8.4% year-over-year, notably outpacing the 4% to 4.8% growth Deloitte projects for overall retail (which it expects to reach roughly $1.7 trillion). Deloitte ties the e-commerce-specific outperformance directly to continued consumer use of digital research and comparison tools, particularly generative AI: a separate Deloitte consumer survey found 33% of US shoppers expect to use generative AI tools at some point in their holiday shopping process. The practical implication for retailers, as one Deloitte economist put it, is that "a third of shoppers using AI to research a purchase means a third of shoppers whose first impression of a product may be formed by a machine reading the product page, not a person looking at it" — making structured, machine-readable product data a more direct revenue lever than it was a year ago.

Methodology

Holiday spending and AI-traffic figures on this page are drawn from Adobe Digital Insights' published reports and press releases, which track a defined panel of more than 1 trillion visits to US retail websites and represent Adobe's own analytics methodology rather than a government or independently audited source. The 2026-27 holiday forecast is drawn from Deloitte's published retail forecast and an associated Deloitte consumer survey; forecasts are estimates and may differ from the season's eventual reported results. This page presents market and traffic statistics only, not investment or business advice specific to any company.

References

1. Adobe. (2026, January). Adobe: Holiday Shopping Season Drove a Record $257.8 Billion Online with Consumers Embracing Generative AI Tools. https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/01/adobe-holiday-shopping-season
2. Digital Commerce 360. (2026, June). Adobe: AI-Referred Traffic to Retail Sites Doubles in a Year. https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/06/17/adobe-ai-referred-traffic-to-retail-sites-doubles-in-a-year/
3. Yahoo Finance, via Decrypt. (2026, April). AI Traffic to US Retailers Jumps 393% in Q1 as Agentic Shoppers Outspend Humans. https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/ai-traffic-us-retailers-jumps-160141756.html
4. MarketScale. (2026). Deloitte: Holiday E-Commerce to Reach Up to $319B in 2026-27. https://www.marketscale.com/industries/retail/holiday-e-commerce-will-reach-up-to-319-billion-this-season-deloitte-forecasts