AI Agility Emerged as 2025’s True Competitive Advantage
Triple Whale, the agent-powered intelligence platform used by more than 50,000 ecommerce and retail brands, released its 2025 Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) Breakdown Report, showing record platform engagement as brands leaned on AI tools to protect margins and drive efficiency during a turbulent holiday shopping season.
Triple Whale’s data illustrates how brands had to do more with less this year, adapting to a retail landscape strained by rising ad costs, inflationary pressure, and higher consumer expectations. Facing slower growth and higher acquisition costs, brands turned to AI-powered insights to make faster, smarter decisions in real time.
“This was our biggest BFCM ever, and it underscored just how essential Triple Whale has become for operators,” said AJ Orbach, founder and CEO of Triple Whale. “Brands needed unprecedented efficiency this year, and they relied on Triple Whale and Moby as real-time strategic advisors, not just data tools. AI is no longer experimental, it’s how brands protect margins and compete.”
Beyond record AI adoption, the report highlights several defining ecommerce trends that shaped the 2025 season:
- Advertising performance on Meta and Google shifted, pushing brands toward emerging channels like TikTok and AppLovin.
- Retention surged as established brands generated the majority of their revenue from returning customers, while smaller brands leveraged the weekend for aggressive acquisition.
- Shoppers began buying earlier than ever, and apparel and health & beauty emerged as the clear category winners.
Together, the findings point to a new era where AI-assisted agility and data-driven strategy define competitive advantage.
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Surge in AI-Driven Marketing Adoption Drives Triple Whale’s Record BFCM
Across Triple Whale’s ecosystem, brands generated $2.88B in revenue over BFCM, representing 19.7% of all Shopify merchant sales. Customers spent $606M on ads through Triple Whale and brands placed 26 million orders, driving $1.4B in new-customer revenue.
Triple Whale’s platform usage also reached new highs, underscoring how deeply embedded AI has become in its customers’ ecommerce decision-making. The company’s conversational AI assistant, Moby, and its suite of AI Agents handled nearly 25,000 real-time questions across five languages, from identifying efficient campaigns to rebalancing spend. The volume of action-oriented queries like “Which campaigns or channels should I scale down specifically, and by how much?” shows that brands increasingly trust AI as a strategic partner capable of supporting campaign management, forecasting, and creative optimization.
A Tougher Landscape: Inflation, Consumer Anxiety, Higher Ad Costs
BFCM 2025 unfolded amid sustained inflation, higher prices from tariffs and supply costs, and weakening consumer confidence as household budgets tightened.
Ad spend rose sharply, accompanied by varied performance shifts across Meta and Google:
- Meta ROAS was nearly flat at 2.26 (+3.18%), while CPMs rose +7.6% YoY to $22.26.
- Google ROAS fell –21.09% to 3.62, with CPAs climbing +34.18% to $26.31.
Brands spent more to reach increasingly cautious consumers, underscoring that brute-force spending no longer guarantees results. As performance on the largest platforms stagnated, brands began to experiment with emerging channels that offered better growth efficiency and cultural reach.
The Ad Duopoly Shows Strain — Diversification Accelerates
Although Meta and Google still captured the lion’s share of budgets (67.6% and 22.65%, respectively), their collective grip loosened slightly. Emerging platforms like TikTok and AppLovin gained traction:
- TikTok ROAS improved +28.42% YoY to 2.26, with CPMs 27.5% lower than last year.
- AppLovin grew +36.24% in share of ad spend as brands explored new performance channels.
Even small percentage shifts matter at scale, signaling that brands are actively diversifying toward channels offering both cost efficiency and cultural relevance. The trend points to a new era of media mix strategy, where brands prioritize flexibility over familiarity.
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Retention Becomes the New Growth Engine
As advertising costs rose, brands placed a focus on customer retention and lifetime value. Triple Whale’s data revealed the larger the brand, the greater its reliance on returning customers. Smaller brands (under $1M in revenue) still relied heavily on customer acquisition, with about two-thirds of their BFCM revenue coming from first-time buyers. Mid-sized brands struck a more balanced mix, while mature brands earning over $10 million flipped the equation, generating the majority of their BFCM revenue from repeat customers.
Top-performing operators used AI to predict repurchase likelihood, trigger lifecycle marketing campaigns across email and SMS, and personalize offers that kept customers engaged well beyond the sales weekend. This shift underscores a broader trend in ecommerce: as acquisition becomes more expensive, the strongest brands are transforming BFCM from a one-time revenue spike into a long-term relationship engine.
The Early Start to the Season
The traditional BFCM window expanded again this year. Brands generated $1.77 billion in pre-BFCM revenue from 16.6 million orders, supported by $396.6 million in ad spend, roughly 65% of the weekend total.
Early-access sales and extended promotions helped capture demand sooner, but also compressed margins and diluted the urgency of Black Friday itself. The best-performing brands were those able to sustain efficiency across the full promotional window. The lines between pre-holiday and cyber week continue to blur, making year-round optimization a requirement rather than a strategy.
Industry Leaders: Apparel and Health & Beauty
Apparel and Health & Beauty dominated BFCM, driving $1.7B and nearly 60% of all revenue across Triple Whale brands. Apparel led with $1.07B, fueled by high average order values (~$88), strong 3.1x return on ad spend (ROAS), and consumer demand for limited drops, bundles, and promotional urgency. Health & Beauty brands followed closely with $680M in revenue and 27% of ad spend, with ~$65 AOV and a solid 2.1x ROAS despite rising competition and acquisition costs.
The category mix reveals how consumers approached discretionary spending: Apparel thrived on novelty and gifting, while Health & Beauty benefited from loyalty and replenishment. Together, they highlight that even in a cautious climate, shoppers rewarded brands that paired clear value and trusted products with strong creative and agile, data-driven marketing.