Adobe: Holiday spending helped drive October online spending to $89B
Online consumers in the U.S. got an early start to the holidays in October to the tune of $88.7 billion.
U.S. consumers spent $88.7 billion online in the month of October, up 8.2% year over year, according to Adobe's new Adobe Analytics e-commerce data for October. Mobile drove the majority of online spend with a 51.4% share ($45.6 billion, up 11.6% year over year) compared to desktop shopping.
In addition, "buy now, pay later" installment spending drove $7.1 billion in spend (up 7.6% year over year). The data also reveals three e-commerce elements that helped prompt some U.S. consumers to begin their digital holiday shopping before Halloween. They were Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days fall online sales extravaganza, increasing use of generative AI as a shopping tool, and growing consumer reliance on social media and influencers for product discovery and education.
Prime Big Deal Days
According to Adobe, online spend spiked on Oct. 7 and Oct. 8 during the Prime Day event, where discounts happened broadly across U.S. retailers. Across those two days, Adobe data indicates consumers spent a total of $9.1 billion online (up 7.3% year over year), driven in part by competitive discounts that Adobe says peaked at 18% off listed price.
[READ MORE: Three consumer signals from Amazon Prime Big Deal Days]
Adobe cited the following product categories as having strong month-over-month online sales growth in October:
- Holiday décor (up 130%).
- Hand tools (up 83%).
- E-readers (up 81%).
- Power tools (up 62%).
- Refrigerators & freezers (up 55%).
- Headphones & speakers (up 52%).
- Phone accessories (up 51%).
- Video games (up 41%).
- Outerwear (up 38%).
Generative AI traffic and conversion
During the 2024 holiday shopping season, Adobe observed the first material surge in generative AI traffic to U.S. retail sites as measured by shoppers clicking on a link.
Between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, 2024, traffic from generative AI sources increased by 1,300% year over year. On Cyber Monday, generative AI traffic was up 1,950% year over year.
Adobe data also shows that generative AI traffic drove higher online conversion rates than traffic from other sources in October 2025, when traffic from generative AI sources increased by 1,200% year over year.
Once these consumers landed on a retail site, they were 16% more likely to convert compared to shoppers from non-AI traffic sources such as paid search, affiliates & partners, email, organic search, and social media. As a result of the shift in conversion, visits from generative AI sources now generate 8% more revenue per session.
Social media and influencers
Adobe expects advertising on social media platforms to be a significant growth driver this holiday season. Its share of online revenue (purchases attributed to social traffic) rose by 28% year over year in October 2025, a significant increase from October 2024 where growth was at 5.6% year-over-year. In the affiliates and partners category (which includes social media influencers), Adobe tracks 15% year over year growth.
Based on Adobe Analytics data, Adobe provides a view into U.S. e-commerce by analyzing commerce transactions online, covering over 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories.
