Cyber Week was the biggest ecommerce week of the US holiday season in 2021, accounting for 23% of the online gross merchandise value (GMV) from that period. The week of December 12 was the second biggest, contributing a much smaller share, with 13% of ecommerce GMV.

7 observations from Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2021: Buy Now Pay Later, SMS Marketing, BOPIS are highlights in an uneven holiday season.

More US adults plan to make digital purchases on Black Friday than on Cyber Monday, at 38.6% and 35.5%, respectively.

The top three individual shopping days—Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Thanksgiving—all underperformed our preseason forecast. Cyber Monday drove record sales but fell way short of expectations. We estimate that Cyber Monday, which remained the No. 1 ecommerce spending day of the season, grew 1.1% to $10.90 billion.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have been growing in importance to holiday ecommerce for more than a decade, despite the persistent myth that early holiday promotions would pull demand forward to take the wind out of these promotions.

But when we examined the post-Black Friday and Cyber Monday period and the lead-up to Christmas, a whole different set of brands made their way to the top. Between November and December, Nestlé Toll House (+5.8%), PlayStation (+5.1%), Nintendo (+4.8%) Cheetos (+4.6%), and Sprite (+4.0%) lead all other brands in attracting new customers. What did people buy from Amazon?

What will ecommerce sales be on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday? Cyber Monday will once again be the biggest online spending day in US history at $12.12 billion, up 12.4% from last year. Black Friday is expected to be the second biggest day of the season with sales increasing by 15.8% to $10.42 billion, while Thanksgiving will come in at No. 3 with a 20.7% jump to $6.10 billion.