It’s the start of the year and the perfect time to pause, look back, and think about what’s coming next.
We asked 12 previous Ecommerce Braintrust guests to share the biggest changes they saw in the industry last year and what they’re most excited about in the year ahead.
From industry analysts to brand leaders to tech founders, this group represents the people who are in the trenches of ecommerce every day.
To recap 2025 and look forward, we asked each guest two simple questions:
- What’s been the most impactful development in our industry in 2025 and why?
- What’s something in our industry that excites you the most for next year?
Their insights reveal four major themes reshaping the industry. Here’s what you need to know.
1. AI Stole the Show (Again)
💡 82% of our respondents identified AI as a defining force in 2025, compared to just 60% of respondents when asked the same questions at the end of 2024. Not only has AI become the default driver of innovation and predictions, but the conversation has moved far beyond hype and into concrete practicality.
Reshaping Consumer Behavior: From Attention to Intention
AI began flattening the shopping journey in 2025, fundamentally altering how people discover and decide on purchases. Alicia Ponzani of Premier Nutrition captures this shift precisely: "In 2025, AI compressed the shopper journey, shifting it from attention to intention. As consumers increasingly use AI to narrow choices and validate decisions, brands need content that's both compelling for people but also legible for machines."
But Ponzani emphasizes that this doesn't mean brands can abandon traditional marketing: "Brands still need to invest in full funnel media, since AI is influencing multiple points across the decision-making journey. The brands that win are balancing performance and brand building, so they're remembered and recommended as AI plays a larger role in purchase decisions."
Lauren Livak Gilbert from The Digital Shelf Institute offers a more philosophical take on these technological changes, arguing that AI is actually making commerce more human, not less: "All of the technology changes and AI capabilities have actually made shopping more human and enabled brands and teams to be more human."
She continues: "It enables conversational shopping that is more in line with how we talk, think, and make decisions. It can help take away some of the more tactical, repetitive tasks and free up humans to focus on what we do best: judgment, empathy, critical thinking, and making truly strategic decisions for the business."
Ash McMullen from Advantice Health looks ahead to how consumer behavior will continue evolving: "I am excited to see what rises to the top in popularity as agentic commerce and conversational commerce continue to be optimized and adopted by consumers. I predict the evolution of search will become more question-based around the challenge consumers are trying to solve, versus a description of a possible solution, which is what it generally is now."
Chris Perry from Firstmovr takes the conversation deeper, arguing that AI is forcing leaders to confront uncomfortable questions about their own value creation: "AI isn't just changing tools or org charts. It's forcing a personal reckoning for leaders about where and whether they actually create value."
AI Becomes Real for Operators
For Mike Black from Profitero+, the most impactful development was clear: "ChatGPT becoming shoppable—without question. This fundamentally changes how brands should think about winning upper-funnel awareness and conversion. Where success in Google was largely about 'gaming' SEO algorithms, the new battleground is AEO/GEO: serving the agents."
But Black emphasizes that winning in this new environment requires more than optimization: "Winning isn't just about increasing 'share of prompt' or getting more Reddit mentions. It requires brands to re-evaluate their entire operating model—from catalog syndication and fulfillment to pricing and availability—to ensure they can actually convert when an agent recommends them."
He's clear about the organizational complexity this creates: "That's a major shift, because these levers are typically owned by different teams with different incentives. Most brands are still struggling to execute omnichannel digital shelf needs, cross-functionally, at scale; optimizing for AI agents will force new cross-functional ways of working that many aren't prepared for, while still demanding digital shelf excellence as table stakes."
Black even offers a framework for brands navigating this shift: "Before jumping straight into optimization, brands need to step back and answer a few first-principle questions: How big will this be for our category? Which agents matter most—short term vs. long term? (Rufus, ChatGPT, or both?) Can we meaningfully measure success if we get this right? Do we have the data, tools, people, and processes to execute at scale, every day? The brands that start with strategy—not tactics—will be best positioned to win."
AJ Patel of Ubeauty sees this transformation playing out across advertising operations: "AI isn't just a buzzword anymore; it's reshaping how ads are created, targeted, optimized, and measured. AI platforms can autonomously optimize ad performance in real-time, adjusting creatives, copy, bidding, and placement across networks such as Google, Meta, and TikTok without constant oversight. AI is moving beyond simple automation to strategic decision-making, changing the economics of ad creation and performance."
What Excites Leaders About AI in 2026
Looking ahead, experts are energized by AI's potential to deliver on capabilities the industry has discussed for years but never executed at scale.
Mike Black anticipates transformative improvements in speed and precision: "We're just beginning to see what's possible when AI is applied to trend mining, review analysis, innovation, and assortment optimization—identifying winnable demand spaces faster and with greater confidence. At the same time, AI will enable brands to scale content optimization across both SEO and GEO in ways that were previously impossible."
But he adds a reality check based on benchmark data: "Based on Profitero benchmark data, only approximately 10% of brands have achieved widespread adoption of AI-driven processes to accelerate eCommerce performance today. Most are still experimenting. The brands that move beyond dabbling—and truly operationalize AI—will unlock a significant and durable competitive advantage in 2026 and beyond."
Lauren Livak shares this optimism about breaking through longstanding barriers: "AI is finally enabling organizations to do what this industry has talked about for years but could never execute at scale. Personalized PDP content by retailer is now achievable. Organization-wide data can be distilled into real, decision-ready insights. And silos can begin to break down through shared intelligence instead of fragmented ownership. I can't wait to see what becomes possible when organizations are truly AI-enabled and what that unlocks for teams, brands, and the consumer experience."
Kelsey Knight from Slumberkins adds a crucial caveat about execution: "The opportunity in 2026 won't be about who uses AI the most, but who uses it with intention. The brands that win will be the ones that treat AI as a strategic layer aligned to brand, economics, and customer trust, rather than a shortcut. That's where the real disruption, and upside, lives."
2. Profitability Replaced Growth as the Primary Lens
💡 64% of respondents explicitly mentioned profitability, margin pressure, or growth discipline as defining themes of 2025.
The Shift: When Volume-Driven Growth Hit Its Limits
Martin Heubel from Consulterce describes the macroeconomic forces accelerating this transition: "In 2025, tariffs and macroeconomic uncertainty accelerated an already clear shift: profitability became non-negotiable. Amazon has leaned heavily into AI and automation, with fewer people managing accounts and algorithms increasingly determining commercial outcomes. Vendor performance is now assessed systematically, not subjectively. "
But Heubel also highlights a significant advantage emerging from this complexity: "At the same time, Amazon Marketing Cloud has emerged as a decisive advantage, giving brands the most powerful customer-level insight they've ever had."
Scott Ohsman from Quickfire points to a specific inflection point that crystallized this shift: "One of the biggest impacts on our industry this year is the loss of [a 2-day] Prime Day. It will never be the same. Of course, there were success stories, but the vast majority of the largest brands on the US platform did not see the usual ROI."
He explains the broader implications for managing tentpole events on Amazon: "The budget for advertising, along with the discounts, has finally hit the confluence of both saturation and maturity. Off Amazon has become so important; this is also diluting the returns. I think this will be a larger shift in how Prime Day performs going forward."
Kelsey Knight frames this as a forced reconciliation between performance and profitability: "Media costs, retail media complexity, and operational constraints have all collided at once."
She continues with the organizational implications: "On the brand side, there's been a real reckoning: growth at any cost is no longer defensible, but neither is pulling back so hard that you starve demand. The result is that teams are being pushed to mature quickly, tightening incrementality standards, rethinking channel roles, and actually integrating finance, merchandising, and marketing instead of treating them as parallel tracks."
Knight emphasizes how this has elevated cross-functional literacy: "What's changed isn't just tactics, but expectations. CMOs and commercial leaders are being asked to understand cash flow, inventory, and margin tradeoffs at a much deeper level, while still delivering growth. The brands that navigated 2025 well weren't the ones with the flashiest new tools, but the ones that built clarity around what truly drives profitable demand."
What This Means for 2026: Focus Over Scale
Respondents see 2026 as a year when brands win through sharper, more intentional strategies rather than trying to be everywhere at once.
Martin Heubel is excited about how agentic commerce will drive portfolio-level thinking: "AI agents won't necessarily favor today's top sellers; long-tail and alternative assortments may suddenly gain relevance. That will reshape market share and economics. Brands will need holistic profitability strategies, not product-by-product thinking."
Kelsey Knight echoes this focus on intentionality: "What excites me most about 2026 is a renewed opportunity for brands to win through focus and identity, not just scale. As channels fragment further, especially across retail media, marketplaces, and owned ecosystems, I see brands getting sharper about where they actually have the right to win. That's leading to smarter bets: fewer 'must-be-everywhere' strategies and more intentional decisions around community, retention, and brand-led demand creation."
AJ Patel highlights the growing importance of retail media networks in this equation: "RMNs can leverage rich first-party purchase data to reach high-intent shoppers at the point of purchase. For brands, advertising inside the places consumers actually buy is becoming as important as awareness campaigns. This is a structural shift in media buying and ROI measurement."
3. Incrementality Evolved from Buzzword to Business Imperative
💡 55% of respondents discussed measurement and incrementality challenges as central to 2025's evolution. After years of conference presentations and consultant frameworks, incrementality finally became real.
Breaking Down Silos Around Growth Measurement
Meghan Corroon from Clerdata observes a critical organizational shift: "This year, I saw the start of a long-awaited breaking down of organizational silos around incremental brand growth and measurement. I am starting to see more commonly the sales team, retail media leads, brand folks, RGM, and even CFOs actively engaged in incrementality conversations to drive growth together. This will be the differentiator among those who thrive in the next few years in a world of tech disruption and opportunity."
Chris Perry takes this further, arguing that incrementality has fundamentally matured: "We are starting to separate three very different types of incrementality. Defensive incrementality, where brands show up online to avoid losing shoppers. Offensive incrementality where they actively win competitors' shoppers. And designed incrementality where brands intentionally engineer growth around specific outcomes like baskets, trips, reactivation, or loyalty."
He's direct about where most companies stand: "Most companies are still stuck between the first two. The real unlock, and the hardest work, is the third. 2025 was the year leaders started realizing that not all incrementality is equal, even if the dashboards say it is."
Perry also identifies a structural change in how companies measure themselves: "We are finally seeing organizations tie omnichannel goals to both leading and lagging metrics that cut across functions and levels, not just channels. Omnichannel didn't fail in the past because teams didn't believe in it. It failed because no one's bonus depended on it. That started to change in 2025."
Progress on Unified Measurement in 2026
Experts are optimistic about measurement improvements on the horizon, driven by both platform evolution and organizational willingness to change.
Meghan Corroon is energized by the industry's newfound openness to experimentation: "I'm really excited about the industry shift to embrace, test, and be curious about new and better ways of working together around commerce media, but also for trade and brand marketing. Causal incrementality measurement, AI use cases, in-store media, and more. It's a wild and fun time to be a part of this transformation, and I'm most excited to see the industry demand more than the old status quo in measurement and beyond!"
Alicia Ponzani sees concrete platform-level progress: "What excites me most about 2026 is the progress we're starting to make around ROI as retail media continues to mature across retailers. Platforms are moving toward more unified planning and measurement, including Amazon's unified reporting platform that connects performance across its ad ecosystem."
She explains the strategic value this creates: "That creates a real opportunity for brands to plan more holistically, understand incrementality better, and make smarter budget decisions. If done well, it helps marketers move beyond channel-by-channel optimization and invest with more confidence in what's actually driving growth."
Paul Sonneveld from MerchantSpring shares the excitement: "That challenge and opportunity around measurement, effectiveness, and smarter media allocation across ecosystems is what I find most exciting heading into 2026."
4. Amazon's Dominance Faces Real Competition
💡 45% of respondents discussed channel diversification beyond Amazon as a defining development. While Amazon remains critical, its position as the default center of gravity may be shifting.
The Rise of Alternatives and What It Means for Agency Models
Paul Sonneveld from MerchantSpring is particularly excited for the rise of TikTok Shop alongside the increasing sophistication of TikTok ads, and what that means for Amazon brands and agencies.
He provides context on the broader trend: "Many Amazon-first brands and agencies have already started looking beyond Amazon to improve profitability. "
Paul sees TikTok Shop as a beachhead: "It's encouraged traditionally Amazon-loyal brands and agencies to place one foot into a different ecosystem. Once that happens, it becomes much more natural to explore additional retail media and ecommerce channels as well."
He explains why this matters particularly in the US context, where the market has historically been very Amazon-centric, with only limited competition from other marketplaces. "As diversification increases, brands and agencies will need to rethink how they evaluate performance across channels, how they balance awareness versus conversion, and how they optimize media spend to build a truly efficient, cross-channel media mix."
Retail Media as the New Operating System
Chris Perry makes a bold claim about retail media's evolved role: "Retail Media quietly became the operating system for Omnichannel. 2025 was not the year retail media 'grew.' It was the year retail media became the center of gravity for how companies actually operate."
Perry explains the mechanism: "When your biggest growth lever sits at the intersection of assortment, pricing, content, media, and measurement, silos stop working. Retail media didn't just absorb budget this year. It absorbed influence. And that has accelerated omnichannel maturity faster than anything else I've seen."
Digital as Gatekeeper to Physical Retail
Perry identifies another interesting shift in how digital and physical retail relate to each other: "Digital performance is no longer downstream of physical retail. It's upstream. More brands are being asked to prove themselves online first through Retailer.com experiences (if not also D2C, marketplace selling, and/or Amazon.com performance) before earning or expanding in-store presence."
He explains what this means operationally: "Content quality, conversion, ratings and reviews, and velocity are becoming signals of readiness, not just eCommerce KPIs. The digital shelf is no longer a mirror of the physical shelf. It's the audition. That changes how brands think about launches, innovation, and even how they partner with retailers."
DTC's Potential Resurgence Through LLMs
Scott Ohsman sees significant opportunity in direct-to-consumer channels: "One of the things I am most excited about for 2026 in our industry is the rise of D2C in ecommerce. LLMs are going to be a significant traffic boost for D2C, Walmart, and other partners."
Ash McMullen agrees, pointing to specific developments: "ChatGPT in-app shopping and instant check-out purchase updates with Shopify, Walmart, Instacart, and Target. Amazon could finally have a challenger to friction-free purchasing."
The Bottom Line: Discipline Meets Disruption
As we move into 2026, the ecommerce industry stands at a fascinating intersection. AI is transforming both how consumers shop and how brands operate.
Profitability has replaced growth-at-all-costs as the organizing principle. Measurement is maturing beyond channel-specific dashboards. And Amazon's position, while still dominant, faces genuine competition from diversifying channels spurred on by new customer journeys.
The voices in this research represent thousands of hours of frontline experience across brands, agencies, and platforms. Their consensus is clear: the winners in 2026 won't be the brands chasing every trend or trying to be everywhere at once. They'll be the ones that operationalize AI with intention, focus on profitable growth, measure what truly matters, and make strategic bets about where they can genuinely win.
The opportunity is significant. The complexity is real. And the brands that embrace both will define the next era of commerce.
Give It a Listen
We discussed the themes that emerged from this research with Kiri Masters, Industry Analyst and host of The Retail Media Breakfast Club.
Tune in for the full interview on the Ecommerce Braintrust hosted by Julie Spear and Jordan Ripley to get her commentary.