What changed
Planned holiday use of owned ecommerce sites fell to 46% from 69%; owned stores 60% from 84%; Amazon 33%, TikTok Shop 21%
When
Survey published by Glossy on October 26 and Modern Retail on November 5, 2026, covering the 2026 holiday season
Who it affects
90 brand and retailer professionals surveyed by Modern Retail+ and Glossy+ Research
What to do
Sort SKUs by purchase frequency and holiday CAC before splitting Q4 budget between your site and marketplaces

Key takeaways

  • Only 46% of brands plan to sell through their own website this holiday season, down from 69% in 2025 (Modern Retail+ and Glossy+ Research, 90 respondents).
  • Amazon is the top marketplace at 33%, and TikTok Shop leads social commerce at 21% versus 6% for all others.
  • Put one-time gift SKUs where search traffic already is, and keep paid site spend for repeat products whose lifetime profit covers holiday CAC.

Brands planning to use each channel for the holidays, 2026 vs 2025

  • Owned stores 202584%
  • Owned stores 202660%
  • Owned site 202569%
  • Owned site 202646%
  • Amazon 202633%
  • Other marketplaces 202629%
  • TikTok Shop 202621%
Source: Modern Retail+ and Glossy+ Research, 2026 (90 respondents)

What the survey found

The numbers come from a Modern Retail+ Research report, The 2026 guide to holiday marketing strategies, which Glossy ran first on October 26 and Modern Retail ran on November 5. It is based on a survey of 90 brand and retailer professionals plus interviews with executives at A-Frame Brands, Mastercard and Ritual.

Owned channels are still the two most used holiday channels, as they have been since 2024. Third-party brand stores and Amazon tie for third. But the share of brands planning to use each owned channel fell sharply, even though most marketers still say those channels matter more at the holidays: 67% say owned stores grow in importance and 49% say the same of owned ecommerce.

  • Owned ecommerce site: 46% plan to use it for the 2026 holidays, down from 69% in 2025.
  • Owned physical stores: 60%, down from 84%.
  • Amazon: 33% plan to sell there, and 38% say Amazon grows more important at the holidays.
  • Other digital marketplaces: 29% plan to use them; 26% say they grow more important.
  • TikTok Shop, tracked on its own for the first time: 21%, against 6% for any other social commerce platform.

Why brands are stepping back from their own sites

The executives interviewed gave different reasons. A-Frame Brands founder Ari Bloom said brands tend to take owned channels for granted and feel less need to spend on them. Mastercard's Susan Grossman argued the shopper path has broken apart: people discover on a creator's video, compare on a retailer site and buy somewhere else, so marketers spread money across channels instead of backing one.

Salesforce data published in July points the same way. It found engagement on brand-owned properties fell 7% year over year, while global digital traffic grew 18% in Q2 2026 but orders rose just 1%, with cart abandonment at 82%. Salesforce also predicts 20% of 2026 holiday ecommerce traffic will come from AI chat agents. In short, paying to pull visitors to your own site is buying more clicks that do not convert. Our Shopify ecommerce news channel tracks the same shift.

What the headline misses

The survey asks which channels brands plan to use, not how much they will spend or sell there. A brand that keeps its site live but stops paying for holiday traffic may have answered no. And with 90 respondents, a few answers move the percentages a lot, so treat 69% to 46% as a strong signal of direction, not a precise market share.

The most useful line came from Ritual's chief growth officer, Laura Brodie: the right channel depends almost entirely on purchase frequency. One-time or low-frequency products should go where shoppers already search, because you do not pay to bring them there. High-frequency products can justify paying holiday acquisition costs on your own site, because the repeat orders pay it back.

So what: the money math

Holiday acquisition costs rise just as conversion gets harder, so the question for each product is simple: does one customer's lifetime contribution cover what it costs to win them on your own site? If not, the marketplace's ready-made traffic is the cheaper route, even after fees.

Worked example, illustrative numbers: a $40 product with $24 of gross profit after product cost. On your own site, say holiday paid social costs $35 to win a new buyer. A one-time gift product earns $24 and loses $11 on that customer. A refill product bought four times a year earns about $96 in the first year and clears the $35 easily. On Amazon, the same $40 sale might carry about $6 referral fee, $5 FBA fee and $8 of ads at a 20% ACoS, leaving about $5 a unit with no acquisition bill. The gift product belongs on the marketplace; the refill product earns more if you keep the customer. For the full trade-off, see our Shopify vs Amazon FBA comparison.

What sellers should do

You have about three weeks before Black Friday on November 27. Use them to put each SKU in the right channel:

  • Finance lead: tag every SKU as one-time or repeat using last year's repeat purchase rate. Metric: share of revenue from repeat customers by SKU.
  • Growth lead: compute holiday CAC on your site from last November's paid social and search spend divided by new customers. Metric: CAC versus first-year gross profit per customer.
  • Marketplace manager: shift gift and one-time SKUs' holiday budget to Amazon Sponsored Products in Campaign Manager, with targets set from margin after fees. Metric: ACoS at or below break-even. Our Amazon Black Friday 2026 guide has the dates.
  • DTC lead: keep site spend for refill and subscription products, and lead with a subscribe offer. Metric: subscription sign-ups and 60-day repeat rate.
  • Social lead: if you test TikTok Shop, work through creators rather than brand posts, as Bloom advised. Metric: GMV per creator. See our TikTok Shop BFCM 2026 dates.
  • Owner: check stock before moving budget, because an out-of-stock marketplace listing wastes ads. Metric: days of cover through December 31.

Put each SKU in the right holiday channel

  • Tag SKUs one-time or repeat
  • Work out last November's site CAC
  • Compare CAC with first-year gross profit
  • Move gift SKUs to Amazon ads at break-even ACoS
  • Keep site spend for refill and subscription SKUs
  • Check stock cover through December 31

When this does not apply

Brands with strong email and SMS lists may get holiday sales on their own site at little paid cost, so the CAC math above flatters marketplaces. Brands in categories Amazon restricts or gates, or with prices well above the marketplace median, may not win there at all. And brands whose margin cannot absorb about 15% referral plus fulfillment and ad costs should fix pricing before shifting channels.

Where PPC Spider helps

PPC Spider runs Amazon, Walmart, TikTok Shop and Shopify growth for brands, and SpiderOS sets each product's target ACoS from its margin after fees, so channel decisions start from profit. Our Shopify DTC agency team handles the owned site, and a free Amazon audit shows which of your SKUs can earn on Amazon this holiday.

Sources

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