Cyber Monday 2025 just became the biggest online shopping day of all time in the US
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Cyber Monday 2025 just became the biggest online shopping day of all time in the U.S. as consumers spent a total of $14.25 billion, up 7.1% year over year, according to Adobe’s e-commerce analytics. At peak between 8AM to 10PM, Americans were spending $16 million per minute.
The caps an also record-breaking Cyber Week (including Black Friday sales) as sales for the American Thanksgiving holiday season were up 7.7% year over year to $44.2 billion.
According to Adobe, deeper price cuts helped drive additional sales:
- 31% off electronics
- 28% off toys
- 25% off clothing
- 23% off computers
- 22% off TVs
- 19% off appliances and furniture
- 17% off sporting goods
Some of those deals will hang around for a few days, Adobe says, though they may not match peak levels. That will drive additional spend this entire holiday season, which is now projected to hit $253.4 billion online, a 5.3% jump over 2024.
As I noted a few days ago, AI-referred traffic is significantly up this year. Consumers clicking on links to retailers in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other AI answer engines surged 670% on Cyber Monday, and is up 760% for the season so far. This is perhaps the strongest signal yet that generative AI chat services and browser assistants are becoming real shopping tools, and are likely to surpass traditional search engines at some point.
“Shoppers have also become increasingly savvy in finding the best deals
and locating the right products, embracing generative AI-powered chat services and browser tools for the second season in a row,” says Adobe analyst Vivek Pandya.
Interestingly, social commerce – long maligned as a mirage – was up 56.5% year over year. Social media drove 3.6% of Cyber Monday revenue, up 56.5% year over year, Adobe says, with influencers and partners accounting for 21.8% of revenue share. Paid search and email still dominate, but social is rising faster than any other traditional channel. The big platforms driving social commerce include TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube: all primary visual and video-based social media.
Also of note: mobile is now the default checkout lane. 57.5% of purchases happened on mobile on Cyber Monday, representing $8.2 billion in spend (up 8% year over year). On Thanksgiving, mobile hit 61.6% for the first time ever. Where five years ago, mobile accounted for just 41% of Cyber Monday spending, this year, it’s the majority and growing. That fuels more impulse buys, Adobe says, amplifying overall holiday spend.
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is also growing, up 4.2% on Cyber Monday, with almost 80% of BNPL orders happening on mobile. For the season to date, BNPL spend is at $10.1 billion, up 9% from last year.
The biggest Cyber Monday demand spikes include:
- Bluetooth headphones & speakers: +1,850%
- Video game consoles: +1,800%
- Refrigerators & freezers: +1,700%
- Home security systems: +1,500%
- Smart home products: +1,450%
- Fitness trackers & smartwatches: +1,400%
- Vacuums: +1,300%
- Computers: +1,200%
And the top categories by total spend were:
- Electronics: $3.7B (up 12.8% YoY)
- Apparel: $2.6B (up 5.2% YoY)
- Furniture: $1.8B (up 5.4% YoY)
On the downside, order volume by actual products shipped fell 1% year-over-year for Black Friday, while prices – despite discounts – were up, according to Salesforce. That likely means that inflation was a key driver of the higher sales volume in dollars rather than additional purchasing.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2025/12/02/cyber-monday-2025-biggest-online-shopping-day-of-all-time/
