Early Retail Results Show A Merry Start To The Holiday Season Season

Based on the numbers for the long Black Friday weekend, retailers should be feeling merry about the brighter-than-expected outlook for the 2025 holiday shopping season.

But, as retailers caution every year, this isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. A strong start doesn’t help if sales slow to a crawl for the rest of this month. And spikes in spending only are good news if they also boost the bottom line.

Still, it’s a lot better when the early Black Friday numbers are good rather than bad.

The rise of ecommerce has shifted the metrics traditionally used to measure whether or not Black Friday weekend was a success. Many consumers who used to line up in the pre-dawn hours outside big box stores are staying home in their pajamas and grabbing deals online. And generative AI shopping assistants are making it easier than ever for consumers to keep track of multiple offers for a long wish list of products and to know exactly when to click the buy button.

Here are the preliminary numbers that have retail analysts bullish about the season (along with a potential cause for concern):

Online Sales Up 7.7%, Record Black Friday spend

Adobe reported today that consumers spent $44.2 billion on U.S. ecommerce sites during the five-day period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, up 7.7% year-over-year, with record online spending on Black Friday ($11.8 billion) and Cyber Monday ($14.25 billion). On Black Friday consumers were spending $12.5 million per minute during the peak hours, and on Cyber Monday they spent $16 million during the peak hours, Adobe reported.

“We really saw some strong growth and momentum out of this Cyber Five period,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights, in an interview. “It’s pretty staggering – over $44 billion processed over five days.”

This year’s results show that Black Friday remains a key day for deal seekers, despite earlier shopping and earlier discounting, Pandya said. “It has a lot of potency especially in an environment like this where consumers are so very preoccupied about making sure that they get the best absolute price.” he said, adding that they are willing to wait for major deal days like Black Friday.

Adobe, which draws its holiday numbers and forecasts from+- data culled from over 1 trillion visits to U.S. ecommerce sites, called out an interesting trend shown by the numbers that signals a larger shift in how Black Friday will play out in future years.

This year, for the second consecutive year, online sales grew at a faster pace on Black Friday than they did on Cyber Monday. Black Friday online sales were up 9.1% year-over-year, while Cyber Monday sales were up 7.1%.

Black Friday used to be the day when shoppers believed they would find the best deals in stores. Now, increasingly, they are seeing it as a day to shop online.

Gen AI is likely to push more deal hunting online. Adobe has been tracking how growing numbers of consumers are using generative AI-powered chat services and browsers to research products and find deals. AI-driven traffic to retail sites was up 670% on Cyber Monday and it is up 760% for all of November, year-over-year.

“It’s far more convenient online to open multiple browsers and compare prices versus going from store to store,” Pandya said. Gen AI is taking that convenience level to the next level. “It is getting even more convenient to lean on a generative AI platform and ask it to go triangulate information and serve to you where it’s seeing the best deals and discounts,” he said.

Shoppers Are Still Showing Up At Stores

Despite the growing prevalence of online shopping, the vast majority of retail sales – more than 80% worldwide as of last year – occur in physical stores.

Over the Black Friday weekend, 129.5 million people shopped in stores, up 3%, according to survey findings released today by the National Retail Federation. While that is still a smaller number (and growth rate) than the NRF estimate of 134.9 million consumers (up 9%) who shopped online, its an encouraging statistic for physical stores.

The Mall of America reported that its had the busiest Black Friday in its history, with a record 235,000 people visiting the mega-mall that day, up 8.5% over last year. It beat the previous Black Friday attendance record, set in 2019, by 2%.

Yes, many of those visitors might have been there primarily for the experiences like the aquarium, amusement park, or restaurants, or the celebrity appearance like JoJo Sliwa, who debuted her new holiday recording, but they also spent money in the stores. Over 30% of mall tenants who responded to a survey said their Mall of America store was the top-performing location in their company on Black Friday. An additional 20% said their store was one of the top five performing stores for their brand.

Location analytics platform Placer.ai reported that shopping malls of all types saw a surge in visits on Black Friday, with traffic at indoor malls up 3.1% year-over-year.

“Black Friday provided a potent reminder of the resilience of consumer demand and the continued centrality of this specific day to the wider retail holiday period,” Ethan Chernofsky, CMO at Placer.ai said in an emailed comment.

The increase in traffic “is an especially positive sign in a year where Black Friday falls later in the calendar and when the pre-Christmas period looks especially poised for a significant spike in overall visits,” Chernofsky said. “Those bullish on the potential of the holidays in 2025 received a powerful sign that those predictions would prove themselves out,” he said.

Yes, But – The Potential Post-Holiday Crash

Shoppers have been telling researchers that they plan to take on debt in order to buy holiday gifts, and Adobe’s latest report confirms they are doing it.

On Cyber Monday, online shoppers used Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) platforms to make a record $1.03 billion in purchases.

For the entire holiday season. Adobe expects that $20 billion worth of purchases will be processed through BNPL, Pandya said. “We really see consumers leaning on it for several multiple reasons,” he said. For some cash strapped consumers, it gives than an opportunity to take advantage of a special deal even if they can’t afford to pay the full price immediately, he said.