The news: Online shoppers spent about $9.1 billion on Cyber Monday as of 6:30pm Eastern, a 4.5% YoY gain, putting sales on track to reach $13.9 billion to $14.2 billion, according to Adobe. That would be a 4.5% to 6.8% increase, falling just short of our 7.0% forecast and in line with Adobe’s 6.3% projection—even amid 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 up 7.2% to $123.17 billion and a stronger-than-expected Cyber Five, the unofficial kickoff to the holiday season.
- Black Friday led the way, with Adobe reporting $11.8 billion in online spend, a 9.1% YoY increase that beat both our expectation of an 8.7% gain and Adobe’s 8.3% forecast.
- 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 are expected to account for 57% of Cyber Monday’s online spending, with electronics up 12.5%, apparel rising 5.8%, and furniture jumping 5.2%.
- 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 Adobe expecting BNPL to drive $1.04 billion in sales, which would make it the largest single day on record and a 5% YoY gain. From November 1 to November 30, $9.0 billion has been spent online using BNPL, up 9.6% YoY.