Cyber weekend has been the talk of the town with retailers, consumers and affiliates alike all reaping the sales activity of Black Friday, Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. Following our live updates on Friday (November 29), we’ve collated some key highlights as things start to wind down and the industry digests all the statistics to what’s been the most exciting and unpredictable shopping period of the year.
Breaking records
Despite speculation around consumer behaviour in the build-up to Black Friday, the annual shopping event appeared to be a huge success for affiliates. Highlights from global network Awin, who were broadcasting insights throughout the day, tracked more than two million sales and over €200m in revenue on Black Friday and leading into Cyber Weekend. For advertisers and publishers, their combined efforts drove commissions up by 24% across the global affiliate network.
Find out more on additional stats including regional breakdown across Europe, device traffic and more.
Meanwhile, over on Skimlinks, the commerce platform reported that content publishers grew traffic 3.5x faster than coupon sites during Black Friday. Furthermore, 60% of traffic came from mobile in the US while in the UK
Traffic analysis from Skimlinks’ global network of 60,000 publishers reveals shoppers prefer to purchase over lunch. U.S. purchases peaked between 12-1 p.m. EST, while the network saw an overall 20% increase in traffic, mobile accounted for 74% of all traffic, peaking with a 90% share of traffic between 5am – 8am.
This year, Global Savings Group saw revenues continue to grow over this Cyber Weekend as shoppers queue up ready to add to their baskets from the early hours. Key findings showed that female shoppers outweighed their counterpart, with 62% of sessions being driven by females, versus 38% for men. Furthermore, the finance and insurance sector topped the average online ‘basket’ size on Friday, with technology and travel following closely behind – these latter two seeing an increase in size from last year to this year.
Meanwhile, mobile proved the favoured way to shop with more than half of daily transactions taking place on a mobile device.
In terms of age groups, 25-34 and 35-44-year-olds were the most active during the sales over the weekend.
Over on Webgains, the network reported that subnetworks, CSS and technology providers all saw strong year-on-year growth across markets, with content partners seeing a whopping 34% growth year-on-year. In addition, a large proportion of sales were driven by industry staple affiliates, such as cashback and voucher, accounting for 35.6% of all sales.
Meanwhile, Black Friday saw 436 new brands on the network drive sales — even more, activity from merchants selling Electronics, which accounted for 23.53% of the transactions. Gifting and toys category also had an exceptional weekend, seeing a 529% uplift in sales.
Digital media agency NMPi released findings and insights on consumer shopping trends across the Cyber Weekend. Using a sample from across the agency’s biggest retail accounts, the agency found revenue was up 14% year-on-year, with a 25% year-on-year increase for Black Friday and 15% year-on-year increase for both the Thursday before and Cyber Monday.
Across the weekend, Black Friday generated more traffic and revenue than Cyber Monday for clients. Between November 1 2019 and December 2 2019, Black Friday created 280% more traffic, 484% more revenue, and achieved a 205% higher conversion rate compared to the average for that time period. However, Cyber Monday still performed well, in the same time period it generated 131% more traffic, 194% more revenue, and a 172% higher conversion rate.
Big spenders – US & UK
In the States, shoppers spent a record $7.4 billion online during Black Friday this year.
Meanwhile, during Thanksgiving, more stores opened and promotions were extending to Cyber Monday and into December. Foot traffic in stores increased by 2.3% on Thanksgiving Day compared with last year, according to ShopperTrak.
This year’s key shopping event has seen 73% of online purchases made by first-time buyers in the UK, compared to 54% in the US, according to new insights from Bluecore. Based on shoppers’ behaviour trends from this time last year, the retail technology company also predicts that 16% of these new customers will become repeat buyers within 109 days.
Overall website traffic has increased for UK retailers more than tripled with almost 10-times more purchases being made compared to a typical day.
Cyber Monday on top
Whilst record numbers peaked on Black Friday, Cyber Monday took the crown for most sales during the period. According to Adobe Analytics, it was projected that Cyber Monday would be the biggest online shopping day in US history with $9.4 billion in sales — a 19% increase from last year. So far sales surpassed $470 million as of 10pm ET to 2am ET with sales on track to hit the record target — beating last year’s record of $7.9 billion.
New research from Bazaarvoice revealed the growing trend among consumers to look for ongoing Black Friday deals during the following Saturday and Sunday resulted in this year’s ‘Cyber Weekend’ being 26% larger than in 2018.
Insights from over 6,200 brand and retailer websites across the globe reported 20% more consumers took part in this year’s Black Friday event and 18% more made a purchase on Cyber Monday.