Key eCommerce Trends to Keep in Mind for 2025

As we step into the new year, it's the perfect time for brands to start shaping their marketing and advertising strategies for 2025. In this blog, we're highlighting key eCommerce trends that will play a significant role in the coming year. 

Numerous trends observed in the previous year will continue to be pivotal in 2025, including the growth of AI integration and content creation, the exponential rise of social commerce, evolving retail media and omni-channel marketing, the increase in mobile commerce, and the importance of brand protection.

We've gathered valuable insights from our experts and team leaders at Blue Wheel to provide a comprehensive look at how these eCommerce trends will influence our strategies and help support our existing and new clients. Keep reading to learn how we can help your brand grow and which key eCommerce trends you should consider for success in 2025 and beyond.

Trend #1: AI Integration in Creative Solutions

The increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) was one of the key eCommerce industry trends in 2024 and will continue to be central in 2025. According to McKinsey reports, 72% of organizations around the globe have integrated artificial intelligence into at least one of their business functions. AI adoption is noticeable everywhere, from chatbots, product recommendations, and checkout experiences to generative AI used for content creation and automation, optimizing product detail pages, and personalizing customer experiences.

We asked Lindsay Kean, VP of Creative at Blue Wheel, to share her thoughts and predictions on using AI for creative content. “AI is a tool to make better creative content, but you still need to have foresight into your goals. If you aren't bringing creative strategy to the plate with AI tools, you'll end up with something generic and not tailored to your brand and objectives,” Lindsay says. 

Creative AI Trends

“Maybe not in 2025, but as we get closer to full AI content creation, I believe that audiences will get accustomed to having this content in the feed and lack trust in brands with a lot of AI-created content, especially when it comes to talent-focused content or assets with people in them. Brands will have to find other ways to showcase credibility and authenticity to their customers. I think this will be done by community building within the produced content and displaying products in ways that align with the audience you are pushing content to. Lindsay Kean suggests “Think more unique lifestyle content vs. direct-to-camera testimonials”.

How Blue Wheel Leverages AI for Creative

We use AI to streamline the research phase of our creative process, pulling valuable insights from customer reviews and product pages. This enables us to identify key barriers to purchase, uncover benefits not explicitly listed by brands, and understand customer sentiment. These insights are pivotal in tailoring creative strategies that resonate deeply with your target audiences.

At Blue Wheel, we will utilize AI as a starting point for copywriting ideation. This allows our team to focus on building on the copy within ads. We build upon it by refining tone, style, and messaging to align with your brand’s unique selling points and goals for each asset. 

As we explore integrating AI-powered tools for storyboarding, we aim to provide clients with more immersive and clear visualizations of creative concepts before production. This helps us bridge the gap between abstract ideas and tangible outcomes, improving communication and alignment early in the process.

The utilization of AI supports tracking the performance of our creative assets, helping us pinpoint what resonates with audiences. These insights guide our optimization efforts, ensuring our campaigns continually improve. Beyond customer reviews, we use AI to understand broader sentiments and patterns, highlighting overlooked aspects of your products that we can elevate in our creative storytelling.

Ethical and Tailored Approach to AI

“Our creative team is committed to ethical AI practices,” Lindsay Kean highlights. “We view AI as a collaborative tool, not a replacement for human creativity. Ensuring our work doesn’t replicate or “borrow” from other artists or generate generic content is a priority. Every AI output is carefully tailored to align with our clients’ creative goals and brand personality.”

“AI isn’t a plug-and-play solution for every task; it requires thoughtful integration and skilled users who can craft effective prompts. Our team recognizes that success lies in understanding the nuances of both creativity and technology, allowing us to make AI outputs custom to projects’ needs. Artificial intelligence can be the greatest asset for creating a higher volume of assets and using that data to find the best-performing assets,” our VP of Creative says.

Trend #2: The Rise of Social Commerce

Social commerce will remain one of the key trends in eCommerce as it continues to grow in 2025. Social commerce revenues are predicted to exceed one trillion US dollars by 2028. As more people shop online, platforms like TikTok and Instagram will provide more options to purchase directly on the platforms, seamlessly integrating social and shopping experiences. Brands can drive awareness, engage with customers in new ways, and drive sales with TikTok Shop and Instagram Shopping solutions.

Influencer and Affiliate Marketing Trends

Influencer and affiliate marketing will remain crucial for reaching targeted audiences and driving conversions, especially for newer eCommerce brands. Ragen Wolffis, Paid Social Director at Blue Wheel, shares her predictions for 2025. “Influencer marketing in the form of whitelisting styles, such as partnership on Meta and Spark Ads on TikTok, will be a large driving force in 2025. Also, affiliate marketing will continue to grow with the TikTok Shop Affiliate program adaptation.” 

Aided by personalized AI recommendations and live shopping experiences, social media will be a key place for product search and discovery, streamlined online shopping, and meeting customers where they are. New and interactive ad formats, like shoppable videos and augmented reality (AR), are becoming more popular. These formats provide engaging and immersive experiences that can drive higher conversion rates.

We can expect to see more generative AI in social commerce and paid social, as it will be used to generate entire ads, make multiple iterations of pre-existing creative, and create avatar-influencer ads, meaning generating UGC using avatars. “As more advertising platforms incorporate AI machine learning, leaning into AI and the platforms’ best practices will allow advertisers to target and find the most optimal audiences. In turn, creative strategy will be more important than ever in social commerce,” says Ragen Wolffis.

Social Commerce Trends

When asked about key social commerce trends for this year, Zach Riegle, VP of Sales at Blue Wheel said, “Social commerce is here to stay.” “The concept revolves around connecting people on platforms that use algorithms to understand their preferences and dislikes. Within this framework, there is an opportunity to present commerce options genuinely tailored to individual needs. This valuable approach will continue to be relevant in 2025 and beyond.”

“Social platforms are increasingly trying to become eCommerce sites, while eCommerce platforms are adding social features. I’ve been saying for the past two years that Amazon is rolling out more social functionalities, and TikTok is aiming to establish itself as an eCommerce network. We are witnessing this merging, and I believe it will persist. To succeed, brands need to meet consumers where they are and find ways to allow purchases with minimal obstacles, as that has become the expectation.”

Trend #3: Omni-Channel and Retail Media Growth

Omni-channel strategies and retail media integration will remain crucial for success in the eCommerce industry. As the lines between physical and online stores continue to blur, brands should stay flexible and adopt a hybrid approach. More and more customers expect a seamless purchase journey, including the ability to buy online and pick up in-store. 

People search for products and purchase in brick-and-mortar stores, and online on DTC websites, social media, Amazon, Walmart, other marketplaces, etc. For brands, the main goal will be to provide seamless shopping experiences that connect online and offline touchpoints, ensuring customers have a consistent journey regardless of where they interact with the brand.

Omni-Channel Advertising Trends

Michael Tomasch, DSP Senior Manager at Blue Wheel, provides omni-channel advertising insights and expectations from Amazon’s multi-touch attribution. “As advertisers continue to adopt a full-funnel approach and diversified ad mix on Amazon DSP, the need to understand their respective impact grows larger and larger. While multi-touch attribution is not a new way to analyze performance, having it at your fingertips via the platform will prove instrumental.”

Amazon Ads is launching a new multi-touch attribution model (beta) for US advertisers. This model goes beyond the traditional last-touch attribution by distributing credit for conversions across multiple ad touchpoints based on their likely influence. It employs advanced machine learning and A/B testing to assess the relative impact of different ad formats and placements on driving conversions. 

The multi-touch metrics, including orders, sales, and ROAS, will be displayed alongside standard last-touch metrics in reports for the Amazon Demand-Side Platform, Sponsored Ads, and the API. This will give advertisers a more comprehensive understanding of how their entire marketing strategies contribute to driving sales and conversions on Amazon in 2025.

Retail Media Trends

Tony Lunn, Retail Brand Manager at Blue Wheel, shares plans and valuable retail media insights for this year. “We remain focused on building a dedicated team, which has already begun, and it will help us grow our imprint on retail media across the Blue Wheel portfolio of clients and advertisers. We will have dedicated reps who can manage the accounts and media buyers who can invest in the relevant growth channels. There is a lot of opportunity in digital retail, as it is expected to grow 25% and drive $70 billion in sales this year, and by 2027, it is projected to be a $110 billion business.”

AI is behind many key eCommerce trends for 2025 and will continue revolutionizing retail media by enabling highly personalized shopping experiences. Retailers use it to analyze customer data and deliver tailored content and recommendations in real-time. Digital screens and interactive displays in physical stores are gaining traction, allowing for dynamic advertising and personalized offers, enhancing the shopping experience, and driving in-store engagement.

How Blue Wheel Provides Retail Media Support

“In 2025, our Retail Media team will work on multiple strategies to drive the retail business forward. By implementing these strategies, we can better engage with our clients and drive growth in the competitive retail landscape,” says Tony Lunn.

Retail media offers the potential for a higher return on ad spend and enables brands to sell products more quickly than traditional channels. Additionally, it allows brands to reach new, targeted audiences on retail platforms that were previously inaccessible. In 2025, Blue Wheel will offer brands opportunities to expand their reach outside of Amazon and traditional managed channels and onto highly targeted retail media sites like Target, Walmart, Criteo, Instacart, and more.

First-party data will be crucial for brands looking to stand out in a crowded eCommerce market. Retailers utilize this data to enhance targeting capabilities and create more personalized shopping experiences. It helps drive brand engagement and conversions by providing insights into consumer behavior. We will utilize first-party data to create highly personalized and targeted campaigns, as the data is valuable for understanding customer preferences and behaviors.

Retailers are increasingly blurring the lines between online and offline shopping. This includes using digital media to drive in-store sales and vice versa. We expect to see more sophisticated in-store media networks allowing cross-channel campaigns, with personalized offers appearing on digital screens as customers walk through stores.

Retail Media Plans for 2025

The focus will be on ensuring a seamless experience across all online and offline channels. “Our team will look into integrating digital campaigns with in-store experiences,” Tony Lunn states. “For example, using in-store digital screens to display personalized ads based on customers' online behavior. We’ve seen this at Whole Foods through Amazon DSP and expect to see more in 2025.”

We will continue developing our reporting and analytics solutions, including our proprietary software Companion, aiming to consolidate retail media data into one source of truth. Visual dashboards allow us to have a client-facing dashboard with performance metrics across different retail channels. For instance, the One Dashboard tool can be used for Walmart, Criteo, Instacart, and Target. 

Trend #4: Growth of Mobile Commerce

One of the main eCommerce trends is the continuous growth of mobile commerce. In 2024, mobile firmly established itself as the driving force of eCommerce, accounting for 70% of online traffic and setting records for one-click checkouts. This year, brands must prioritize mobile-first email and SMS marketing strategies to deliver seamless, engaging experiences that convert. 

Lisa Wendland, Director of Lifecycle Marketing at Blue Wheel, shares a detailed overview of what to expect this year and how to prepare your mobile commerce strategies. “Mobile-first email campaigns will be essential for capturing attention. Responsive designs, concise copy, and bold, tappable call-to-action buttons ensure emails are easy to interact with on smaller screens. Adding interactive elements like swipeable carousels and embedded videos will enhance engagement further. To drive urgency and action, combining email with SMS triggers for abandoned cart reminders, product drops, or time-sensitive offers can create a powerful synergy that meets consumers where they are—on their phones.”

Mobile Commerce Trends

Leveraging augmented reality (AR) for product previews is another key opportunity for eCommerce brands. Last year, beauty brands pioneered AR tools for virtual consultations and shade matching, significantly improving the shopping experience. In 2025, AR will expand into new categories like apparel, eyewear, and furniture, offering “try-before-you-buy” experiences. This technology reduces purchase uncertainty and boosts conversion rates by helping customers make confident buying decisions.

“Streamlining mobile payments will also play a critical role,” says Lisa Wendland.” Integrating one-click payment options such as Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and Shop Pay directly into email and SMS flows can minimize friction in the checkout process. Personalized checkout links can help recover abandoned carts and capitalize on impulse buys, providing a seamless path to purchase.” 

“You must align messaging on mobile apps, SMS, and emails to create consistency across channels. By leveraging mobile data—like browsing behaviors and past interactions—brands can deliver hyper-personalized campaigns that feel seamless and relevant. Omni-channel consistency will ensure customers experience uniform branding, offers, and messaging at every touchpoint.”

Trend #5: The Role of Brand Protection in Security and Privacy

Protecting customer data and privacy will remain the top priority in eCommerce. Brands need to be prepared to handle customer data securely and protect themselves from counterfeiters, especially with the rise of AI integration in every aspect of the industry. 

Paula Ponce, Brand Protection Manager at Blue Wheel, says: “At Blue Wheel, the Brand Protection team is deeply aligned with the growing emphasis on security in eCommerce. While our primary focus is safeguarding our clients' brands from counterfeiters and unauthorized sellers, these efforts inherently contribute to protecting customer data and privacy.”

How Blue Wheel Protects Brands and Customers

Counterfeit goods often come from unverified sellers who do not comply with privacy or security regulations. By removing unauthorized sellers and rogue listings, we help ensure that customers receive genuine products from reliable sources, reducing the risk of data breaches during transactions.

By implementing Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policies and authorized reseller agreements, we help preserve the integrity of marketplaces. Customers feel more secure sharing their personal information when they encounter consistent pricing and verified sellers.

Using tools like Amazon Brand Registry, we safeguard trademarks and intellectual property while ensuring secure data exchanges between platforms and clients.

To Conclude

In 2025, success will depend on staying ahead of key eCommerce trends and adapting your brand’s strategies. AI's transformative role in creative solutions and retail media, along with the growth of social commerce and a mobile-first approach, presents brands with numerous opportunities to connect with their audiences in impactful ways.

At Blue Wheel, we are dedicated to helping brands navigate these changes and achieve measurable growth. Whether it involves leveraging AI, enhancing omni-channel experiences, or protecting your brand, our team is here to support you. Contact us today to learn more about our diverse eCommerce solutions and how we can help build and support your strategy.