The momentum of Thanksgiving — which saw consumers spend a record $33.6 billion spent globally online on the day — looks like it continued into Black Friday, with a bang. Adobe said that in the U.S., consumers made a record-breaking $10.8 billion of purchases, up 10.2% on last year. Meanwhile, Salesforce is giving a much higher overall spent estimate: $17.5 billion spent in the U.S., up 7% YoY. Globally, Salesforce said spending also reached a new high: $74.4 billion was spent in the 24-hour period, up 5% on a year ago.
For a point of comparison, in 2023, Adobe said Black Friday online spend in the U.S. was $9.8 billion, and Salesforce said global spend was $70.9 billion.
Another bit of context: the numbers we’re seeing for Black Friday in the U.S. are a little bump compared to growth as tracked by U.S. Census Bureau. It said that e-commerce spend in the most recent quarter (Q3) was just over $300 billion, up between 6% and 8% on the same period a year ago. The lower percentage growth globally may well be due to the fact that, despite the best marketing efforts of e-commerce companies, Black Friday is not really a holiday day in the rest of world as it is in the U.S. marketing.
“Crossing the $10 billion mark is a big e-commerce milestone for Black Friday, for a day that in the past was more anchored towards in-store shopping”, said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insight, in a statement.. “And with consumers getting more comfortable with everything from mobile shopping to chat bots, we have tailwinds that can prop up online growth for Black Friday moving forward.”
The figures are closely watched because this week is typically the start of the holiday sales season, the most important period for retailers around the world.
Adobe said that at its peak between 10am and 2pm Eastern, Black Friday holiday sales bargains were being snapped up at a rate of $11.3 million spent each minute. Sales rates are the latest in real-time data, with both Shopify and Stripe also getting in on the action with futuristic animations that look like a spaceship console and a power generator. That’s one way to infuse a little more pizzazz into the world of analytics.
The two companies have different methodologies. Salesforce said its 2024 figures are based on shopping data from 1.5 billion consumers captured across its customers and other data feeds in its Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud. Adobe says its data is based on 1 trillion visits tracked to U.S. retail sites, covering some 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories in all.
A few more notable points:
- Adobe said 55% of all online spend was made on mobile devices, working out to $5.9 billion, up 12.1% year-on-year.
- Discounts continue to drive sales. Unsurprisingly, the highest mark-downs were on categories that people are likely buying as early holiday presents. Toys were discounted by as much as 27.8%; electronics 27.4% and TVs 24.2%.
- Chatbots continue to figure as a theme. Adobe said that traffic to retail sites from GenAI chatbots was up by 1,800% last year, although you have to remember that they would have been considerably more rare, and less functional, last year. Adobe said that it in a survey it did of 5,000 consumers in the U.S., 20% said they were using chatbots to find deals and other shopping recommendations. Whether chatbot creators leverage that to build out advertising will be an interesting development to watch. In the meantime, it definitely points to one more way that chatbots are threatening to upend discovery through search engines.