The trend: Black Friday and the first few days of the Cyber Five drove an outsize share of holiday sales despite retailers pulling holiday spending into early October and supersizing the five-day stretch between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday into the Cyber Dozen.

The numbers: US retail sales (excluding automotive) grew 3.4% YoY on Black Friday. Ecommerce sales soared 14.6% YoY, while in-store sales increased just 0.7% YoY, per Mastercard SpendingPulse.

Those online sales results are roughly in line with the 10.2% YoY jump in Black Friday sales reported by Adobe Analytics and the 7% YoY increase reported by Salesforce. All three ecommerce growth figures outpaced our Black Friday ecommerce expectations of a 5.5% YoY gain.

• The average discount rate was 28%, per Salesforce, and those deals drove bargain-hunting shoppers to click the buy button. There were bargains to be had across several key categories, including toys (down 27.8% compared with listed price), electronics (down 27.4%), TVs (down 24.2%), and apparel (down 22.2%), per Adobe Analytics.
• Lower-than-expected prices enticed many shoppers to open their wallets. Roughly 72% of holiday shoppers, or 131.7 million consumers, planned to shop on Black Friday, per the National Retail Federation.

The biggest trends:

• The majority of online sales occurred on mobile devices. Mobile devices accounted for 80% of US traffic to retailers’ sites and apps on Black Friday, and 73% of orders, up from 71% a year earlier, per Salesforce. Between November 1 and November 29, mcommerce accounted for 52.3% of online revenues, up from 51.1% a year ago, per Adobe. We expect mobile will account for 52.7% of ecommerce sales over the final two months of the year.
• Shoppers turned to alternative payment methods to stretch their budgets. Buy now, pay later drove $686.3 million in online spend, up 8.8% YoY, per Adobe.
• GenAI-powered chatbots drove shoppers to spend. Consumers’ use of genAI-powered features grew 6% week over week on Black Friday as shoppers turned to the technology to find products that suited their needs, per Adobe. That assistance delivered clear results: Retailers with genAI integrated into their site and/or app saw a 9% higher conversion rate than other retailers.
• Ecommerce is more important than ever this holiday season. Our holiday forecast expects online sales to grow 9.0% in the final two months of the year. That will push ecommerce’s share of overall holiday sales to a record 19.7%—an 80-basis-point increase over last year and a resounding. More notably, that share is 130 basis points higher than in 2020, when the pandemic pushed many consumers to shop online.

Our take: Better-than-expected results bode well for retailers as the holiday season rounds the final bend.

One notable trend is an uptick in spending on big-ticket items, which likely stems from some shoppers deciding to splurge before President-elect Donald Trump’s tariffs raise prices.

Go further: Check out our US Holiday Shopping 2024 report.

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