Despite inflation woes and reports of weakened demand, shoppers shelled out a whopping $257.8 billion online this holiday season—and apparel was among the top three categories driving sales, according to Adobe Analytics.
While Deloitte predicted a 10 percent slowdown in holiday spending last year due to tariff turmoil, consumers actually spent 6.8 percent more between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, 2025 than they did during the same period a year prior, setting a new record for e-commerce sales. Over the course of 25 days, they spent over $4 billion per day (up from 18 days in 2024).
Related Stories
The season’s sales were propelled, not surprisingly, by the five-day Cyber Week holiday between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, which brought in $44.2 billion in online sales (up 7.7 percent from the same period in 2024).
Cyber Monday was the biggest web-based sales day of the season and all of 2025, representing $14.25 billion in spending—an increase of 7.1 percent from the previous year. Black Friday, however, saw greater year-over-year growth, with online sales increasing 9.1 percent to the tune of $11.8 billion. And, showing that shoppers are indeed pulling forward their purchases earlier in the season—as many retail execs have long suspected—Thanksgiving Day e-commerce sales grew 5.3 percent from 2024, totaling $6.4 billion.
More than half of the $257.8 billion spent online during the holiday season was driven by three categories: apparel ($49 billion), electronics ($59.8 billion) and furniture ($31.1 billion). Apparel sales grew 7.4 percent from the same period in 2024, despite research showing that President Donald Trump’s tariffs suppressed import demand for clothing in the United States.
U.S. apparel imports grew at a muted 1.7 percent during the first 10 months of 2025, compared with the 6 percent to 11 percent growth seen in markets like Europe, the United Kingdom and Japan, according to International Monetary Fund data assessed by Dr. Sheng Lu at the University of Delaware. Apparel importers began cancelling holiday shipments at an alarming rate before the peak season summer rush.
Against odds that could have crushed the season, including low consumer confidence and lower-than-usual inventory levels, Adobe Analytics identified several trends that set 2025’s holiday season apart—and drove such robust online spending.
A confirmation that will surprise few: shoppers are glued to their phones, and that’s how they’re transacting. Mobile shopping hit its peak this holiday season, with 56.4 percent of purchases made through smartphones, up from 54.5 percent in 2024. While November’s shopping holidays were huge, mobile shopping actually hit its highest point on Christmas Day, driving 66.5 percent of online sales (up 1.5 percent from the previous year). Thanksgiving Day saw mobile shopping dominate 61.6 percent of all online sales.
In a price-conscious consumer landscape, competitive discounts also captured attention in a significant way. Steals and deals drove shopper demand online, and actually pushed them to “trade up” and purchase higher ticket items at greater discounts, rather than eschewing their favorite brands for cheaper options. Within the apparel category, discounts peaked at about 25 percent during the holiday sales season, and the share of units sold for the most expensive products grew by 20 percent compared to the rest of 2025.
Generative AI, or artificial intelligence, also played an outsized role in consumers’ shopping journeys. Generative AI-driven chatbots and browsers became heavily utilized services for scouting out sales and researching products online. That was evidenced in the fact that generative AI tools drove 693.4 percent more traffic to retail sites than last year. On Cyber Monday alone, AI-driven traffic to retail e-commerce sites grew by 670 percent, showing that shoppers are becoming comfortable with treating AI tools like shopping assistants.
“This 2025 holiday season, consumers embraced generative AI more than ever as a shopping assistant in their purchasing decisions,” said Adobe Digital Insights lead analyst Vivek Pandya. Target even launched its own chatbot dedicated to helping consumers find holiday gifts.
The analyst also pointed to another web-based suite of tools—Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) providers like Klarna, Afterpay and Affirm—that have surged in popularity and become a part of many consumers’ holiday shopping arsenals.
Flexible payment methods hit a milestone during the 2025 holiday season, accounting for a staggering $20 billion in e-commerce spending (a 9.8 percent increase from 2024). The vast majority (82.2 percent) of BNPL users made their transactions using smartphones. Cyber Monday represented BNPL’s most prolific day ever, with $1.03 billion in sales generated, up 4.2 percent from the same day a year earlier. An Adobe survey of 1,000 American shoppers in November found that they were most likely to use BNPL to finance purchases of apparel, electronics, toys and furniture.
Notably (given that so much of this season’s shopping was done online), consumers actually pulled back on returns, bringing back 1.2 percent fewer items than they did last year. One out of seven returns that did take place happened between Dec. 26 and Dec. 31, and 38.8 percent of returns were initiated via mobile devices.
