Thanksgiving continued to rise in importance for holiday shoppers in 2024, with ecommerce and mobile purchases setting new records.
Data from some of the leading online retail platforms showed deals and key categories driving interest and buying before Thanksgiving concluded and Black Friday began. By the end of Nov. 28, online consumers spent an all-time Thanksgiving high of $6.1 billion, according to analysis from Adobe Analytics.
Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the Cyber 5, the five-day period that runs through Cyber Monday, which falls on Dec. 2 this year. Adobe also refers to this period as Cyber Week.
US consumers set Thanksgiving ecommerce sales record in 2024
Thanksgiving ecommerce and mobile shopping records
“Cyber Week is off to a strong start, where bigger-than-expected discounts on Thanksgiving propelled impulse shopping in categories like electronics and apparel,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights. “As people gathered with family and friends, many were hitting the buy button on their mobile devices, which hit an all-time high for the overall holiday season.”
The $6.1 billion in spending that Adobe saw represented an 8.8% increase from Thanksgiving in 2023. In addition to overall sales being up, the rate of growth ballooned as well, up from 5.5% the year before.
Ecommerce platform provider Salesforce also observed strong year-0ver-year growth on Thanksgiving, seeing global online sales of $33.6 billion, up 6% from Thanksgiving in 2023.
Meanwhile, both Adobe and Salesforce saw mobile orders playing significant roles. Adobe analysts assessed that 59.5% of all online sales on Thanksgiving were made from mobile devices, the largest share Adobe has ever recorded for the holiday. That share was worth $3.6 billion in online transactions, which Adobe said was up 10.5% year over year. Meanwhile, Salesforce saw mobile’s share of global online orders grow 3% from 2023, driving 72% of orders and 80% of online traffic for the day.
Adobe Analytics data is based on more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories, according to the company. 200 online retailers in the Top 1000 use Adobe Analytics for their web analytics, and 97 use it for site design and development. Top 1000 online retailers also use it for content delivery and management, as an ecommerce platform, a marketing platform, for personalization and more.
Salesforce draws on global shopping data from more than 1.5 billion shoppers from its Commerce Cloud platform. In North America, 76 of the Top 2000 online retailers use Salesforce as their ecommerce platform. In 2023, those 76 online retailers combined for more than $136.077 billion in web sales.
The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of North America’s largest online retailers based on web sales.
What Thanksgiving shoppers bought online
“Back in the spring of 2024, nearly two-thirds of consumers reported that they were waiting for Cyber Week deals to make splurge purchases,” said Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights at Salesforce.
Salesforce includes the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving in the period it refers to as Cyber Week.
In its Cyber Week predictions released prior to Thanksgiving, Salesforce predicted shoppers were holding off on purchases, waiting for better deals to emerge. Now, those deals appear to be convincing consumers to buy. Salesforce saw the average global discount rate unchanged from 2023 at 26% globally and 28% in the U.S.
“The sales and order growth over the last few days implies that these shoppers stayed true to their word,” Schwartz said. “This could be the strongest Cyber Week we’ve ever seen.”
Salesforce observed the strongest sales growth year over year in the home appliances, dining and furniture category, up 20% from 2023. That was followed by general footwear and handbags, where sales were up 18%.
By category, Adobe saw consumers buying higher-priced items than they did prior to the holiday season in electronics, sporting goods and appliances. Among the day’s top-selling toys, Adobe noted that stuffed animals, board games, Harry Potter toys and action figures all sold in higher volumes from earlier in the year.
Other Thanksgiving ecommerce trends
Sharing Thanksgiving results from its merchants, the ecommerce platform Shopify noted that the peak sales hour for activity on Nov. 28 was 9 p.m. EST. Shopify also noted that the average cart price for its merchants that day was $164.47. In addition, it cited trending products from its online retailers, including:
- Thrive Causemetics, Liquid Lash Extensions Mascara
- Merit Beauty, Flush Balm
- Cozy Earth, Bamboo Sheet Set
Adobe also noted the use of buy now, pay later (BNPL) services playing an import role. Adobe credited $430 million in Thanksgiving online spending to BNPL purchases. That was up 10.3% from 2023, and Adobe expects to see BNPL drive $993 million million in purchases on Cyber Monday.
On Thanksgiving, BNPL drove $430 million in online spend, up 10.3% year over year, as consumers looked for more flexible ways to manage their holiday budgets. On Cyber Monday, BNPL is expected to hit $993 million, up 5.6% year over year.
Black Friday predictions
Looking ahead to Black Friday, Adobe forecasted another record of $10.8 billion in online spending, which would be a 9.9% increase from a year earlier. It anticipated TV discounts of as much as 24% off listed prices driving activity. Additionally, Adobe expects to see the deepest discounts for computers to emerge on Saturday, Nov. 30, where it projects that discounts will reach 23% off listed prices.
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