Bluefish, the AI marketing platform for the Fortune 500, released its 2025 Holiday AI Commerce Report, offering one of the first in-depth looks at how generative AI shaped shopping journeys and brand visibility across the December holiday season. The report analyzes AI-native shopping journeys and millions of AI answers across leading platforms to show which content, sources and narratives most influenced what consumers saw when they asked AI what to buy and where to buy it.

The findings show that paid media had little direct impact on AI answers during the 2025 holiday period, confirming a similar conclusion from other reports that show as much as 95% of AI citations came from non-paid sources. Instead of rewarding ad spend, AI assistants favored brands with high-quality, clearly structured and consistent organic content, making AI visibility a leading indicator of demand capture in the most important sales window of the year.

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“Holiday 2025 proved that AI commerce is now a major channel, which requires a fundamentally different playbook,” said Alex Sherman, co-founder and CEO of Bluefish. “This report shows that the brands winning here are those that have rewired their holiday strategy around high-quality owned and earned content.”

The report also highlights a major shift from a “best deals” AI narrative during Black Friday to a “best gifts” narrative in December, as AI assistants moved from surfacing doorbusters to curating thoughtful gifting recommendations. Bluefish observed that “best deals” content saw its impact on AI recommendations decline by more than 30% heading into Christmas, while “best gifts” guides – especially “best gifts under 100 dollars” – increased their influence as the month progressed.

Using its industry-leading Impact Score and Influence Rank analytics, originally introduced in Bluefish’s Black Friday report, the Holiday AI Commerce Report reveals that a relatively small set of high-signal pages drove a disproportionate share of AI holiday recommendations. Publishers like Reddit, CNET, RTINGS.com, PCMag and lifestyle titles such as Who What Wear and Vogue emerged as outsized shapers of AI answers. Bluefish’s metrics show that these sources often punched above their raw citation counts, exerting disproportionate impact on how AI described and ranked brands in key gifting categories.

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Within this environment, several brands emerged as AI holiday “winners” by tightly aligning owned content, earned coverage and the narratives AI prioritized. In beauty, Ulta stood out for “best gift” messaging that was consistently reinforced across its own pages and third-party coverage. In luxury, brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Ralph Lauren benefited from decades of cultural relevance amplified by dense coverage in curated gift guides and editorial lists, positioning them as definitive answers for “best luxury gifts.”

The report notes that forward-thinking marketing organizations have already begun rewiring holiday planning around high-quality content, measuring AI visibility weekly and treating AI commerce as a distinct performance channel. Looking ahead to 2026, Bluefish expects that direct AI advertising will begin to formalize an even more complex reality. As a result, Bluefish is building their platform to support a shifting landscape, helping brands see how AI represents them, identifying the few sources that truly drive influence and taking systematic action to drive results.

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