After a booming holiday shopping season in 2021, privacy-compliant consumer intelligence data offers a great deal of insight into what we can expect to see moving forward.

The rubber band effect drove much of the top performing product categories and retail brands in 2021, as they snapped back from mid-pandemic lows.

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.

US shoppers saw more out-of-stock messages this past holiday season than in previous years, per an Adobe index that tracks this activity. The index rose to 4.0 during the 2021 season, when US ecommerce consumers received more than 6 billion out-of-stock messages. That’s about an 8% increase year over year and a 264% jump from the pre-pandemic 2019 season.

More US consumers shopped from their couch than in-person every day of Thanksgiving weekend 2021.

When it comes to Christmas shopping, the biggest priority among UK consumers is avoiding crowds, cited by 32% of those 18 and older.

Nearly three-quarters of US adults will likely use standard delivery for their purchases this holiday season.

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Half of US adults plan to fly in the next six months as of October 2021, up 14 percentage points from October 2020.

While Amazon has the largest share of holiday ecommerce sales this year at 41.9%, Apple will post the strongest growth at 36.9%.

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.

How Cyber Five, Top Retailers, and Product Categories Will Perform

Holiday sales in the UK this year will grow by 8.1% from last year, with ecommerce sales growth rates stabilizing after spiking in 2020.

Cars are the transportation of choice this holiday season, with 78% of US adults saying they will likely drive or hail one over the holidays.

The smartphone industry is feeling the squeeze of the semiconductor shortage.

US holiday retail sales in 2021 will see the strongest growth in more than 20 years, rising 9.0% from last year to $1.147 trillion.

This year’s holiday shopping season will once again kick off early with consumers motivated to avoid shipping delays and out-of-stock items.

Find out how seemingly small ad creative elements—including the use of motion, intentional calls to action, and more—can make a big impact on ROI and purchase intention during the 2021 holiday season. Hear from Mattel’s Jason Horowitz, SVP, US marketing and global head of media and digital, Instagram’s Genie Alfonzo, product marketing manager, and VidMob’s Blake Boznanski, head of industries.