2025: What Changed — and What We Learned This Year

If there’s one way to summarize 2025, it’s this: this was the year TikTok Shop stopped being a playground and started becoming a proving ground.

Throughout the year, we watched a wave of major U.S. brands and experienced operators rush onto the platform. Some entered cautiously, others aggressively, but most came with curiosity and urgency, driven by headlines, case studies, and a growing fear of missing out. They tested, experimented, spent, and learned—often faster than expected—that TikTok Shop is no longer a channel where things simply “turn on.”

2025 wasn’t about discovering TikTok Shop anymore. It was about learning how it actually works.

Big Brands Came In — and Reality Set In Quickly

One of the defining characteristics of 2025 was the influx of established brands coming from Amazon, DTC, and traditional retail backgrounds, all asking the same question: Can TikTok Shop become a meaningful growth channel for us, or is this just another experiment?

They came in expecting momentum to appear fairly quickly, only to realize that TikTok Shop does not reward familiarity with other channels, nor does it automatically transfer success from past platforms.

What worked elsewhere often needed to be rethought, restructured, and rebuilt specifically for this ecosystem, and that learning curve became one of the defining characteristics of the year.

In 2025, I spoke with many legacy and major U.S. brands throughout this process and often walked away surprised by how weak execution actually was—whether it came from internal teams or from long-standing external agency partners who simply weren’t built for this channel. In many cases, the issue wasn’t a lack of budget, talent, or intent, but the absence of a TikTok-native operating model that translated strategy into daily execution.

Random Wins Stopped Being Reliable

Another major shift in 2025 was the realization that TikTok Shop is no longer a place where things randomly start working. As more brands entered the ecosystem and competition intensified, the platform became far more efficient at distinguishing between shops built on real foundations and those operating on luck.

Earlier years allowed for sporadic wins—one creator popping off, one video going viral, or one loosely coordinated seeding push driving short-term GMV. In 2025, those moments became less frequent and far less sustainable. Dabbling without a clear strategy increasingly led to stalled growth.

We saw countless brands test content inconsistently, send products to creators without direction (sometimes seeding 1,000 units only to receive 200 usable videos — yikes!), or run promotions without a cohesive offer structure, only to be confused by volatile or short-lived results. What became clear is that TikTok Shop is no longer forgiving of half-commitment. Without a clear playbook guiding daily execution, even well-funded brands struggled to build momentum that lasted.

Strategy Had to Live Inside Execution

As randomness faded, strategy stopped being something brands could separate from execution. This was especially evident in how affiliate programs evolved throughout the year. Early on, affiliate marketing was treated as a pure numbers game: more creators, more samples, more outreach. Over time, brands learned that affiliate performance depends far more on structure than volume alone.

Creators needed

• better briefs

• clearer incentives

• faster feedback loops

In order to perform consistently, and the brands that invested in those systems saw far more predictable outcomes than those who relied just on sheer outreach volume.

The brands that succeeded were the ones that treated content as an operational system rather than a creative afterthought, building pipelines that allowed them to test multiple hooks, angles, and creators simultaneously while continuously iterating based on performance data.

The Ecosystem Got Competitive — Fast

As more sophisticated sellers entered the ecosystem, the overall environment became noticeably more competitive.

• Creators became more selective about the brands they worked with

• Customers grew more educated as they compared similar products across shops

• Margin for error narrowed significantly

• Ads fatigued faster and budget became harder to scale

Ramifications for poor customer experience and slow product fulfillment showed up faster and more visibly than before, reinforcing the idea that TikTok Shop rewards operational excellence just as much as creative output.

What 2025 Ultimately Taught Us

Perhaps the most important realization of 2025 was this: the real question isn’t whether TikTok Shop works—it’s what TikTok Shop should do for your brand. Too many sellers chased outcomes that worked for someone else without first defining what success should look like within their own business model.

We saw this play out repeatedly:

• High-AOV sellers ($150+) attempting to rely on mass seeding strategies that only make sense for low-priced consumables

• Brands with strong organic content engines deprioritized owned momentum to chase affiliates prematurely

• Bootstrapped brands benchmarking venture-backed sellers and assuming running ads at 1x ROI was a viable scaling strategy

TikTok Shop serves different purposes for different sellers, and the brands that struggled most were often the ones forcing a one-size-fits-all playbook. The strongest performers aligned strategy and execution around their specific goals, constraints, and advantages, embedding that clarity into how they produced content, worked with creators, structured offers, and measured success.

Looking Into 2026

Looking back, 2025 was the year many brands learned what TikTok Shop actually demands—not just in spend or effort, but in focus, structure, and consistency. Brands that treated this year as a serious learning phase, using it to build playbooks and operational muscle, are now entering 2026 with a real advantage.

As we head into the new year, the gap between strategic operators and casual participants will only widen. TikTok Shop is no longer a place where experimentation alone is enough; it’s a channel that rewards clarity, commitment, and disciplined execution. For those who took 2025 seriously, the groundwork has already been laid. For everyone else, the learning curve is still ahead.

Thanks for reading throughout the year. More to come in 2026.