The news: Online shoppers spent $14.25 billion on Cyber Monday, a 7.1% YoY gain, making it the biggest US online shopping day in history, according to Adobe. That growth was just ahead of our 7.0% forecast and Adobe’s 6.3% projection—even with a Cyber Monday outage at Shopify that disrupted transactions for some merchants on its ecommerce platform.
- That momentum followed a solid November, with ecommerce sales rising 7.2% to $123.17 billion and a stronger-than-expected Cyber Five—the unofficial kickoff to the holiday season—that generated $44.2 billion in online spend, a 7.7% increase.
- Black Friday led the way, with Adobe reporting $11.8 billion in online spend, a 9.1% YoY increase that topped both our expectation of an 8.7% gain and Adobe’s 8.3% forecast. This was the second consecutive year in which Black Friday ecommerce growth outpaced Cyber Monday.
- Online spending on Thanksgiving climbed 4.9%, and ecommerce sales on Cyber Five’s Saturday and Sunday rose 8.7%, well above our 5.7% projection and Adobe’s 4.8% estimate.
The impact of inflation: Inflation influenced consumer spending on Cyber Monday, as it has throughout the early holiday season.
- Consumers stocked up in categories where prices have risen faster than overall inflation—such as furniture—or where they expect price increases, including apparel and consumer electronics. Together, those three categories accounted for 57% of Cyber Monday’s online spending, with electronics up 12.8%, apparel rising 5.2%, and furniture jumping 5.4%.
- Salesforce, which reported more muted US online sales growth—about 3% on Black Friday and 5% on Saturday and Sunday—found that elevated prices weighed on demand, contributing to a 2% decline in units sold per transaction during Cyber Week.
Other key trends:
- BNPL usage set a record on Cyber Monday. Shoppers turned to alternative payment methods to stretch their budgets, with BNPL driving $1.03 billion in sales, making it the largest single day on record and a 4.2% YoY gain. From November 1 to November 30, $9.0 billion has been spent online using BNPL, up 9.6% YoY.