US consumers spent a record number online on the black frind, just as in-store sales were Lafluster.
Americans spent a record $11.8 billion Shopping Online on November 28, according to data from Adobe Analytics. The numbers increased by 9.1% from 2024 and were more than the $11.7 billion the company had originally predicted in October.
The number does not include the high volume of e-commerce deals, cyber monday, which Adobe expects will attract more than $14 billion in consumer activity. That means we can have another day of record sales in sight. With the way things will go, Adobe said it expects the 2025 holiday season to be “the first trillion holiday season.”
Between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Friday, online shoppers reportedly spent $12.5 a minute.
“The record used yesterday shows that Black Friday has revealed its role as e-commerce in the big sector, as more consumers choose to stay at home and take advantage of the deals,” Adobe said on Saturday.
Record sales were driven “in large part by competitive deals across categories such as electronics, toys, and apparel,” Adobe Digital Insights analyst Vivek Pandya told Forbel.
Salesforce also ran its course, and their online sales figures were at an all-time high. The company shared in its report that American online shoppers spent $18 billion on Black Friday, up 3% from last year. Globally, Salesforce said that online shoppers spend $78.9 billion.
Helping, at least in part, get those numbers to grow to record highs is purchasing ai tools. According to Adobe, traffic to Retail Websites from AI rose 805% from last Friday, although it is uncertain whether that traffic has translated into purchases. Salesforce, whose AI funds were aimed at marketers, asked for $3 billion in Friday’s earnings call for AI agents, according to Reuters.
Agentic AI has been the latest disaster in integrated AI systems, and companies are betting that the Agents ai you buy will be the time to trade. A slew of companies have unveiled AI shopping assistants since Black Friday from Friday 2024, from Walmart’s in Mode Mode, Amazon’s quick checkout feature, OpenAI also announced on Monday that it is releasing a new feature for the holiday season where an interface with tusles will appear every time you ask chatgpt for shopping advice.
Online sales are on the rise, and they’ve been crushing the traditional Friday experience for a while now. CNBC reported Friday that Online Friday Balday sales have topped store receipts for the past six years, and foot traffic hasn’t increased significantly since the Covid Spike.
The first data so far shows that the trend continues this year, as the foot traffic in the stores is suspected to be five times that of 2024 Frish starts in 2024% compared to 2024.
Even though the numbers change from study to study, it’s becoming more and more like a uniform pattern that appears: Black Friday is no longer the shopping experience it once was. Gone are the days of shoppers waking up at the crack of dawn to head outside stores for hours on end to catch a flash sale. Instead, it becomes a day of scrolling on your laptop and, it is said, referring to deals through chatgpt.
