Insights: Black Friday, Cyber Monday & More

This year, the holiday shopping season has been extended more than ever with continual deals starting earlier and earlier. The Turkey 5 sales period is now the Turkey 11. Walmart started offering Black Friday deals early in November… on Wednesdays.

Adobe Analytics announced online Black Friday sales reached a record $9.8 billion this year and Cyber Monday hit another ecommerce record surging to $12.4 billion in online spending. 

Overall sales are definitely up but the impact of specific days like Black Friday are becoming less impactful due to the diluting effect of the continual deals. We anticipated fewer peaks and valleys of traffic and that appears to be playing out.

2023 AMAZON SPONSORED ADS ANALYSIS

Keep in mind that we are still within the attribution window for several of these days but we wanted to share our initial analysis. For this review we compared “deal day” data to average metrics from early November. This is solely Amazon Sponsored Ads data, primarily for the US market. Comparison is given in percent of variance.

Week 1 of Deals: In general, metrics saw a slight increase November 17-22 compared to the early November average. Traffic and Spend saw the largest jump in metrics for this time period. The metrics indicate shoppers were looking but not quite ready to purchase.

Thanksgiving: True to years past, the first day of the traditional “T-5” was fairly quiet with a small lift in Impressions, Spend, and Sales.

Black Friday: Shoppers were keen on making the purchase on Black Friday with an 85% increase in Sales over the early November average.

Saturday/Sunday: The weekend between the two namesake deal days saw the biggest dip in Conversion Rate. Traffic dipped and Sales dipped further, but still saw numbers well above the early November average. 

Cyber Monday: Reigning traffic king with a 112% increase in impressions, Cyber Monday also saw the largest increase in Ad Spend. 

Conversion Rate: Throughout T-11, Conversion Rate experienced minimal swings – highest on Black Friday, closely followed by Cyber Monday. 

2019-2023 HOLIDAY SHOPPING TRENDS

We did an additional analysis reviewing holiday shopping trends for the past four years.

For this purpose, we broke down the data by Impressions (traffic) and Conversion Rate (orders/clicks).

Here are some high level takeaways:

• Increased traffic on shopping events doesn’t necessarily translate to the same increase in conversion rate. 
• Christmas and Thanksgiving are low traffic and low conversion days – the data here matches our intuition.
• Weekends tend to see low conversion leading up to Thanksgiving, but that trend isn’t as obvious once the holiday shopping season is in full swing.
• Traffic plummets a few days ahead of Christmas as the shipping window for arriving in time for the holiday closes.
• Depending on your brand, you may see a rebound of traffic after Christmas. This could include shoppers looking to buy any products they didn’t get as gifts or “New Year, New You” products.

WHAT’S NEXT

The holiday shopping events may be behind us, but smart sellers know the game is far from over.

Amazon DSP can help captivate the attention of those eager shoppers who’ve shown interest in your products over the past 11 days of deals. ADSP enables you to build audiences that go beyond just your own products, tapping into those actively browsing your competitors’ offerings.

Take it a step further to exclude shoppers who have already made a purchase, letting you hone in on those yet to find the perfect gift.

➡ Audience Precision: Craft laser-focused audiences based on user behavior. Identify and target those who have not only viewed your products but have also engaged with your competitors.

➡ Exclude Converters: Ensure your marketing efforts are optimized by excluding shoppers who’ve already made a purchase. Maximize your impact by reaching those still in the decision-making phase.

➡ Flashback to Big Deal Days: Don’t overlook the goldmine of potential customers who expressed interest during the Big Deal Days in October. Reconnect with those who might be ready to seal the deal before the holiday season concludes.

With three weeks of high-intent shopping left before Christmas, be sure to take advantage of this shrinking window of opportunity.