October 2025 has been a weird month for anyone selling stuff online. If you've been watching the headlines, you probably think everything is basically about Amazon's "Prime Big Deal Days" or some new AI tool that writes product descriptions. You'd be half right. But the real story is under the surface. It's about how the actual math of selling is changing. Honestly, the "growth at all costs" era didn't just end—it got buried this month.
The Big Amazon October 2025 Reality Check
Amazon kicked off its Prime Big Deal Days (PBDD) in early October, and the numbers are... confusing. On one hand, they pulled in roughly $11 billion in U.S. sales. That sounds huge. It is huge. But when you look at the year-over-year change, it actually dipped by about 0.4%.
Wait, what?
People are buying more items—unit volume was actually up in 8 out of 12 major departments—but they are spending less per item. This is what the pros call "trading down." Instead of the $150 high-end blender, people were grabbing the $40 budget version. Average Selling Prices (ASPs) fell off a cliff in categories like Home Improvement (down 17.1%) and Household Supplies (down 14.6%).
It turns out October 2025 was the month of the "Strategic Stock-up." About 39% of shoppers used the event just to buy basics like laundry detergent and dog food. Grocery sales jumped 14.6%. It wasn't a luxury splurge fest; it was a pantry-loading exercise.
Why Search Volume Matters More Than the Sales Dip
Despite the slight revenue slide, search volume on Amazon was up 10.5% compared to last October. People are looking. They are browsing. They just aren't pulling the trigger on expensive stuff unless it’s a total necessity. If you’re a seller, this is a massive signal: your "pre-event" visibility is now more important than the event itself. Stackline data showed that 65% of people were building their baskets two weeks before the sale even started. If they didn't see you in September, you didn't exist in October.
TikTok Shop Is Actually Becoming a Thing
For a long time, we all sort of rolled our eyes at TikTok Shop. It felt like a chaotic flea market of ring lights and weird kitchen gadgets.
Not anymore.
Ecommerce news October 2025 confirms that TikTok is now a serious heavyweight. They’ve been throwing cash at the problem—offering merchants up to $20,000 in incentives just to hit growth targets this holiday season. They are even covering shipping costs for some retailers.
It’s working.
Social commerce is on track to hit $87 billion in the U.S. this year, and TikTok is grabbing a massive chunk of that. Emarketer reported that TikTok Shop sales reached $15.82 billion in 2025. That is a 108% jump from last year.
The fascinating part? It’s not just Gen Z buying $5 lip gloss. Luxury brands are starting to realize that TikTok’s "Self-Expression Over Status" vibe is where the money is. People aren't buying because a brand is prestigious; they’re buying because a creator they like made the product look fun.
The AI Referral Explosion
If you want to know what really happened with ecommerce news October 2025, look at the traffic logs. Adobe Analytics dropped some data that honestly sounds fake, but it’s very real: traffic to retail sites from Generative AI tools (like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity) increased by nearly 700% year-over-year.
Shoppers aren't just Googling "best running shoes." They are asking AI: "I have flat feet and run five miles a day on gravel, what should I buy?"
When these AI tools link to a store, the shoppers who click through are 31% more likely to convert than people coming from traditional search. They spend 45% more time on the site. They are high-intent. They’ve already done the research with the bot; they’re just coming to your site to hand over their credit card.
The Death of the Random Click
We’re seeing a "Zero-Click Squeeze." Total email click-through rates are down 33%, yet average order values (AOV) rose from $149 to $182.
Basically:
- It is harder to get someone to click.
- If they do click, they are much more likely to buy.
- Automation (like cart abandonment emails) now drives 25% of all email revenue despite being less than 2% of the total volume.
Quality is officially beating quantity. If you're still blasting 10,000 generic emails a week, you're just paying for "Unsubscribe" clicks.
The Temu and Shein "Mafia" Wars
October was also a brutal month in the legal world for cross-border giants. The ongoing legal drama between Temu and Shein hit a weird peak. On September 30, right as October started, a D.C. judge threw out Temu’s antitrust claims against Shein but kept the intellectual property (IP) claims alive.
Temu had basically accused Shein of a "mafia-style" scheme to intimidate suppliers.
While they fight in court, the European Union is sharpening the guillotine. There is a massive push to eliminate the de minimis threshold—that loophole that lets cheap parcels enter without customs duties. By early 2026, those $5 t-shirts from Temu might suddenly cost $12. October was the month the industry realized the "unregulated" party is almost over.
What You Should Actually Do Now
Stop obsessing over total traffic. It's a vanity metric in 2025.
Focus on Search Generative Experience (SGE). If AI bots can't "read" your product data because it’s buried in unoptimized images or messy code, you won't show up in the queries that actually convert.
Invest in Post-Event Retargeting. Since 32% of people browsed the October sales without buying, your "window shoppers" are your biggest revenue opportunity for November. They’ve already seen your product; they’re just waiting for a reason to say yes.
Finally, fix your Automated Flows. If a quarter of your revenue is coming from 1.7% of your emails, why are you spending 90% of your time on the other 98.3%? Double down on the triggers—abandoned carts, browse abandonment, and "back in stock" alerts. That’s where the profit is hiding.
October proved that the "average" shopper is feeling the pinch, but the "intentional" shopper is still spending big. You just have to be the brand they specifically asked the AI for.
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Next Steps:
- Audit your product feed to ensure it is "AI-readable" for tools like Gemini and ChatGPT.
- Shift your ad spend toward retargeting the 32% of "browsers" from the October sales events.
- Review your "low-value" email campaigns and replace them with higher-frequency, behavior-triggered automation.