eCommerce Vertical in 2025: Anything New?
eCommerce is still shining – and there is plenty of proof for that.
For example, Amazon Associates became the leading affiliate program in 2024 – with almost a million affiliates actively using it. eCommerce campaigns that our partners create at PropellerAds generate over 300 million impressions daily, and this number increases from year to year.
And, finally, just a simple human logic – people will always purchase goods, and be interested in various shops and marketplaces. So, how to make these people convert exactly on your offers – and get a share of the multi-billion and evergreen vertical?
What is eCommerce Vertical About?
The term is pretty wide and embraces plenty of offer types and marketing strategies. But, in all cases, media buyers, webmasters, and marketers work with online retailers to drive traffic to their websites and apps.
Note: In 2025, these online retailers are not just about traditional shopping for goods: new brands like Trip.com and Traveloka (flights and hotel aggregators) are showing significant growth, too.
Here are some options for how you can do it:
- Work with CPA offers from brands that pay for particular user actions: signing up at the site, loading a shopping app, purchasing particular goods, etc.
- Opt for RevShare and earn commissions from users’ purchases at online retailers. Here, the top popular option is to promote particular goods through your own channels. Some create their own shops with warehouses, the others choose a dropshipping strategy. We described this in detail in this article:
Once you are ready with your basic strategy, the next question is which retailer to work with.
Which eCommerce Offers To Run?
The number of offers is huge: if you check out CPA networks, you’ll see all kinds of goods from sneakers to drones, at various marketplaces.
However, it’s not the best idea to promote what YOU like – so we gathered the top profitable affiliate programs bringing the best results for PropellerAds partners. Here they are, with the top GEOs to target for each.
As you see, most of them are huge Asian marketplaces:
| eCommerce offer | GEOs |
| Temu | TR, SA, MX, CO, NG, US, CL, AE, KR |
| Shein | Europe (ES, IT, FR, DE); PH, US |
| Shopee | VN, ID, TH, MY, PH, SG |
| Lazada | ID, PH, TH, MY, SG, VN |
| AliExpress | MX, ES, FR, IL, IT, CL |
| Traveloka | ID |
| Trip.com | TH, HK, MY, KR, SG, TW, ID |
How to Run eCommerce Campaigns?
It’s hard to say which strategy is the best one, as it all depends on what, when, and how you run. But there are obviously some patterns to notice and use for your campaigns.
To find these patterns, we asked media buyers we work with to share some case studies and show us what exactly they do.
Strategy Example 1: Basic approach
Here are some tips from an experienced buyer who has run successful eCommerce campaigns at PropellerAds for a long time and knows the approaches for most offers and brands in the vertical.
- Find the top profitable GEOs. At the moment, the highest performing ones are Southeast Asia and Europe.
- Then, consider audience segmentation: each campaign must target a single GEO and particular device types: mobile or desktop.
- Mind the peak user activity in the chosen time zones, and set your campaigns accordingly. For example, if you know that your targeted audience is the most active from 9 AM until 6 PM, set this timeframe at the PropellerAds self-service platform. Here is an example of user behavior during weekdays depending on the time of the day:
| Time Period | Shopping Behavior |
| Morning Commute (7 AM – 9 AM) | Many people browse and shop on their mobile devices while commuting to work. In most cases, this time is about quick purchases: daily deals or last-minute items. |
| Lunch Break (12 PM – 2 PM) | Another peak of mobile shopping is usually a lunch break. |
| Evening Commute (5 PM – 7 PM) | Another mobile traffic spike usually happens when people commute back home. |
| Evening (8 PM – 10 PM) | This period might become the biggest peak, and this is a perfect time for more expensive and more conscious shopping: people have time to thoroughly choose and consider their purchases. |
| Late Night (10 PM – 12 AM) | Many younger people tend to stay up late, and this can also become a reason for shopping peak. |
Strategy example 2: How to run an eCommerce app offer
This media buyer was driving traffic to an eCommerce app and needed as many installs as possible. So, his goal was to get the lowest possible Cost-Per-Install and boost conversions.
Here is what he suggests:
- Set clear goals for your campaigns: for example, 1,000 conversions per day, and CPI of $1.
- Begin testing formats to see what works best. Everything can work out, from the good old Push Notifications to the brand-new Survey Exit, Social Traffic, and Telegram Mini-App Ads. While the familiar formats are about established workflows and stability, the new ones will give a chance to get the freshest audiences and not yet overheated auctions.
- After 2 weeks of monitoring campaigns, you will see which combo of pre-landers and creatives works best and optimize your campaign accordingly.
- Then, scale with Survey Exit – the format that brings a narrower but more high-quality audience of extremely engaged users.
Here is the case study with the real figures for promoting the Shopee App:
What’s New in eCommerce in 2025?
The truth is that eCommerce is still profitable, but this also means it has a huge competition.
PropellerAds traffic acquisition manager: Nowadays, eCommerce competition is on the rise. High profits in this vertical require exceptional performance, and many converting GEOs are almost dead today and don’t bring the same ROI as before.
Besides, there are 2 more important trends.
Increased Taxes
There have been some changes in US and European laws. Look what happened:
- In the US: New rules have removed a tax break for cheap imports from Shein and Temu. It means these products now have extra fees, making them more expensive. To handle this, both brands are expanding their U.S. operations – and this might mean higher competition in the market.
- In Europe: The EU is increasing customs checks to ensure products meet regulations. Right now, items that cost less than €150 don’t have to pay certain taxes when they come into the EU. However, the new rules might get rid of this break, so even cheaper goods will require a tax, which could make them more expensive. This, in turn, requires a more customized approach towards customers: in simple words, users must stay inspired enough to pay more.
Customer Behavior Changes
Another trend is related to shopping behavior. Today, about 30% of goods purchased online are returned back to a seller. Why so? Largely because of the fashion influencers and bloggers who purchase goods only for filming a TikTok or YouTube video. For example, the latest trend is about bloggers asking their viewers ‘Keep or return?’ about their purchases, and actually returning a great deal of their order after collecting feedback.
Besides, bloggers and photographers tend to purchase clothes to create content. After they film a video or make a photoshoot, they turn these items back – using retailers as a free rental service.
Source: TikTok
This made many retailers charge return or cancellation fees, which can make the marketing efforts a little more complicated.
How to Spice Up Your eCommerce Campaigns in 2025?
The good old methods still work – but we are here for the trends, right? We asked our partners to share their life hacks on how to stand out in the hugely competitive market and keep high eCommerce profits.
New Traffic Sources and Channels
Banner ads, Push, Interstitials, social networks, and other traditional traffic sources still work, and work nicely as you can see from our case studies above. But what’s really new and trending can give your campaigns a boost right now?
Pinterest is not just a source of ‘inspirational pics’ for mood boards and your phone screensavers. It’s a big social network already used by plenty of merchants and affiliate marketers.
The basic strategy looks like the following:
- You post an attractive picture or video – it’s called a pin – to your account.
- This picture or video has a product you want to promote on it and links to a store where a user can purchase it. That’s it!
As you see in this example, this link can come as a product catalog available in the special Pinterest Business section. However, it’s not necessary, and some just post a single link without any fuss:
As a visual search engine full of aesthetic images that inspire to buy like crazy, Pinterest has great potential for eCommerce offers. And, what is even more important, it’s extremely popular in the USA, which implies very expensive traffic, and, as we already said, high competition among media buyers.
Telegram
Telegram has already proven to be a big source of high-quality traffic, and, in 2025, you can safely treat it as a reliable advertising platform. And, the best part: it gives you plenty of ways to promote your offers.
We have written about them much recently, so let’s highlight the basics:
- You can purchase ad placements at various channels. For example, some marketers pick the top popular news channels for a bigger reach and seed their posts like this:
- Alternatively, eCommerce affiliates create their own channels. Yes, it takes some time and budget to gain subscribers, but in the end, it pays off. Here is how a popular channel can promote eCommerce offers with no huge efforts to produce engaging content:
- You can also run a campaign via Telegram Ads, an official advertising platform for Telegram. It allows you to automatically post short ad creatives in channels. You can pick these channels yourself or just set targeting options: user interests, GEO, or channel topics. As a result, your creatives will appear at the end of feeds of channels, looking like this:
- Finally, there’s the Telegram Mini-Apps format at PropellerAds. It allows you to show ads at mini-apps, which are usually games where users spend plenty of time. And, a spoiler: it’s usually cheaper and easier than promoting your own channel or running official TG Ads campaigns. You can learn more at this post:
New Products and Offers to Promote
We showed you the best-performing marketplaces. These marketplaces sell thousands of goods—which ones will seem the most attractive to audiences and bring conversions? Of course, it’s a question of testing.
As Serge Abramov, media buyer puts it, you shouldn’t stop at just a couple of products to test: experienced marketers try out 10 or even 20 goods to see what attracts users best.
Another partner of ours, a big media buying team, tests out approximately 50 items every season to check what will convert best in the next couple of months – so it’s about hard work, not just intuition or your personal taste.
We decided to give you a helping hand and narrow down your search a bit. So, here are the top trending categories of products that might become your golden mine in 2025.
Eco-products
Yes, many people go eco today – or at least try to do so, and the ads of so-called sustainable products trigger them a lot. BusinessDasher says that people look for eco-sustainable products much more than before – the search number grew by 71%. So, isn’t it a nice reason to include some specific products in your tests?
Some examples of these products, according to CPA networks and sales statistics, are:
- Eco diapers for babies
- Eco home cleaning essentials
- Sustainable furniture
- Vegan cosmetics
- Cosmetics with dissolvable packaging
Smart Home devices
Alexa and Google Assistant are not the latest trends – but growing ones! Statista says the number of smart home appliance owners will grow at least 3 times during the next 5 years – worldwide!
So why not try to promote these ones:
- Smart speakers
- Smart security cameras
- Smart lighting systems
- Kitchen Appliances
Guilty-pleasure goods
This sort of goods is a trend among Gen Z – young people born in 1997 – 2012. They are said to care much about their comfort and tend to simplify everyday life and daily routine as much as possible. It means Gen Z is easily triggered when you offer something cute, cozy, and has some practical purpose at the same time.
Intrigued? Here are some examples:
- Sleep-aid electronic devices with micro-current
- Face beauty pillows
- Electronic rings for remote smartphone scrolling
- Smart bedside tables with wireless chargers
New Approach to Creatives
Once you find goods that will most likely attract users, you’ll need to demonstrate them in a favorable way. Is a photo and a quick description with a discount amount enough? Probably so – in some cases – but we are here for the novel trendy approaches that can boost conversions, right?
Here they are.
Realness Movement
The basic eCommerce creative must have a product as the main element. To make it more visible, it’s better to use a neutral background without extra details. Don’t distract the user’s attention or make them guess what you are trying to sell: a dish sponge or a silicone tray:
And, the latest trend is to show the real – not perfectly polished and retouched – product. It can even look like a selfie:
AI Descriptions
Whether you need a landing page, a set of product cards for your online store, or whatever else – you will require some written content. When ChatGPT, Jasper, and other AI bots came into the scene, many marketers breathed a sigh of relief – but for a short while, before they discovered Google could detect and ban AI content.
However, it doesn’t mean you can’t use it at all. Here is what our partner, an SEO specialist, shared with us:
Don’t worry about AI content: it’s okay to create product descriptions or landing pages with chatbots. Google might ban such content if it lacks originality, relevance, and authenticity. And, it might also repel users, too. So, it’s essential to add a human touch to each article, description, or landing page – something to personalize it. I personally use Jasper to create drafts, then I rewrite them using Paraphraser – it makes content more readable and sounds less like AI.
That’s basically a complete guide, right? The only thing we’d add is that we don’t recommend you to use AI for visual creatives. Well, you really risk to get something like this – misleading as hell:
AR Visuals
AR-displayed products allow users to feel more confident in what they are going to purchase online. According to Vertebrae, 94% of customers buy more willingly after they interact with a product in AR – so if your campaign is based on some particular goods promo, this can be a nice conversion boost.
Fear Of Missing Out
That’s not actually the latest trend; it’s a classic in marketing – and it hasn’t faded out one bit. Fear of Missing Out, or simply FOMO, is the trigger for a user that you create by saying the most profitable offer will disappear VERY soon. FOMO is perfectly mixed with CTAs, looking like this:
Purchase at a 50% discount: only 2 hours left!
To Sum It Up
Once you have offers, strategies, and a couple of actionable tips on hand, you can begin your eCommerce campaign at PropellerAds right away.
Mix the good old Push notifications with testing our novel formats like Social Traffic and Telegram Mini-Apps, and see your CRs grow.
Join our Telegram for more insights and share your ideas with fellow-affiliates!
