2024 holiday sales live up to the record-breaking projections

Ecommerce is experiencing the best holiday season ever, keeping pace with a record-breaking forecast from Adobe Analytics. Cyber Week, the period just concluded from Thanksgiving to Monday, brought in $41.1 billion in U.S. online sales, up 8.2% year-over-year.

Last year, the five-day period saw a 7.8% YoY increase, with $38 billion in U.S. ecommerce sales, according to Adobe.

According to Salesforce, overall U.S. sales (digital and in-store) were up 7%, coming in at $76 billion for Cyber Week.

Cyber Monday. Traditionally, this was the day Thanksgiving vacationers returned to their offices and spent part of the day shopping deals on a desktop. This behavior has changed with more professionals working remotely and more shoppers buying on mobile, yet marketers continue to schedule big deals on this day. And the strategy works.

Cyber Monday 2024 was the biggest online shopping day of all time, bringing in $13.3 billion in U.S. online sales alone, Adobe Analytics found. This edged out Adobe’s prediction of $13.2 billion and was up 7.3% over 2023.

Commerce media platform Criteo saw a 14% surge in online transactions in the first 12 hours of Cyber Monday over the same period last year.

Cyber Monday discounts averaged 29% in the U.S., up 2% over last year, according to Salesforce.

The highest discounts on Cyber Monday were found in:

• General apparel (39%).
• Health and beauty (34%).
• Active apparel and footwear (23%).

“Cyber Monday was a day for splurge purchases with luxury handbags and apparel categories seeing incredible growth,” said Caila Schwartz, Salesforce’s director of consumer insights. “Throughout the weekend, retailers sweetened their discounts, enticing shoppers to wait for better deals before making purchases on higher-ticket items.”

“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,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights. 

Cyber Week. Here is how online sales kept up through the rest of Cyber Week.

• Thanksgiving (Nov. 28): $6.1 billion, up 8.8% YoY.
• Black Friday (Nov. 29): $10.8 billion, up 10.2% YoY.
• Saturday and Sunday (Nov. 30 combined with Dec. 1): $10.9 billion, up 5.8% YoY.

Why we care. Cyber Monday continues to outperform any other day in ecommerce, as well as Thanksgiving weekend’s Saturday and Sunday combined. This is despite the rise of mobile shopping. Marketers continue to line up promotions for this day, and consumers, no matter where they happen to be at that moment, are ready to capitalize on the savings.

Another thing to watch closely is that it appears that promotions — and holiday sales success — are moving earlier in a substantial way. The three weeks prior to Cyber Week saw a 9.6% increase year-over-year in digital sales. It’s not eating sales out of the Cyber Week turkey, but it’s stuffing the preceding days in November with more revenue and spreading the gravy around.

Dig deeper: Holiday ecommerce start surpasses record-breaking forecast

Mobile climbing. Mobile claimed 57% of online sales on Cyber Monday, according to Adobe. The total mobile U.S. sales were $7.6 billion, up 13.3% over last year. In 2019, mobile was 33% of sales for the holiday season.

Salesforce calculates the U.S. mobile order share at 60%, down from 61% in 2023. Its U.S. mobile sales figure for the day is $7.68 billion.

Retail marketing platform Bluecore saw an “overwhelming majority” of ecommerce site visits via mobile. Footwear retailers saw mobile at nearly 85% of sessions. The lowest mobile category, sporting goods, was still high — 59% of sessions were from mobile.

GenAI agents. In the first holiday season where many retailers are rolling out genAI-powered agents, these early experiments are generating real traffic. (AI recommendations and agents are expected to bring in one-fifth of Cyber Week sales.)

And this trend kept up when it mattered for marketers and shoppers. Cyber Monday saw use of genAI and agent features increase 26% week-over-week, according to Salesforce.

Dig deeper: AI is ringing in big holiday shopping changes

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