Cyber Monday Makes History With Single Biggest Online Spending Day Ever

Online shopping analytics data has shown that U.S. shoppers spent more during Cyber Monday this year than ever before, raking in a record (and mind-blowing) $13.3 billion. That's over 7% greater than 2023 and it also helped break the five-day so-called Cyber Week record with $41.1 billion in sales. Whether the numbers reflect inflated prices and/or lower discounts is still debatable, but one can't deny that U.S. buying power is stronger than ever post-pandemic.

In our report on how Black Friday broke prior records with shoppers spending $10.8 billion in a day, we also mentioned that experts were predicting big sales figures for Cyber Monday. Based on Adobe Analytics, a tool that tracks online shopping data, released information shows U.S. consumers forked out a record $13.3 billion for Cyber Monday, which equates to roughly $15.8 million being transacted every minute. Yowza.

When accounted for the entire five-day shopping spree beginning Thanksgiving Day and ending on Cyber Monday, shoppers spent a total of $41.1 billion with most sales being made online or digitally. Adobe believes that total sales for the "traditional" shopping season from November 1 to December 31 could exceed a staggering $240 billion; that's greater than the annual GDPs for more than two-third of the countries in the world.

According to Adobe Digital Insights, it saw significant year-to-year increases not just for sales, such as a jump by 7.3% for Cyber Monday and an 8.2% increase for Cyber Week, but also in how people shopped. For example, mobile shopping saw a 33% boost from 2019, with folks spending $7.6 billion on their mobile devices (accounting for 57% of all online sales).

There has been greater reliance and trust in chatbots found on many retailer websites, allowing users to find what they need, get recommendations, as well as navigating the sites. It also seems like consumers frequented "Buy now, pay later" programs, which is really the online version of in-store layaways, contributing to about $1 billion of total sales on Cyber Monday alone.

Among some of the top sellers on Cyber Monday were naturally consumer electronics. People holding out during the long weekend of Black Friday teasers were able to snag great deals on top-sellers like the Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch OLED, and PlayStation 5.