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Cyber Monday broke records with these two interesting trends you need to jump on

Author

Ada at Sellify
December 08, 2025

In partnership with

Happy Monday, 10,000 Shopify rockstars!
Hope you recovered after the BCFM chaos and the strange Shopify glitches over the weekend. As always, here’s your Monday dose of practical ideas that help you grow 1% at a time.

Inside today’s edition:

  • Industry: Cyber Monday broke records and AI quietly shaped shopper behaviour

  • Growth Hack: Grow with affiliates like GOLI

  • Weekly Challenge: Test faster, because the first affiliate video is rarely the winning one

  • Trend:  Peptide Lip Treatments

Let’s get into it.

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Industry: Cyber Monday broke records and AI quietly shaped shopper behaviour

This year’s Cyber Monday closed with a strong $14.25B in online spend in the U.S., according to RetailDive…. a 7% jump from last year. But the most interesting part isn’t just the “how much,” but how shoppers bought.

More customers used Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) to soften the holiday spending pressure. Over $1B of Cyber Monday’s revenue came from BNPL transactions alone. This means that if you’re not offering BNPL options in your store using providers like Klarna, it’s not too late to do so and reach younger buyers who want flexibility over large December orders.

Also, AI-driven retail traffic grew more than 800 percent on Black Friday. More shoppers used chat assistants to compare deals, find alternatives, and choose products. ChatGPT referrals to retail apps rose 28% and while this is still small today, the direction is obvious. Discovery is slowly moving from search bars to AI agents.

For e-commerce sellers, the takeaway is simple: optimize your store today for AI discovery and you still in line for first mover advantage. Here’s a fully researched Notion template guiding you through the process.

Use Plug In AI to automatically help your products rank organically

Growth Hack: Grow with affiliates like GOLI

If you want to win on TikTok Shop, affiliates are the engine. They drive about 80% of total GMV, and brands like GOLI scale by mastering one thing: a clean, repeatable creative system.

GOLI is one of the biggest examples of how far TikTok Shop affiliates can take a brand and their playbook is surprisingly simple.

  1. Pre-launch: They started by testing 3–5 creators to find one winning video formula…the hook, demo, and storyline that reliably converted.

  2. Launch: Once they locked the winning creative, they scaled it to 50–100 creators using clear briefs and tiered commissions to keep top performers motivated.

  3. Scale: GOLI then built a creator community that exploded into thousands of affiliates posting content consistently, creating massive, organic momentum.

Takeaway: You don’t need luck, you need a repeatable creative system. GOLI’s growth shows that when affiliates have a clear blueprint, they can scale your brand faster than ads.

Weekly Challenge: Your first affiliate video is never the perfect one

Here’s this week’s challenge:
Pick one product from your store and test three different video angles with the same creator (or three creators, if you can).

You’re allowed to be wrong twice. All you need is one angle that works.

The biggest mistake founders make is expecting their first affiliate video to be the winning one. Most brands need 5–15 tests before the lightbulb moment. Your challenge is to speed up that moment by testing intentionally, one hypothesis at a time.

Shoppers are adding to cart for the holidays

Peak streaming time continues after Black Friday on Roku, with the weekend after Thanksgiving and the weeks leading up to Christmas seeing record hours of viewing. Roku Ads Manager makes it simple to launch last-minute campaigns targeting viewers who are ready to shop during the holidays. Use first-party audience insights, segment by demographics, and advertise next to the premium ad-supported content your customers are streaming this holiday season.

Read the guide to get your CTV campaign live in time for the holiday rush.

Peptide lip treatments are exploding this season, and search data confirms the craze. The phrase “peptide lip balm” has grown 6,800% in five years. One product in this category currently earns over $2.2M per month on Amazon.

Why they’re hot: peptides signal the lips to produce more collagen… hydrating, repairing, and giving that soft, plump look without fillers. Many formulas now double as tinted lip gloss, which fits perfectly into the “clean girl,” natural-glam aesthetic dominating TikTok.

If you sell beauty, skincare, lifestyle, or accessories, this is an easy trend to tap into. The lip care market is projected to cross $23B, and specialty lip treatments are one of the fastest-rising segments. High margin, small size, strong visual appeal, and repeat purchase potential… everything you want in a product.

Till next Monday,
Ada