NEW YORK, Jan. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Bluefish, an AI marketing platform serving Fortune 500 companies, has released its 2025 Holiday AI Commerce Report, providing a detailed analysis of how generative AI influenced shopping behaviors and brand visibility during the December holiday season. The report examines AI-native shopping journeys and millions of AI-generated responses across major platforms to identify which content, sources, and narratives shaped consumer recommendations on what and where to buy. Key findings reveal that paid advertising had minimal direct effect on AI-generated answers during the holiday period, corroborating other reports that as much as 95% of AI citations originated from non-paid sources. Instead, AI assistants favored brands with high-quality, well-structured, and consistent organic content, making AI visibility a vital indicator of demand capture during the critical sales season. "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 significant shift in AI narratives from emphasizing "best deals" during Black Friday to focusing on "best gifts" throughout December. As AI assistants transitioned from highlighting doorbusters to curating thoughtful gift recommendations, the influence of "best deals" content on AI suggestions decreased by over 30% approaching Christmas, while "best gifts" guides—particularly "best gifts under 100 dollars"—gained prominence as the holiday progressed. Utilizing Bluefish's proprietary Impact Score and Influence Rank analytics, first introduced in their Black Friday report, the 2025 Holiday AI Commerce Report reveals that a small group of high-impact pages disproportionately drove AI holiday recommendations. Publishers such as Reddit, CNET, RTINGS. com, PCMag, and lifestyle outlets like Who What Wear and Vogue emerged as significant influencers in AI responses.

Bluefish's data show these sources exerted outsized influence beyond their citation counts, shaping how AI ranked and described brands in key gifting categories. Within this framework, certain brands distinguished themselves as AI holiday "winners" by closely aligning owned content, earned media coverage, and AI-prioritized narratives. In the beauty sector, Ulta stood out with consistently reinforced "best gift" messaging across its own platforms and third-party mentions. Luxury brands including Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Ralph Lauren leveraged long-standing cultural relevance and extensive presence in curated gift guides and editorial lists, positioning them as definitive choices for "best luxury gifts. " The report notes that forward-looking marketing teams have already begun redesigning holiday strategies around quality content, tracking AI visibility weekly, and treating AI commerce as a distinct performance channel. Looking ahead to 2026, Bluefish anticipates that formalized direct AI advertising will add complexity to this landscape. To address this, Bluefish is evolving its platform to help brands monitor AI representations, identify truly influential sources, and take systematic actions to enhance outcomes. The full 2025 Holiday AI Commerce Report is available at https://www. bluefishai. com/holiday-report About Bluefish Bluefish is an AI marketing platform for enterprise brands navigating the shift of product discovery and purchasing to AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Meta AI, and Google AI. Serving Fortune 500 companies, Bluefish helps brands gain visibility, understand key sources shaping AI recommendations, and improve how AI represents their products and stories. The company is led by the team behind PromoteIQ (acquired by Microsoft) and LiveRail (acquired by Facebook), and is headquartered in New York City. SOURCE Bluefish AI