Holiday online sales 2024: Adobe highlights 3 key trends in forecast

Holiday online sales in the U.S. will grow at a faster rate in 2024 than they did last year, according to a new forecast from Adobe Analytics.

Defining the holiday period as Nov. 1 through Dec. 31, Adobe expects three key trends to factor into sales:

1. Discounts, which it anticipates being as high as 30% off listed price.
2. More spending than ever from mobile devices.
3. Influences will “play a major role” in boosting ecommerce sales during the 2024 holiday season.

“The holiday shopping season has been reshaped in recent years, where consumers are making purchases earlier, driven by a stream of discounts that has allowed shoppers to manage their budgets in different ways,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, in a statement. “These discounting patterns are driving material changes in shopping behavior, with certain consumers now trading up to goods that were previously higher-priced and propelling growth for U.S. retailers.”

Adobe’s analysis is based on 100 million stock keeping units (SKUs) across 18 product categories. 200 online retailers in the Top 1000 use Adobe Analytics for their web analytics, and 97 use it for site design and development. Top 1000 online retailers also use it for content delivery and management, as an ecommerce platform, a marketing platform, for personalization and more. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of North America’s largest online retailers based on web sales.

Holiday online sales forecast for 2024

Adobe Analytics projects U.S. online sales during the holiday period to grow 8.4%. That would have online holiday sales reaching $240.8 billion, up from $221.8 billion in the 2023 holiday shopping season.

And of that, Adobe forecasts a record $128.1 billion spent through mobile devices. That mobile ecommerce spending would represent 12.8% year-over-year growth. Adobe sees 53.2% of online sales coming from mobile devices during the 2024 holiday season — compared to 51.1% in 2023. Adobe also anticipates the increase in mobile spending will correlate with an increase in buy now, pay later (BNPL) usage this holiday season.

It expects influencers to drive consumers “to shop 10 times more compared to overall social traffic to retailer sites.” Moreover, it expects discounts to drive sales in the electronics, appliances and sporting goods categories that would contribute $2 billion to $3 billion in online sales during the 2024 holiday season.

“Each season, discounting has been a reliable driver of consumer demand and e-commerce growth for retailers,” Adobe said. “The effect is more pronounced in 2024, as consumers remain price sensitive — taking advantage of big promotional events after a period of persistent inflation.”

For every 1% decrease in product price during promotional events, demand increased 1.025% compared to the prior year, according to Adobe data. That held true during Amazon’s Prime Day sales event, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day and Labor Day, Adobe said.

Impact of Black Friday and Cyber Monday on holiday online sales in 2024

Adobe also forecasts that the Cyber 5 (also called Cyber Week) will drive $40.6 billion in online sales, or less than a fifth of holiday sales this season. That would be a 7% year-over-year growth, and it would also represent about 16.86% of sales for the overall 2024 holiday shopping season.

To put that into perspective, the Cyber 5 and overall holiday shopping season in 2023 each hit new spending records in the U.S. Still, the Cyber 5 accounted for 17.13% of holiday online sales in 2023. In other words, Adobe forecasts that Cyber 5 sales will grow in 2024, but not at as fast a rate as the overall holiday season.

Diving deeper, Adobe anticipates Cyber Monday to be the largest online shopping day of the holiday season and of the year overall, bringing in $13.2 billion for retailers. That would be 6.1% year-over-year growth. Although it sees Thanksgiving and Black Friday bringing in fewer sales than Cyber Monday — which is consistent with years past — it expects both of those days to grow at faster rates than Cyber Monday.

Adobe expects Thanksgiving 2024 online sales to grow 8.7%, reaching $6.1 billion. It also expects Black Friday 2024 online sales to grow 9.9% year over year, reaching $10.8 billion.

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