Bluefish, the AI marketing platform for Fortune 500 brands, has released its 2025 Holiday AI Commerce Report, providing an in-depth analysis of how generative AI influenced shopping journeys and brand visibility during the December holiday season.
The report examines AI-native shopping behaviors and millions of AI responses across leading platforms, revealing the content, sources, and narratives that most shaped consumer recommendations for what to buy and where.
The findings confirm that AI assistants prioritized brands with high-quality, clearly structured, and consistent organic content over those relying on paid media. As much as 95% of AI citations originated from non-paid sources, underscoring AI visibility as a critical indicator of demand capture during the peak holiday sales period.
Bluefish observed a notable narrative evolution: "best deals" content, prominent during Black Friday, saw its influence on AI recommendations decline by more than 30% into Christmas. In contrast, "best gifts" guides—particularly those focused on categories like "best gifts under 100 dollars"—gained significant traction as AI assistants shifted toward curating thoughtful gifting suggestions.
Using proprietary Impact Score and Influence Rank analytics, the report identifies that a small number of high-signal pages from select publishers disproportionately shaped AI holiday responses. Sources such as Reddit, CNET, RTINGS.com, PCMag, Who What Wear, and Vogue emerged as key influencers, often amplifying brand mentions beyond raw citation volumes in major gifting categories.
Several brands stood out by aligning their owned content and earned coverage with AI-prioritized narratives. In beauty, Ulta excelled through consistent "best gift" messaging reinforced across its sites and third-party reviews. In luxury, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Ralph Lauren leveraged longstanding cultural relevance and dense editorial coverage in gift guides to secure top AI recommendations for "best luxury gifts."
"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."
Forward-thinking organizations are already adapting by monitoring AI visibility weekly and treating AI commerce as a distinct channel. Looking to 2026, the emergence of direct AI advertising is expected to further complicate the landscape, prompting Bluefish to enhance its platform for tracking representation, identifying influential sources, and driving systematic improvements.
The 2025 Holiday AI Commerce Report is available at https://www.bluefishai.com/holiday-report.
About Bluefish
Bluefish is the AI marketing platform for enterprise brands. As product discovery and purchase journeys shift to AI platforms like ChatGPT, Meta AI, and Google AI, Fortune 500 brands use Bluefish to gain visibility, understand which sources truly shape AI recommendations, and systematically improve how AI represents their products and stories. Bluefish is led by the team behind PromoteIQ (acquired by Microsoft) and LiveRail (acquired by Facebook) and is headquartered in New York City.
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