How GenAI and agentic commerce are transforming the way consumers shop

During the 2025 holiday season, GenAI and AI agents drove $262 billion in global holiday revenue through personalized recommendations and deeper customer engagement, accounting for 20% of all retail sales. Traffic from AI search channels like ChatGPT and Perplexity doubled year over year. Shoppers referred from AI-powered search converted at nine times the rate of social media referrals.
What does this mean for how brands reach consumers? We see it playing out on three fronts: