Holiday 2025 by the numbers: How strategic marketplace operators won in North America
While the headlines trumpet record-breaking sales and AI-driven miracles, a closer look at Mirakl's holiday 2025 performance data reveals something more nuanced — and more significant: the marketplace model isn't just outpacing traditional retail, it's redefining what profitable growth looks like, especially in North America.
The numbers that matter
Mirakl Platform Performance:
Black Friday: $154M GMV (45% YoY growth)
Cyber Monday: $131M GMV (53% YoY growth)
Cyber Weekend Global: $497.8M GMV (40% YoY growth)
Platform uptime: 100% despite peak traffic of 118 orders per second
Infrastructure scale: 4 billion API calls (+25% vs 2024), 50 billion product updates (+22% vs 2024)
Here's the context those numbers need: While Adobe reported 7.1% Cyber Monday growth and Salesforce projected 6% global growth for Cyber Week, Mirakl operators achieved multiples of those figures via marketplace. But more telling than the growth rate is what's happening beneath the surface.
The North America story: more than just growth
Mirakl-powered marketplaces in North America didn't just perform well during Cyber Week — they emerged as a blueprint for strategic marketplace execution.
NORAM Cyber Week Performance:
79% GMV YoY growth
54% order volume growth YoY
16% AOV growth YoY
Top categories for Cyber Weekend (11/28-12/1): Office Products, Electronics, Home & Kitchen
That 79% GMV growth isn't happening in a vacuum. It's occurring in a region where:
Online order volume dropped 1% YoY across the broader market (per Salesforce data)
Average discount rates remained flat compared to 2024 despite inflation and tariff concerns
What this means for you in 2026:
The performance from Mirakl-powered marketplaces across NORAM demonstrates that marketplace is increasingly becoming a growth driver rather than just a supplementary channel. While traditional retailers faced declining order volumes, marketplace operators expanded selection without inventory risk, captured emerging trends as they developed and grew AOV as consumer preferences shifted toward quality.
The strategic direction is becoming clearer: marketplace infrastructure is increasingly part of the competitive landscape, and the operators investing in it are building capabilities that compound over time.
The dropship advantage: NORAM's secret weapon
North America's exceptional performance wasn't just about marketplace — it was about dual-model execution. The region's top three dropship categories mirror its top three overall categories: Office Products, Home & Kitchen and Electronics. That's not coincidence — it's strategy.
Dropship enables operators to test category expansion without capital commitment, respond to demand surges without inventory constraints and maintain margins while offering competitive selection. In a market facing tariff uncertainty, the ability to operate a capital-light model while capturing demand is proving valuable.
What this means for you in 2026:
For retailers evaluating their channel strategy, the data suggests dropship is playing a larger role in high-performing categories than many might expect. The operators achieving the strongest results are building dual-model capabilities — moving fluidly between owned inventory, marketplace and dropship based on product economics.
Profitable growth, not just growth
Everyone's announcing record sales, but Salesforce data shows online order volume down 1% and units per transaction down 2%. So where's the actual growth coming from?
For Mirakl operators, it's coming from three sources: higher AOV through curation (16% in NORAM), capital-efficient expansion (marketplace GMV carries no inventory risk) and dual-model flexibility (optimized by product economics).
What this means for you in 2026:
For executive teams evaluating growth strategies, marketplace offers an interesting proposition: expanding selection and revenue without proportional capital investment or margin pressure. In an environment where tariffs and inflation create margin challenges, the ability to expand selection without inventory risk is worth examining closely.
AI-powered personalization in advertising — analyzing customer behavior, search patterns and product context — is making it possible to improve both top-line growth and customer experience simultaneously, a combination that's increasingly important as boards expect profitable growth, not just growth.
The curation signal: quality over quantity wins
Mirakl operators are winning by being strategically selective, not comprehensively broad. The NORAM top categories — Office Products, Electronics, Home & Kitchen — aren't random: they reflect strategic choices aligned with consumer priorities.
This aligns with a broader shift: 43% of global consumers say they care more about quality than ever before, up from 30% in 2023. Mirakl data confirms this trend, with products like premium postcards and fast charger adapters among top sellers — evidence that consumers are choosing quality and functionality over bargain-hunting.
Retailers like Ulta Beauty have embraced this quality-first approach in their Mirakl-powered marketplace strategy, prioritizing authentic brands and curated selection over catalog bloat. This focus on curation is what drives sustainable marketplace growth.
What this means for you in 2026:
The operators seeing 16% AOV growth in NORAM aren't adding every possible product — they're using data to identify white space and adding products that complement their core assortment strategically. The insight here is less about "more SKUs" and more about "right SKUs, faster."
AI-powered catalog tools like Mirakl's Catalog Transformer are making it possible to onboard new products in under 24 hours rather than months — automatically matching data, filling gaps and optimizing descriptions for discoverability. The operators who can identify and activate emerging categories in the first weeks of a trend see meaningfully different results than those who wait.
The platform performance story no one's talking about
Here's what 100% uptime during Cyber Weekend actually means: 118 orders per second processed without degradation, 4 billion API calls (+25% vs 2024) and 50 billion product updates in real-time (+22% vs 2024).
While everyone's focused on AI traffic growth percentages (Adobe reported 670% AI traffic growth on Cyber Monday), there's a different question worth asking: Can your infrastructure handle the complexity of marketplace operations at scale?
This matters particularly in North America, where three major Mirakl-powered marketplaces launched or expanded in 2025: Best Buy Marketplace (August), Ulta Beauty's UB Marketplace (October) and Lowe's (May).
What this means for you in 2026:
Infrastructure is becoming increasingly important as marketplace complexity grows. AI-powered tools are increasingly handling operational complexity — from automated price anomaly detection to customer care intelligence that reduces resolution times by 90%. The fact that Mirakl maintained 100% uptime while processing 50 billion product updates demonstrates what enterprise-grade infrastructure makes possible during peak periods.
The 2026 playbook: what NORAM performance tells us
1. Curation is becoming a competitive advantage: NORAM's outperformance was driven by strategic selection rather than comprehensive catalogs. The operators succeeding in 2026 are likely to be those using data to identify gaps and fill them systematically.
2. Dropship is playing a strategic role: The fact that NORAM's top three dropship categories mirror its top three overall categories suggests dropship is operating as a primary channel, not a fallback. Operators planning for 2026 may want to evaluate dropship as a first-class channel in their strategy.
3. Infrastructure decisions matter: Best Buy, Ulta and Lowe's chose Mirakl because it could handle operational complexity at scale. For retailers evaluating their 2026 roadmap, infrastructure capability is worth serious consideration.
4. The performance gap is widening: When traditional eCommerce grows 5%-7% (Adobe projects 5.3% for full holiday season, Salesforce reported 6% for Cyber Week globally) and marketplace operators grow 40%-79%, the structural difference becomes harder to ignore.
What this means for you in 2026:
The operators who performed well in holiday 2025 typically started their infrastructure and strategy work well in advance. For retailers considering marketplace expansion for holiday 2026, the timeline to build capability suggests starting sooner rather than later — particularly for organizations that want time to test and optimize before peak season.
Worth considering: Can your current systems handle dual-model operations? How quickly can you onboard new sellers? How does your infrastructure perform under 3x-4x traffic spikes?
Your 2026 reality check
Holiday 2025 demonstrated that marketplace success comes from building capabilities in speed, capital efficiency and profitability rather than simply adding selection. North America's 79% GMV growth, driven by strategic dropship execution and infrastructure that maintained 100% uptime while processing billions of transactions, shows what's possible when marketplace is treated as a strategic priority.
If your holiday 2025 numbers didn't meet expectations while marketplace operators saw anywhere from 40% to 79% growth depending on region — with NORAM being the standout performer — that performance gap isn't going to close on its own. The retailers who dominated this season started building their marketplace infrastructure and AI-powered operations well in advance — catalog transformation capabilities, dual-model fulfillment, automated quality controls.
For retailers planning 2026, the window to build these capabilities before next holiday season is shorter than it appears. The question isn't whether marketplace and intelligent operations will be important — it's whether you'll have the infrastructure in place to compete when it matters most.
Learn how Mirakl's enterprise marketplace platform can help you build for 2026 or explore our AI-powered tools.
