Holiday shoppers pushed online sales to new highs in 2024 for Thanksgiving and the four days that follow, which collectively make up the Cyber 5.
U.S. consumers spent a record $41.1 billion on ecommerce purchases across those five days, according to data from Adobe Analytics.
The volume of sales for online retailers was up 8.2% over results from 2023. That’s higher than the 7.8% year-over-year growth seen that year. Still, it was not as dramatic a jump as seen in the two years prior.
US consumers spend $41.1 billion online during 2024 Cyber 5
Not only did Thanksgiving ecommerce sales contribute a record year for 2024 bringing in $6.1 billion. That was up 8.9% from a year earlier in the U.S.
Black Friday online sales rose 10.2% year over year to a new high of $10.8 billion. Those days were followed by 5.8% online sales growth over Small Business Saturday and the Sunday that follows it, along with $13.3 billion in Cyber Monday online sales that made it the most successful day ever for U.S. ecommerce sales, up 7.3% from the same day in 2023.
Cyber Monday remains busiest day for ecommerce in the Cyber 5
Adobe Analytics says it bases its data on more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories. 200 online retailers in the Top 1000 use Adobe Analytics for their web analytics. 97 use it for site design and development. Top 1000 online retailers also use it for content delivery and management, as an ecommerce platform, a marketing platform, for personalization and more.
The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of North America’s largest online retailers based on their annual ecommerce sales.
New Cyber 5 online sales record
The historic $41.1 billion in ecommerce sales seen over the Cyber 5 in 2024 was characterized by accompanying trends, according to Adobe. Those trends included mobile shopping, which was responsible for $7.6 billion in transactions on Cyber Monday, up 13.3% from 2023.
In addition, the volume of spending through buy now, pay later (BNPL) options reached its own all-time high on Cyber Monday, making up $991.2 million of the day’s purchases. That was a 5.5% increase from a year earlier. 75.2% of those BNPL transactions were done on mobile devices, according to Adobe.
The five-day period saw consumers exercise patience, waiting out the first four days for discounts on Monday.
“While Cyber Monday remained the season’s and year’s biggest online shopping day, year-over-year growth was stronger on both Thanksgiving and Black Friday,” said Vivek Pandya, a lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights. “Early discounts were strong enough that many consumers felt comfortable hitting the buy button earlier on during Cyber Week, with Cyber Monday becoming ‘last call’ for shoppers to take advantage of big holiday deals.”
Globally, the average discount rate was 26%, with the average U.S. discount rate at 28%, for the period running from the Tuesday before Thanksgiving until Cyber Monday, according to analysis shared by ecommerce platform provider Salesforce. In both cases, those average rates were down 1% from the corresponding period in 2023.
“Shoppers were waiting all of 2024 for the right moment to buy the goods they wanted, and they clearly made the most of this Cyber Week,” said Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights at Salesforce. “Strong year-over-year (YoY) order growth indicates that even modest discounts were enough to convince consumers to open their wallets. And retailers who invested in AI [artificial intelligence] and agents were able to reap even greater revenues during this critical shopping period through personalized promotions, recommendations and support.”
Share of Cyber 5 online sales
Though online sales increased year over year for each day in the Cyber 5, Cyber Monday’s share of total sales over the period shrank slightly from 2023. This year, 32.4% of the days’ ecommerce sales occurred on Monday. That’s down from 32.8% the year before. As that day’s share decreased along with those of other days, Black Friday grew its share from 26.0% to 26.3%.
Black Friday eats into Cyber Monday’s share of Cyber 5 sales
Meanwhile, Thanksgiving’s share remained least changed from 2023. It fell from 14.9% to 14.8% in 2024. Sunday’s share of Cyber 5 online sales also dropped, decreasing from 13.9% in 2023 to 13.6% this year.
Total number of active shoppers down from 2023
While Adobe and Salesforce showed overall online spending was up, the National Retail Federation published data showing that the number of people shopping during the Cyber 5 decreased year over year. The organization estimated that 197 million individuals shopped online and in stores over the five days. That was down 1.7% from 200.4 million in 2023. Still, the number of shoppers active this year remained elevated from all years prior to 2023.
The NRF typically sees a higher number of shoppers active — both online as a standalone category and overall — on Black Friday than on Cyber Monday, it said. That was the case in 2024, with NRF analysis showing 87.3 million shoppers active online on Black Friday and 64.4 million active on Cyber Monday. Over the course of all five days, the NRF found that shoppers spent an average of $235 each on gifts.
“Even with this year’s shortened shopping period and the multitude of early sales promotions from retailers, this past weekend exceeded expectations in terms of the sheer volume of shoppers,” said Matthew Shay, president and CEO of the NRF.
Here’s last year’s article about Cyber 5 online sales.
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