eMarketer's new US Ecommerce 2026 report projects online sales will grow 7.9% in 2026, with only slight deceleration through 2030 despite soft consumer sentiment and economic uncertainty. The bigger story is AI: under eMarketer's base case, AI-driven ecommerce sales climb from 3.2% of total US retail ecommerce in 2026 to 15.8% by 2030, a fivefold jump in four years. The report also expects 2027 to be the year mobile officially becomes the dominant way Americans shop online, notes that digital buyer growth is close to maxing out, and projects Amazon will reach a new peak among major retailers. For eCommerce teams, that combination means future growth increasingly depends on managing AI-influenced discovery, mobile-first conversion, and existing buyer spend, not just adding new shoppers, and most orgs still don't have anyone whose job is explicitly to own any of it.
eMarketer released its US Ecommerce 2026 report this week, and on the surface it describes a fairly settled market. Online sales are projected to grow 7.9% in 2026, and that pace is expected to moderate only slightly through 2030 even with ongoing economic uncertainty and a consumer mood that's stayed soft for most of the year. A stronger than expected first half lifted the outlook from where analysts had it earlier in 2026.
But eMarketer, led on this report by analyst Sky Canaves, frames AI as the real wild card sitting inside that otherwise steady forecast, the one variable with enough range to meaningfully change how the next four years actually play out.
The Stat That Should Change How You're Hiring
Here's the number worth sitting with. Under eMarketer's base case scenario, AI-driven ecommerce sales grow from 3.2% of total US retail ecommerce in 2026 to 15.8% by 2030. That's not AI as a research tool that eventually leads to a normal checkout. It's sales eMarketer attributes directly to AI platforms and shopping assistants, and it's projected to roughly quintuple as a share of the market in four years.
That's eMarketer's base case for how much of total US retail ecommerce AI platforms and shopping assistants will directly influence, up from roughly one in every thirty dollars spent online today to nearly one in every six by the end of the decade.
Three More Findings That Change Where Growth Comes From
The AI stat gets the headline, but three other findings in the report matter just as much for how eCommerce teams should be staffed over the next few years.
- Mobile becomes the default in 2027. eMarketer expects US ecommerce to officially enter its mobile-first era next year, with related research projecting mobile will account for more than half of US retail ecommerce sales in 2027 for the first time.
- Digital buyer growth is close to maxing out. Most Americans who are going to shop online already do, which means the easy growth from acquiring brand-new digital buyers each year is mostly behind us.
- Amazon is set to hit a new peak. Among the major retailers eMarketer tracks, Amazon is projected to reach its highest share yet, tightening the competitive gap for everyone selling around it.
Why This Is a Hiring Problem, Not Just a Forecast
None of these four findings is really about technology on its own. Each one is a growth lever, and each lever needs an owner. Most eCommerce orgs built their current hiring plans around a market that looked different: new buyers were still coming online in meaningful numbers, desktop and mobile got roughly equal product attention, and search engines, not AI agents, decided what shoppers saw first.
That market is the one eMarketer says is ending. The org chart that made sense for it doesn't automatically make sense for the one coming. A brand whose product data isn't structured for AI-driven discovery, whose mobile experience is still a scaled-down version of desktop, and whose growth plan still leans on new buyer acquisition is going to lose ground to competitors who've already assigned those responsibilities to someone specific.
The Roles Most eCommerce Teams Don't Have Yet
Based on where eMarketer says growth is actually going to come from, four roles stand out as the ones most teams haven't formally created yet.
AI and Agentic Commerce Lead
Owns product feed structure, schema, and content quality specifically so AI shopping assistants and agentic buying tools can find, understand, and transact on a brand's catalog, not just so search engines can rank it.
Mobile Commerce Owner
Owns mobile conversion, checkout speed, and app experience as a primary responsibility rather than a scaled-down version of the desktop build, ahead of mobile becoming the dominant US ecommerce channel in 2027.
Marketplace and Amazon Strategist
Manages Amazon and other marketplace relationships with the specific goal of defending share as Amazon approaches a new high-water mark among major retailers, rather than treating marketplace as a secondary channel run by whoever has bandwidth.
Retention and Lifecycle Marketing Lead
Owns growth from the buyers a brand already has. The retention and lifecycle marketing role we've covered before becomes more central once new digital buyer growth levels off and revenue has to come increasingly from existing customers spending more.
Who Should Actually Own This
At most brands right now, the honest answer is nobody, or all four of these live as partial responsibilities spread across marketing, ecommerce ops, and whoever happens to manage the Amazon account. That's manageable while AI's share of ecommerce sales is still in the low single digits. It stops being manageable as that share climbs toward eMarketer's 15.8% projection for 2030, because by then a competitor with a dedicated owner for AI discovery, mobile conversion, and retention will simply be capturing more of the growth this report describes.
We've seen a version of this pattern before. Our piece on Meta's retail media tools blurring the line between paid social and retail media covers the same dynamic: a channel boundary that used to be clear starts to overlap, and the brands that move first are the ones who assign real ownership before the shift becomes obvious to everyone.
eMarketer isn't predicting AI replaces ecommerce as we know it. It's predicting AI becomes a meaningfully larger slice of it, on a mobile-first, buyer-growth-plateaued market where Amazon keeps gaining ground. The brands that treat that as a hiring question now won't be scrambling to build the team in 2029.
This report also lines up with something we've flagged in our guide to building an eCommerce analytics team: none of these four roles work well without clean, well-structured data underneath them. A brand that hasn't invested in that foundation yet has two problems to solve, not one.
eMarketer's full report runs through 2030 and covers category-level detail beyond what's relevant here for hiring. But the headline trajectory is clear enough to act on now: AI, mobile, and marketplace dynamics are about to matter more to US ecommerce growth than they have in years, and right now, most teams don't have a single person whose job is to actually own that.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does eMarketer's US Ecommerce 2026 report actually project for 2026?
eMarketer's report, released in August 2026, projects that US retail ecommerce sales will grow 7.9% in 2026, with the growth rate moderating only slightly through 2030. A stronger than expected first half of the year lifted the outlook after earlier concerns about soft consumer sentiment and economic uncertainty. The report treats that steady, mature growth path as the base case, but frames the pace of AI adoption in ecommerce as the biggest variable that could shift the trajectory in either direction.
What is the report's key stat on AI-driven ecommerce sales?
Under eMarketer's base case scenario, AI-driven ecommerce sales are projected to grow from 3.2% of total US retail ecommerce in 2026 to 15.8% by 2030, roughly a fivefold increase in four years. That figure covers sales eMarketer attributes directly to AI platforms and shopping assistants, not just AI-assisted research that ends in a traditional purchase, which is why the report treats it as the central question mark in an otherwise fairly predictable growth forecast.
What does the mobile-first era arriving in 2027 mean for ecommerce hiring?
eMarketer expects mobile to officially become the dominant way Americans shop online starting in 2027, with related research projecting mobile devices will account for more than half of US retail ecommerce sales that year. For hiring, that means mobile conversion, checkout speed, and app experience stop being a secondary workstream handled alongside desktop and become a primary responsibility, ideally for someone whose role is built around mobile performance specifically.
If digital buyer growth is near its ceiling, does new buyer acquisition still matter?
It still matters, but eMarketer's report is clear that most of the easy growth from new digital buyers has already happened, since the large majority of Americans who are going to shop online already do. That shifts where ecommerce growth actually has to come from: existing buyers spending more per visit and returning more often, and AI-driven discovery surfacing more purchases from shoppers a brand already has, rather than a steady stream of brand-new digital shoppers entering the market each year.
What roles should eCommerce teams prioritize based on this forecast?
Based on where eMarketer sees growth actually coming from, teams should prioritize hires that can structure product data for AI-driven discovery and agentic shopping tools, own mobile conversion as mobile becomes the dominant channel in 2027, manage Amazon and marketplace strategy as Amazon approaches a new share peak, and lead retention and lifecycle marketing now that new buyer growth is leveling off. Very few teams currently have all four of those explicitly assigned, which is the gap this forecast points to.