Owned Channels Lose Holiday Ground: E-Commerce Use Falls From 69% to 46%

Only 46% of surveyed brands and retailers plan to use their owned e-commerce sites during the 2026 holiday season, down from 69% in 2025. The figure comes from Glossy+ Research's report, The 2026 guide to holiday marketing strategies, based on a survey of 90 brand and retailer professionals plus individual interviews with marketing executives at companies including A-Frame Brands, Mastercard and Ritual.

The retreat from owned channels is striking because those same channels still rank as the No. 1 and No. 2 most used sales channels during the holidays — positions they have held since 2024. Owned brick-and-mortar retail took the top spot; owned e-commerce took second.

How steep is the drop?

The decline spans both physical and digital owned channels:

• Owned e-commerce sites: planned use fell from 69% of respondents in 2025 to 46% for 2026.
• Owned physical stores: planned use fell from 84% to 60% over the same period.

Yet marketers say these channels matter more, not less, during the holidays. Sixty-seven percent of respondents said owned physical stores grow more important during the holiday season, and 49% said the same of owned e-commerce sites.

The takeaway: brands are pulling back from channels they themselves describe as gaining seasonal importance.

Why are brands spending less on owned channels?

Ari Bloom, founder and CEO of brand incubator A-Frame Brands, points to complacency. "Brands take their own channels and especially physical stores for granted," Bloom said. He argued the shift back toward controlled environments masks a harsher retail reality. "The reality is that wholesale channels are dying. Physical and multi-brand retail, except for mass, is going away. Very few department stores are healthy enough to survive this year, and a lot have gone out of business."

Susan Grossman, evp of consumer acquisition and engagement services at Mastercard, reads the data differently. She does not believe marketers are less invested in owned channels; she believes the purchase journey has fragmented.

"Today's holiday shopper might discover a product through a creator, compare options on a retailer's site, read reviews, receive an offer in a banking app, and ultimately purchase somewhere else entirely," Grossman said. "The journey is increasingly fragmented and non-linear. As a result, marketers are investing less in any single channel and more in creating connected experiences across channels."

The practical consequence: budget allocation is moving from single-channel bets toward cross-channel orchestration.

Where does Amazon stand?

Amazon remains the dominant digital marketplace for the 2026 holidays. Thirty-three percent of brands and retailers plan to sell through Amazon, and 38% of marketers said Amazon grows more important to their sales during the holidays. Other digital marketplaces trail: 29% of companies plan to sell through them, and 26% of marketers said those channels grow more important seasonally.

Third-party brand stores and Amazon tied for the No. 3 most used sales channel during the holidays, behind the two owned channels.

Should every brand chase marketplaces?

Laura Brodie, chief growth officer at supplement company Ritual, said the answer depends on purchase frequency. "If you're thinking about low-frequency one-time purchase, the shift toward marketplaces and retail makes a ton of sense because the digital foot traffic is there," Brodie said. "You don't need to pay to drive [consumers] to the destination."

For high-frequency categories, the math changes. "If purchase frequency is high, the story shifts a little bit because the value of retaining that customer in an owned channel and driving the lifetime value can outweigh the cost of customer acquisition," she said. "The cost of acquisition spikes during holidays, so it's really about understanding that trade-off."

Channel strategy, in Brodie's framing, is an acquisition-cost-versus-lifetime-value calculation — and holiday CAC spikes make it sharper.

What about TikTok Shop?

For the first time, Glossy's survey tracked TikTok Shop as a standalone sales channel. It emerged as the most widely planned social commerce option by a wide margin: 21% of respondents said their company plans to use TikTok Shop during the 2026 holiday season, against just 6% planning to use another social commerce platform.

Bloom urged caution. "TikTok Shop is going to be very content creator-heavy and it's harder for brands to do it unless they're really good at working with those content creators," he said. "It's hard for brand stores to do it on their own on TikTok. It's not set up for it, and it's not a platform that natively works well with established brands. Creator brands, on the other hand, are going to be fantastic there."

The takeaway: TikTok Shop rewards creator-driven brands, not legacy storefronts importing their existing playbook.

For the 2026 holiday season, the data to watch is whether the 46% e-commerce figure and 60% store figure translate into actual sales declines on owned channels — or whether Grossman's connected-experiences thesis holds and dispersed spend simply follows fragmented shoppers.