Americans spent a record $11.8 billion in online shopping on Nov. 28, according to data from Adobe Analytics. The number was 9.1% higher than 2024 and slightly more than the $11.7 billion the company initially estimated in October.
This number excludes e-commerce deals, the height of Cyber Monday, which Adobe expects will attract more than $14 billion in consumer spending. This means we could see another record sales day. The way things are going, Adobe said it expects the 2025 holiday season to be the “first quarter trillion-dollar holiday season.”
Between 10am and 2pm on Friday, online shoppers reportedly spent $12.5 million every minute.
According to Forbes, Adobe said on Saturday, “Yesterday’s record spending shows that Black Friday has solidified its role as a major e-commerce moment, as more shoppers opt to stay home and take advantage of deals.”
“The record sales were largely driven by competitive deals in categories like electronics, toys and apparel,” Vivek Pandya, principal analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, told Forbes.
Salesforce also did their own study and their online sales estimates were even higher. The company shared in its report that American online shoppers spent $18 billion on Black Friday, a 3% increase from last year. Globally, Salesforce said online shoppers spent $78.9 billion.
AI shopping tools are, at least partially, helping to drive those numbers to record highs. According to Adobe, traffic to retail websites from AI increased 805% from last year’s Black Friday, although it is uncertain how much of that traffic converted into purchases. Salesforce, which has its own AI agents geared towards retailers, claimed that $3 billion in Black Friday sales were due to AI agents, according to Reuters.
Agent AI has been the latest trend in corporate AI initiatives, and companies are betting that AI agents who make purchases for you will be the future of commerce. In the run-up to Black Friday 2024, many companies unveiled AI shopping assistants, from Walmart’s Sparky to Google’s AI Mode Shopping, Amazon’s Buy for Me, or ChatGPT’s instant checkout feature for Etsy. OpenAI also announced Monday that it’s launching a new feature for the holiday season in which a quiz-style interface will pop up every time you ask ChatGPT for shopping advice.
Online sales are on the rise, and they’ve been crushing the traditional in-store Black Friday experience for some time now. CNBC reported Friday that online Black Friday sales have topped in-store receipts for the past six years, and foot traffic has not increased significantly since Covid boosted sales.
Early data so far suggests that this trend continues this year, as foot traffic in physical stores this Black Friday is reportedly down from 2024. According to NBC, RetailNext estimates that Black Friday foot traffic is down 3.6% compared to 2024, while Sensormatic Solutions found it’s down 2.1%.
Although the numbers vary from study to study, a common picture is emerging: Black Friday is no longer the shopping experience it used to be. Gone are the days when shoppers would wake up at the crack of dawn and stand in queues outside malls for hours to get a chance at exclusive flash sales. Instead, it’s becoming the day to scroll on your laptop and, allegedly, refer to deals by ChatGPT.
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