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Cyber Week 2022: A Recap

December 1, 2022 | by Steve Guillemette
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Initially projected to be a flop, this year’s Cyber Week soared past expectations and set a record for the most Black Friday online sales ever. Click to learn more about this year’s biggest shopping habits and how to capture customers.

Cyber Week defied all expectations and delivered a shopping bonanza. 196.7 million shoppers turned out from Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday, which topped the turnout of 179 million during last year’s holiday weekend, according to the National Retail Federation. The NRF also said that sales for the overall holiday shopping season were on track to meet its forecast. The NRF expects that holiday sales will rise by 6% to 8% from last year to between $942.6 billion and $960.4 billion. 

Spending data from other authoritative sources shows that online commerce in particular had a big week. For example, according to Adobe Analytics, Cyber Monday generated $11.3 billion in sales online. This is 5.8 percent more than consumers spent on the same day last year. And, significantly, inflation did not account for the boost. Adobe said that the Cyber Monday figures were based on more transactions overall, not spending boosted by inflation. (At the peak, people were spending $12.8 million per minute on Monday.) 

And Black Friday was huge, too: shoppers generated $9 billion in online sales, a record. Who says Black Friday is dead? It’s bigger than ever in the digital world. 

I see a few takeaways: 

  • Retailers that kept their advertising levels up despite the doom-and-gloom pronouncements that consumers would rein in their Cyber Week spending were at a distinct advantage. If you maintained a strong spend in your data-grounded eCommerce-related advertising, you were well positioned to gobble up some of the consumers' spend. If you listened to the rumors and reduced your spending, you risked losing your search rank position. You lost the opportunity to get your products in front of the best audiences against your competitors.  

  • Consumers looked widely for deals. In years past, Amazon was the top site for Black Friday searches. In 2022, Walmart, Target, and Kohl’s all saw higher volumes of Black Friday searches than Amazon did. Searches for Black Friday discounts on Walmart’s website surged 386% year over year. This was a good sign that shoppers were very deal-oriented given Walmart’s branding and current inflation challenges. It’s also interesting that Walmart’s Deals for Days (their Black Friday type sales throughout November) apparently did not deter shoppers from continuing to go back to Walmart on Black Friday. In fact, Deals for Days might have helped Walmart, just as Target’s own pre-Black Friday sales likely helped Target. That’s because Deals for Days was a multi-channel marketing event, as was Target’s own pre-Black Friday sales. People who shopped in physical Walmart stores and purchased products there found Deals for Days offers when they visited Walmart.com or used their Walmart app – and vice versa. The same interplay happened with Target. Amazon lacked this advantage.  

  • Advertising deals and value won the day. Consumers had done their homework and knew that retailers were suffering from excessive inventory. They knew the deals would be there for Cyber Week. So, despite fears that holiday shoppers would do most of their shopping during early holiday season events such as October’s Amazon Prime Days II, consumers held out. In fact, Amazon Prime Day II reportedly suffered underwhelming results. Shoppers wanted to wait and see what was around the corner during Cyber Week. 

There is still plenty of holiday shopping left. Don’t let up on your holiday shopping campaigns (unless you are running out of inventory) just because Cyber Week is over. Shoppers are going to look for deals as late as they can. 

Contact IDX  

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