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U.S. shoppers spent a record $11.8 billion online on Black Friday, November 28, 2025, up 9.1% from a year earlier, according to Adobe Analytics. Cyber Monday still had the higher single-day total, at $14.25 billion. The bigger story was how the holiday shopping journey changed: deals stretched across more days, mobile became the leading source of online revenue, and AI-assisted discovery and buy now, pay later (BNPL) grew—while shoppers remained focused on value.
Black Friday 2025 online sales at a glance
| Measure | 2025 result | What it tells us |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. Black Friday online sales | $11.8 billion, up 9.1% year over year | A record day and faster growth than Cyber Monday |
| U.S. Cyber Monday online sales | $14.25 billion | Still the largest single online shopping day |
| U.S. Cyber Week online sales | $44.2 billion, up 7.7% | Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday formed a major spending window |
| U.S. holiday online sales, Nov. 1–Dec. 31 | $257.8 billion, up 6.8% | Online spending grew across the full season, not just the headline days |
| Mobile share of holiday online revenue | 56.4% | More than half of measured online revenue came from mobile devices |
| Holiday online BNPL spending | $20 billion, up 9.8% | Installment payments were an increasingly common checkout option |
| Generative-AI referral traffic to retail sites | Up 693.4% year over year | Fast growth from a still-modest base |
| U.S. Black Friday online shoppers | 85.7 million | NRF survey estimate of shoppers, not a transaction count |
| U.S. Cyber Monday online shoppers | 75.9 million | NRF survey estimate; people may shop on multiple days and channels |
Adobe’s figures are transaction-based estimates of online activity. The shopper counts come from National Retail Federation (NRF) consumer research and are not directly comparable to sales totals. Salesforce and Shopify report from their own commerce ecosystems or surveys, so their figures can differ because of merchant mix, geography, methodology, and whether attributed or planned activity is included.
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Black Friday grew faster, but Cyber Monday remained larger
Adobe measured $11.8 billion in U.S. online sales on Black Friday, versus $14.25 billion on Cyber Monday, December 1. Black Friday’s year-over-year growth was 9.1%, compared with 7.1% for Cyber Monday. Adobe said Black Friday had outgrown Cyber Monday for a second consecutive holiday season.
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Retailers have incentives to bring deals forward and keep them available across more of the week. Shoppers can compare prices and purchase when a useful offer appears instead of waiting for one designated day. For retailers, the trade-off is a longer period of discounting, competition, and operational pressure. Black Friday 2025 was a peak in an extended deal season, not a single-day release of all holiday demand.
Mobile was the main online revenue channel
Mobile devices accounted for 56.4% of U.S. holiday online revenue from November 1 through December 31, according to Adobe’s holiday report. On Thanksgiving, the mobile share reached 61.6%. These figures describe online revenue, not all shopping activity or every retailer’s channel mix.
For retailers, mobile readiness goes beyond making a desktop website fit on a smaller screen. A phone-based shopping journey may start with a social post, an AI recommendation, an app notification, or an in-store price check. It can then depend on readable product details, fast pages, wallet payments, saved checkout information, clear delivery dates, and easy order tracking or returns. Buy online, pick up in store can also make a mobile order more convenient and reduce delivery wait time.
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AI was a growing discovery channel, not a replacement for search
Adobe reported that traffic from generative-AI tools to retail websites rose 693.4% year over year over the 2025 holiday season; on Cyber Monday, it was up 670%. Adobe also found that AI referrals converted 31% better than other traffic sources during the season. The growth rate is striking, but Adobe cautioned that the underlying traffic base remained modest. It does not show that AI displaced search, email, paid advertising, or social as a whole.
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Consumers can use AI tools to compare products, summarize reviews, find gift ideas, build shopping lists, or ask conversational questions. Retailers, meanwhile, use AI for recommendations, customer-service responses, campaign personalization, merchandising tasks, and demand forecasting. Salesforce reported that AI and agents influenced $262 billion in global holiday sales across its data set. That is a platform-based attribution measure of influenced sales—not $262 billion of purchases necessarily completed inside AI interfaces, and not a directly comparable estimate to Adobe’s referral traffic.
AI discovery makes accurate product information more important. A retailer’s catalogue should provide complete specifications, current prices and availability, clear product variants, shipping and return terms, useful reviews, and distinctive product attributes. Missing or inconsistent data can make products harder for automated tools to represent correctly.
There are risks as well as opportunities. A chatbot or AI-generated description can give incorrect specifications, outdated stock information, or promises about delivery and returns that the retailer cannot meet. Recommendations may rely on incomplete catalogue data, and review summaries can make weak evidence sound definitive. Retailers need reliable feeds, human oversight for consequential claims, and a way to distinguish genuinely incremental AI activity from purchases that may have arrived through another channel.
BNPL use rose, with benefits and financial trade-offs
Adobe measured $20 billion in U.S. online BNPL spending during the 2025 holiday season, up 9.8% year over year. Smartphones drove 82.2% of BNPL purchases. Cyber Monday alone accounted for $1.03 billion in BNPL spending, up 4.2%. Adobe found consumers were most likely to use it for electronics, apparel, toys, and furniture.
For a retailer, installments may reduce the upfront price barrier on a larger purchase and help a shopper manage cash flow. But rising BNPL use is not evidence that households are financially stronger. Shoppers still have repayment obligations, and payment plans can make an expensive item feel more affordable than it is. Consumers should understand due dates, fees, and the consequences of missed payments before choosing installments.
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Merchants also need to account for provider fees, fraud exposure, returns, chargebacks, and the work of matching refunds to installment plans. Any conversion or average-order-value benefit has to be assessed against those costs and the retailer’s margins. BNPL is not automatically a good fit for low-margin items or customers likely to return purchases.
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Discounts helped shoppers trade up, not just hunt for the cheapest item
Promotions were central to the season, but a discount headline needs context. Adobe’s peak listed-price discounts included 30.9% in electronics, 29.6% in toys, 25.1% in apparel, 24.3% in televisions, and 23.4% in computers. These were peak category figures, not reductions offered on every product in each category.
Discounts can influence what people buy, not only how many units they purchase. Adobe reported that the share of units sold from the most expensive products increased 20% compared with the rest of the year. The increases were 56% in electronics, 55% in sporting goods, and 38% in appliances. This suggests that some shoppers used deals to justify a higher-tier purchase; it does not mean every premium product sold more or that sales volume automatically translated into stronger profit.
Retailers used familiar tactics such as percentage-off offers, bundles, free-shipping thresholds, loyalty pricing, early access, limited-time codes, and clearance markdowns. Each has a different cost. A bundle can lift order value but complicate stock planning; a free-shipping threshold can encourage a larger basket but still absorb delivery expense; a deep markdown can move old inventory but also discount purchases that would have happened at a higher price.
Gross sales are not the same as contribution margin. The financial result depends on discounts, customer-acquisition costs, payment fees, marketplace commissions, fulfilment, expedited shipping, fraud, support, and returns. Adobe reported that holiday returns were down 1.2% overall, but that aggregate change does not describe every retailer or category. Return handling remains part of the economics, especially where sizing, product expectations, or gift purchases drive higher return rates.
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Electronics, apparel, and furniture led holiday online revenue
Adobe’s largest U.S. holiday online categories by revenue were electronics at $59.8 billion, apparel at $49.0 billion, and furniture at $31.1 billion. Together, they accounted for more than half of the $257.8 billion season total. Their year-over-year growth rates were 8.2%, 7.4%, and 6.6%, respectively.
| Category | Holiday online sales | Year-over-year change |
|---|---|---|
| Electronics | $59.8 billion | +8.2% |
| Apparel | $49.0 billion | +7.4% |
| Furniture | $31.1 billion | +6.6% |
| Groceries | $23.7 billion | +10.2% |
| Toys | $8.8 billion | +7.8% |
| Cosmetics | $8.4 billion | +9.3% |
| Sporting goods | $8.4 billion | +7.7% |
The largest categories by dollars were not necessarily the fastest-growing or most discounted. Groceries had the strongest growth among the categories listed, while electronics had the highest peak discount in Adobe’s comparison. Adobe also saw generative-AI shopping traffic in video games, toys, appliances, electronics, and personal care—categories where shoppers may benefit from comparison, recommendations, or product guidance.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Shoppers were active but value-conscious
NRF estimated average planned holiday spending of $890.49 per person, the second-highest level in its 23-year survey history. It estimated that 85.7 million people shopped online on Black Friday and 80.3 million shopped in stores. Those audiences can overlap: one person may shop both online and in person, and on more than one day.
Survey intentions are not completed purchases. Shopify’s global holiday retail research found that 51% of surveyed shoppers planned clear spending caps and 23% intended to set stricter budgets. Shopify also reported planned global BFCM spending of $192 in 2025, compared with $155 in 2024. That is a survey-based intention, not realized sales and not directly comparable with Adobe’s U.S. transaction data.
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Online and in-store shopping converged
Black Friday was not exclusively an online event. The NRF’s estimates of 85.7 million online shoppers and 80.3 million in-store shoppers are separate channel counts, not mutually exclusive groups. A customer might discover a product online, check its price in a store, order it on a phone, collect it curbside, and return it at a physical location.
That convergence makes inventory accuracy and fulfilment choices commercially important. Store pickup and ship-from-store can offer faster delivery or reduce last-mile costs, while online returns to stores can give customers a convenient option. But these services rely on dependable inventory visibility, aligned prices and promotions, and staff capacity to fulfil and process orders. Shopify’s survey found that 43% of consumers said they were more likely to discover and purchase products in stores, while 44% expected to buy smaller items online and make larger purchases in stores. These are reported preferences, not measured shares of actual transactions.
What retailers can take from Black Friday 2025
The results point to several durable priorities for the next holiday season. They are not a guarantee of performance, and retailers should adapt them to their category, margins, customer base, and fulfilment capabilities.
- Make mobile checkout dependable. Test page speed, product pages, wallets, coupon handling, account requirements, delivery estimates, and order tracking on real devices.
- Prepare product data for both people and machines. Keep specifications, variants, inventory, price, delivery, and return policies accurate and consistent across the store and product feeds.
- Plan promotions as a season, not a single day. Set discount floors and compare the contribution margin of early access, bundles, loyalty offers, and blanket markdowns.
- Offer flexible payments with clear controls. Model fees and refund processes, display repayment terms clearly, and consider whether the product’s margin and return profile support BNPL.
- Connect stores, site inventory, and returns. Pickup and store returns can improve convenience, but only when stock data and fulfilment operations can support them.
- Track profit and incrementality, not just gross revenue. Break down results by channel, device, promotion, new versus returning customers, cancellations, fulfilment cost, fraud, and returns.
- Prepare support and operations for peak volume. Load-test critical pages, verify inventory and delivery cutoffs, prepare customer-service guidance, and monitor stockouts and cancellation rates.
A practical checklist for shoppers
Record sales totals do not mean every deal is worthwhile. Before buying, compare the final delivered price rather than relying only on a percentage-off claim. Check the seller, return deadline, delivery estimate, and whether the item matches the advertised specification. For BNPL, confirm each payment date and any applicable fees, and consider the total of all installment commitments. Be cautious about unusually large discounts on scarce or unfamiliar products.
What Black Friday 2025 says about eCommerce
Black Friday remained a major online sales event, but the holiday season was no longer organized around one decisive day. Black Friday grew faster than Cyber Monday even though Cyber Monday kept the larger single-day total. Mobile, AI referrals, installment payments, extended promotions, and omnichannel fulfilment all shaped how shoppers moved from discovery to purchase. For retailers, the commercial test is not simply whether those channels generate activity; it is whether they do so with accurate information, reliable service, and sustainable margins.
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