Cyber Monday Spending Just Hit An Absurd New Record For 2024

While Black Friday used to be a standalone spending day (and the biggest one of the year at that) it has increasingly become just one of five Thanksgiving-adjacent shopping days that, altogether, have been dubbed Cyber Week. While Cyber Monday generally reigns supreme for the top online spending day, there were some notable changes to consumer trends in 2024. According to Vivek Pandya, 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." Despite the sales growth in other Cyber Week days, 2024's Cyber Monday still hit record highs.

According to data from Adobe Analytics, the five-day Cyber Week online spending total for 2024 was $41.1 billion, representing an 8.2% year-over-year increase compared to 2023. Of that spending, $13.3 billion was spent on Cyber Monday alone, which was a 7.3% year-over-year increase. It's worth noting that this total beat Adobe's spending prediction (which was $13.2 billion). Even crazier? Adobe predicts that this holiday season (November 1 through December 31) will bring in a total of $240.8 billion (an 8.4% increase compared to 2023) in online shopping alone. As consumer spending habits change, and retailers work to keep up with the increasing push towards online shopping it's worth remembering that there are still some items you shouldn't buy online. With that said, let's dive into what, how, and how much people shopped this Cyber Monday.

Despite Cyber Monday's impressive sales totals, it's worth noting how consumers have changed when, exactly, they shop. Adobe's analyst, Vivek Pandya, explained, "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." This means that, even though Cyber Monday still experienced a 7.3% increase over the year prior, earlier spending during Cyber Week actually surpassed the Monday increase. In fact, Thanksgiving day boasted record breaking spending, with consumers spending $6.1 billion online that day (an 8.8% increase).

It's also important to look at the changing ways people chose to shop online during Cyber Monday. Exactly as previous reports predicted, the trend of mobile sales continues to grow. In fact, 57% of all online sales during Cyber Monday (which was $7.6 billion by the way) happened on a mobile device. This was a 13.3% increase in mobile sales compared to 2023 showcasing the increasing way consumers are relying on their mobile devices over more traditional at home computers and laptops. However, the trend of mobile shopping isn't tied only to Cyber Monday. Adobe calculated that mobile shopping was responsible for 53.1% of the total online sales that have happened during the first half of the 2024 holiday season shopping season (November 1 to December 2). This means consumers spent a whopping $69.8 billion on their phones in November (which is a 14.1% increase over 2023). For comparison, just 33% of all Cyber Monday sales occurred on a mobile phone back in 2019.

With discounts across multiple categories, consumers had a LOT of options on Cyber Monday. Even so, toys were far and away the biggest sales category with a 680% increase in online sales compared to an average pre-holiday retail day. Other popular categories for Cyber Monday spending included personal care items, jewelry, appliances, and electronics. When looking at the greater holiday season so far (beginning November 1), over half of all online purchases belonged to just three categories: electronics, apparel, and furniture. Electronics accounted for $30.1 billion in online sales (a 10.6% increase over 2023) while apparel made up $24.6 billion (a 9.5% increase) and furniture accounted for $16.2 billion (a 6.6% increase). It's also worth mentioning that toys and computers were the items that had the highest peak sale price during Cyber Monday. Both categories peaked at roughly 18% off the regular listed price, with electronics, televisions, and apparel all peaking at 17% off. 

Another growing trend during Cyber Week was just how much consumers used buy now pay later (BNPL) services. While we warn against relying too heavily on using BNPL services, especially since they tend to ruin holiday budgets, usage for these services hit an all time high during this year's Cyber Monday. A massive $991.2 million was spent through BNPL services, which represented a 5.5% increase in use compared to 2023 spending habits. Interestingly, the majority of these BNPL purchases happened via mobile phones, with 75.2% of these purchases being made on a phone.