After weeks of build-up and speculation, Black Friday is here! With all the mega deals and strategies now in place, it’s time to capitalise on the biggest online shopping event of the year! 

As the action unfolds, PerformanceIN will keep you up to date with the key takeaways and statistics from around the globe as it happens. 

Great start for Thanksgiving 

Kicking things off in the US is, of course, Thanksgiving which has made a fantastic start according to stats from Adobe. Bargain hunters have flocked online to start their holiday shopping with Adobe reporting, as of 2pm Pacific time, $2.1 billion had been spent online, up 20.2% on the same period a year ago. Prior to that, Adobe said $470 million has been spent online at 10am, a rise of 14.5% compared to sales figures from the same time last year. Overall, sales patterns are largely on track to hit Adobe’s prediction of $4.4 billion in sales today.

Retailers in full gear

Meanwhile, Black Friday is no doubt the biggest shopping event of the year for retailer brands across the globe. One brand in particular which has been preparing for the busy day is FitFlop, who’ve just launched a new out of home campaign for the Wonderwelly across London’s transport network. Plus with up to 60% off via their website, it’s a no brainer to get yourselves some great footwear at a bargain price!

Updates from affiliate

Over at Awin, as they bring more live updates from Black Friday and Cyber Weekend, some key findings has shown some promising results. Stats from the Commission Factory team in Australia, show that numbers up 65% on last year as of 8.30pm last night, while cashback & loyalty performance was up by 38% year-on-year.

In addition, the network has tracked 30 transactions every second – and on course to track more than 2 million sales over Black Friday.

Meanwhile, interest in Black Friday as one of the focal points of the sales year is burgeoning across Europe with many consumers across the continent now adopting the date en masse – but it’s not the only important sales period.

According to recent Rakuten Marketing research conducted among 200 UK marketers, while nine in 10 are still orientating campaigns around major sales moments in the year, 31% of marketers focus their marketing campaigns around the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period. However, the event is actually surpassed in terms of focus by Christmas (53%) New Year sales (43%) and – surprisingly – Summer sales (42%).

Elsewhere, Skimlinks has reported a total number of clicks of 2.27 million as of 2.23pm — +20% from last year which they had 1.88 million.

Global trends and consumer behaviour

Different trends are being reported across Europe as Black Friday continues to unfold. According to a survey by marketing consultancy firm Simon-Kutcher & Partners, 70% of Dutch shoppers think Black Friday discounts are fake but also found that 1 in 5 of those surveyed still planned to buy something on the day.

Meanwhile, Awin has reported the amount of money being spent from German shoppers on the day has quickly grown. This year sales revenue is expected to increase over the weekend by another 22% to €3.1bn.

In the UK, spending intentions from shoppers are on the rise according to data from vouchercloud — which found at the average amount of £132 will be spent per person is set to spend £132 this weekend. At 52,487,600 people in the UK above 18 (no-one surveyed under 18), and with 37.9% of people making no sales, we’re at 32,594,799 people according to the survey — scaling up to £4.3 billion worth of UK sales potential this Black Friday Weekend.

We’ll continue to update this article throughout the day. Share your insights with the team at content@performancein.com.