Social Commerce Trends To Watch In 2025

Social commerce has been growing steadily and it’s disrupting many of the current ecommerce channels that have developed long before the rise of social media. This shift has left some brands, influencers, and marketers on the back foot.

As social commerce comes into its own, there are trends that all businesses should be aware of. While there are many positives with social commerce, there are some headwinds building in certain areas.

Some of these headwinds are simple market saturation trends, but others have more to do with consumer behavior and overall commercialization across influencers and social media platforms.

Below, we’ll go over the trends in social commerce for 2025 to help you navigate this disruptive space that’s still evolving and provide new opportunities for those brands that are fast to react.

What is Social Commerce?

Social commerce is the integration of social media platforms with ecommerce into the same user experience. Instead of users learning about a new product on social media and then visiting a separate ecommerce website, they can purchase the item directly on the original social media platform.

The result is an increase in conversions, engagement, and other metrics associated with influencer marketing and ecommerce sales.

Social commerce is an umbrella term that defines the entire space along with all the different techniques, trends, and platforms involved.

One of the most popular examples of social commerce is the TikTok Shop. Influencers on TikTok can directly promote products within the TikTok shop to their audience. When someone purchases a product, the TikTok influencer can receive an affiliate percentage.

Most sellers can offer their products in the TikTok Shop as long as it doesn’t violate any of TikTok’s banned product categories.

However, other social media platforms offer their own social commerce solutions and all of these platforms are undergoing rapid changes and iterations to continue their growth and address the needs of influencers and customers.

Social Commerce Trends By The Numbers

To give you an idea of the current social commerce landscape, we’ve compiled some key statistics to show you where it’s at and where it is predicted to go in the coming year.

Global Market Growth: The entire social commerce market is projected to grow from $492 billion in 2021 to $1.2 trillion by 2025, growing three times faster than traditional ecommerce over that same period. Source

U.S. Revenue Projections: In the United States, social commerce revenues are expected to reach approximately $80 billion by 2025, up from $64.8 billion in 2023. Source

Share of E-commerce Transactions: By 2025, social commerce is anticipated to account for 17% of global ecommerce transactions, which is a substantial shift towards purchasing directly through social platforms instead of independent websites. Source

Consumer Adoption: In 2023, 43% of internet users in the U.S. were classified as “social media shoppers,” this shows the growing trend of consumers making regular purchases on social platforms. Source

Influencer Impact: Nearly half (49%) of consumers make purchasing decisions based on influencer recommendations, showing the significant role influencers play in driving social commerce sales. Source

Live Shopping Engagement: Approximately 75% of U.S. live shoppers express a desire to attend more live shopping events. Retail businesses are starting to notice the popularity of real-time, interactive shopping experiences and how it can help them. Source

Platform Dominance: Facebook leads as the top social commerce platform in the U.S., with an estimated 65.7 million people expected to shop through it, followed by Instagram. Source

Mobile Commerce Influence: Mobile e-commerce sales reached $1.7 trillion in 2023, with projections indicating that two-thirds of all online purchases will occur via mobile devices by 2028, emphasizing the importance of mobile optimization for social commerce. Source

Global User Base: As of April 2024, over five billion people were using social media, representing 62.6% of the global population, providing a vast audience for social commerce initiatives. Source

Projected Market Value: Social commerce is expected to achieve a market value of $1.2 trillion by 2025, enabling businesses to sell products and services directly on social platforms. Source

Social Commerce Is A Natural Extension Of Consumer Behavior Trends

Social media is filled with fads that blow up one day but fizzle out relatively quickly. Social commerce is not one of those fads. It’s a natural extension of how consumers are using social media as a central part of their everyday lives.

Reports indicate that a majority of younger shoppers use social media for product discovery and product research. It’s a natural extension that those young consumers also want to purchase those items directly from the platforms they’re discovering them on.

Social commerce also grew out of trends in Asia and other parts of the world where so-called “super apps” dominate. These super apps combine payment features, social media, and even identity verification so consumers can perform all kinds of actions directly from a single app.

Social commerce in the West is similar and it represents a shift toward centralization of social media along with other functions like shopping and payment processing. The result is less overall friction for the consumer and more options for brands and marketers.

The Most Popular Social Commerce Platforms

Below, we’ll go over the largest social commerce platforms as ranked by usage and total sales amounts. Just remember that social commerce is still relatively new, and things can change drastically if one platform develops a new innovative approach to set itself apart from the competition.

Facebook

Facebook may not get much fanfare these days, but it’s still a behemoth. The demographics have skewed older in recent years, but the platform still boasts the most social commerce buyers.

Part of that lead is due to the Facebook Marketplace, which originally focused on local, second-hand sales. But today, it incorporates paid ads for new products and helps make Facebook the most used social commerce platform.

Besides Facebook Marketplace, there is a feature called Facebook Shops. This is the dedicated social commerce platform for Facebook and it’s open to just about any business that wants a social commerce presence on the site. There are also integrations for popular ecommerce platforms such as Shopify.

One downside of Facebook for influencer marketing is the lack of influencers on the platform. Facebook lags when it comes to creators and while some influencers from other platforms have dedicated Facebook pages, it doesn’t work for all influencers.

This means most businesses on Facebook will need to do their own promotion either through paid ads or by building an audience on the platform through posts or other engagement methods.

Instagram

Instagram (owned by Facebook parent Meta) is next on the list of the biggest social commerce sites. The social commerce feature on Instagram is known as Instagram Shopping and it allows brands to create links to products or storefronts directly in the app.

As of 2024, Instagram and Facebook are requiring merchants to use their dedicated checkout system. Part of this is to try to keep the entire customer journey within the Meta ecosystem, including any customer and demographic data.

Although this has some privacy concerns, it does provide an incredible amount of data for marketers and brands to fine-tune their marketing strategies without the need to aggregate data from different sources.

TikTok

TikTok Shop might be the most well-known social commerce platform due to how often products appear in people’s FYP. However, based on sales figures, it comes in just behind Instagram with approximately 35 million shoppers.

But more importantly, TikTok Shop is growing faster than both Instagram and Facebook commerce offerings. So the platform will likely take the top spot if those trends continue.

Of course, there is some question as to whether TikTok will be banned in the United States. A law signed in April states the company must divest or sell to a U.S. buyer by January 19th, 2025. If that is upheld, it will severely harm TikTok’s continued growth here in the U.S. and other platforms will likely absorb much of their user’s screen time.

Another headwind for TikTok and its parent company ByteDance is they are losing money on TikTok Shop. They have incentivized the program heavily and also had to invest in fulfillment services.

The total losses are around $500 million according to estimates. Tech companies, especially social media platforms, are accustomed to losing money as they grow. But if that growth slows down, it could make a transition to profitability difficult.

Instagram and Facebook have already figured out how to make their platform profitable, which gives them an advantage.

Top Social Commerce Trends For 2025

Continued Focus On UGC

UGC (user-generated content) will continue to be a key component of social commerce. Product reviews and mentions by real users still hold a tremendous amount of weight among social shoppers. This is especially true on short-form platforms such as Instagram or TikTok.

Brands can leverage this trend by creating campaigns that spur and promote UGC. Things like giveaways, challenges, or content are all proven ways to get customers to share product-related videos and spread hashtags.

Influencer Marketing Will Be More Important Than Ever

If you’ve browsed TikTok, you’ve likely noticed the number of creators pushing products from TikTok Shop. Everyone seems to be jumping on board and it’s making it difficult for consumers to know who to trust.

This is where creators and influencer marketing will continue to play a key role in leveraging social commerce in 2025. Consumers want to know who they can turn to for authentic feedback and recommendations.

Brands will need to pay special attention when finding the right influencers in the evolving social commerce space. Relationships that seem inauthentic won’t resonate as the novelty of social commerce starts to wear off.

Consumers will want a more guided path and advice that comes from someone who has built trust with the audience.

Social commerce was once thought to be a threat to influencer marketing and would essentially leapfrog the need for influencer marketing. But in reality, it has grown more crucial as social commerce has saturated social media with marketing messages.

Savvy influencer marketing will be what cuts through that noise and guides consumers on their journey of product discovery and ultimately toward making a purchase.

Implementing AI Customer Service Bots To Further Boost Conversions

AI chatbots are one of the hottest technologies right now. Social commerce uses these in the same way as ecommerce brands by communicating with customers during their entire shopping and checkout process.

Some of these are still in testing on social commerce platforms but they should start to be unveiled in 2025. These chatbots provide detailed communications that can help with cross-sales and upselling based on the customer’s past behavior or shopping habits.

They can also provide product information or answer any questions during the entire shopping experience to ensure the customer never gets stuck or has to leave the platform to find answers.

TikTok Symphony was launched in early 2024 and is a suite of AI tools for both creators and sellers on the TikTok platform. Look for features to be added in 2025 that bring Symphony integration with specific features within TikTok Shop.

Instagram will likely incorporate services like their “Get Paid In Chat feature with an AI bot to automate the process of sending payment links and communicating with potential customers who have questions.

Micro Influencers Will Become More Valuable

With traditional ecommerce, it was mostly a numbers game. Everything was based on conversion rates and you needed a specific reach to get the sales you desired. Part of the reason for that was the friction of traditional ecommerce and how it lowered conversions.

If a customer was exposed to your marketing campaign or other touchpoint, they had to first engage with the ad. Then they had to take some kind of action, such as visiting your website and navigating to the product page. Finally, they had to complete the checkout to complete the conversion.

With social commerce, the journey is much shorter which means your conversions are going to be significantly higher. You don’t need to have the same levels of traffic to get the same level of sales.

The result is that micro influencers and those with smaller, more focused audiences will yield better results.

Depending on the product, there is still a place for macro and mega influencers, but social commerce can really boost the value and ROI when using micro influencers as a part of your campaign.

Live Streaming

Livestreaming or live shopping is not new for 2025, but many large retailers are entering the space along with big budgets to try to win over consumers. This result is that there will be a lot of competition for live shopping experiences. There will also be many newer social shoppers who are unaware of the phenomenon and will be exposed to it for the first time.

Live streaming has been proven in the gaming niche but it’s now coming to retail experiences. The buzz of a live event helps to drive engagement and create a sense of anticipation that other types of content can’t match.

Beyond just live streaming a product launch, live shopping can also be combined with live events, such as trade shows or pop-up stores in popular areas. This can further build excitement and engagement beyond a traditional sponsored video.

The key to these live events is to make sure to build anticipation with a proceeding influencer marketing campaign that teases the live event. This can increase the lead time needed to create the entire campaign, but it results in a far better outcome when done correctly.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) will start to come into its own more in 2025. This technology already exists on TikTok in the form of their Effect House suite of tools to create AR filters. However, more retailers will start adding these into their social commerce strategy to engage consumers even further.

Everything from being able to virtually try on clothes to seeing a piece of furniture in your room, these AR experiences can fuel engagement and drive conversions.

At the moment, creating AR experiences requires development time and the need to have in-house staff or hire an agency to create the experience. However, as more self-service tools become available, smaller brands will be able to craft their own AR experiences without much coding knowledge.

No-code options already exist for many business and marketing applications, and no-code or low-code AR solutions will likely be coming in 2025.

As consumers get exposed to the technology more, they will come to expect it, especially in fashion or other niches where they want to see how something looks before making a purchase decision.

Benefits Of Social Commerce

If you haven’t created a social commerce strategy for your brand yet, there are a few reasons you want to strongly consider it in 2025. While it’s not perfect for every brand, there are many benefits if you’re looking to scale your business in 2025.

Benefit #1: Reach A Larger Audience of Consumers

There are now entire segments of customers who do a majority of their impulse shopping via social commerce platforms. If you’re not in the mix, these customers likely won’t engage with your content, especially if it requires them to visit a website or perform another off-platform action.

When you create a social commerce presence, you immediately get access to these consumers who are proven to spend and enjoy the process of product discovery. They’re open to new products and experiences and will generally convert higher than other ecommerce demographics.

Benefit #2: Reach Younger Audiences

If your core demographic is in the 18-34 cohort, you should strongly consider a social commerce presence on the platform that best matches the rest of your core demographics.

For most younger shoppers, their entire customer journey takes place on social media. If your brand is not represented, you likely won’t be able to effectively reach these customers.

Social commerce allows you to spend fewer resources to gain access to these consumers and also enjoy higher conversion rates in the process.

Benefit #3: Remove Friction From Your Ecommerce Experience

We all spend countless hours (and money) optimizing our ecommerce channels to maximize conversions. Whether it’s A/B testing landing pages or constantly tweaking shopping cart options to make it as streamlined as possible.

But even with the most optimization, customers still need to navigate your website for the first time, which can be cumbersome and leads to abandoned shopping carts. That’s lost revenue and lower conversions.

Social commerce removes much of that friction and allows consumers to stay on the platforms they love and trust. Not only can your conversion improve, but cross-sales and upsells are also easier as customers feel more trust in purchasing through their favorite app.

Benefit #4: Easier Analytics

In today’s world, data is everything, especially in marketing and ecommerce. However, aggregating all the data that’s available today can be overwhelming. Combining data from paid advertising platforms, payment solutions, social media, and other places is difficult and prone to mistakes.

With social commerce, your customers are already on the platform and they complete the entire process there. That means all of the analytics are in one place for those customers.

Not only that, but most platforms like Meta or TikTok offer robust internal targeting analytics so you can pinpoint exactly what metric you need to study or optimize.

Having everything under one roof is one of the benefits of social commerce and it makes optimization faster and easier.

Benefit #5 Leverage Your Social Proof

Since social commerce is integrated with influencers and the social platform, your brand’s social proof is already tied into the process. For established brands, this gives you a head start.

For newer brands, it’s a quick way to build social proof that can immediately give you credibility and authority when entering a new market.

Potential Headwinds For Social Commerce

So far, we’ve been pretty glowing on the prospects of social commerce. That’s for good reason as virtually all of the trends point in that direction. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few headwinds that can pose as stumbling blocks moving forward.

In this section, we’ll cover some of the growing pains the social commerce industry may face in 2025 and beyond.

Overall Economic Conditions For Younger Consumers

While much of the global inflationary environment has slowed, the higher cost of living still persists for many. No other group was hit harder than younger shoppers who are still in the nascent period of their earning years.

In a study by Bank of America, 73% of Gen Z shoppers said the current economy was making it difficult to save money. 56% stated that the economy was impacting their buying behavior and putting stress on their finances.

Since social commerce growth is fueled by young shoppers, any financial hit to this demographic can hamper the industry’s growth.

There is still economic uncertainty for 2025, so this is poised to be one of the biggest question marks for social commerce growth in the short term.

The Future of TikTok

While TikTok isn’t the largest social commerce platform just yet, it’s the fastest-growing platform. It’s also leading the charge with technology innovations such as free AI tools for merchants.

However, the future of TikTok in the United States is in doubt. An order signed earlier this year states that TikTok must sell or divest to an American company by January 19th, 2025. We covered this topic in our Influencer Trends of 2025 blog post.

TikTok is fighting these actions in court, but they recently had a hearing go against them and as it stands now, the original order still stands.

Some type of last-minute deal will likely be reached as we get closer to January 19th. Since the ban has geopolitical implications, it’s likely being used as a bargaining chip as part of wider negotiations.

Even if the ban goes through, it won’t impact the future of social commerce, but it will upset the main players in the short term. Other social media platforms will absorb the users and creators who leave TikTok. Those other platforms will also have a larger share of the overall market.

In fact, Meta will mostly own the entire social commerce space through Facebook and Instagram. That could bring about its own scrutiny in the United States over anti-trust issues.

Overall, there is uncertainty in the social commerce space and due to there being so many moving parts, it’s impossible to say how it all plays out before the January 19th comes to pass or the order is rescinded or otherwise nullified.

Consumer Fatigue & Saturation

Another possible headwind is consumer fatigue with the over-commercialization of the influencer space in general. While this is hard to measure, social commerce growth has slowed despite still being very strong.

The slowdown is likely a mix of two factors. Firstly, extreme growth as we’ve seen with TikTok Shop is only sustainable for a specific period of time. Eventually, it does flatten out to a more conservative figure.

But there’s also the issue of saturation as more and more influencers of all sizes push products to maximize their own monetization efforts. This can erode trust in the ecosystem and create problems for legitimate influencers and brands.

The antidote to this problem is for brands to focus on finding influencers that offer true value. Both in their content and in their relationship with an audience. 

Secondly, being agile and always striving to be best in class within your niche or industry will insulate your brand from this type of issue. Saturation and consumer fatigue generally impact the lower-tier brands and players first. It almost acts like a business culling, where only the strongest brands remain.

By remaining agile and focusing on quality, you can position your brand to withstand a slowdown as a result of consumer fatigue or over-saturation.

Understanding The Future Of Influencer Marketing & Social Commerce

As we enter 2025, the digital marketing environment is changing drastically. New technology is forcing brands to be more agile and new opportunities are providing avenues for growth that never existed a few years prior.

However, each of these changes requires agility and the right partnerships to take full advantage. 

Social commerce is one area where brands want to pay close attention. There will be continued growth but also drastic changes as new offerings emerge and the key players shift.

Savvy brands will remain flexible and open to these changes so they can pivot quickly and always be a first mover in 2025 and beyond.