6 Ways Black Friday and Cyber Monday Were Different in 2021

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Updated 2 years ago

Here’s how BF/CM 2021 stacked up by the numbers versus 2020.

1. Consumers spent $10.7 billion on Cyber Monday. Though this was 1.4% less than 2020, it remained the biggest online shopping day of the year.

2. Out-of-stock items are indeed an issue. Out-of-stock messages increased 169% over pre-pandemic notices, and were up 258% versus November, 2019.

3. Consumers aren’t waiting until BF/CM to shop for the holidays. 63% shopped for deals before Thanksgiving, and 54% were mostly or entirely done shopping before Cyber Monday.

4. Buy Now, Pay Later is growing. BNPL was the planned payment method for 7% of adults during the holiday season, while an additional 14% said they were somewhat likely to do so.

5. Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain an international phenomena. The region with the greatest growth in Cyber Week was APAC, while 15% of Shopify orders involved international transactions.

6. 18% of online orders used curbside pickup.

Chances are these changes such as out-of-stock or spacing out purchases are here to stay. So what’s a blogger to do?

First, since consumers are shopping earlier, pay attention to when your advertisers are starting their holiday sales, and be prepared to promote them as soon as possible.

Second, choose advertisers with multiple payment (buy now, pay later) and delivery options (curbside pickup, etc.) to meet your reader’s needs.

Third, monitor the frequency of out-of-stock notices from your most popular merchants or on your most popular items. Be prepared to switch to a different merchant if the first runs out of an item.

Bonus info: SMS is growing vs. email marketing for advertisers, in some cases generating 10x more revenue than last year.