Holiday Shopping Recap 2025: Key Takeaways from Black Friday & Cyber Week

Writer: Weston Wheeler
Date: December 11, 2025

Take a breath. Thanksgiving and the subsequent cyber flurry have concluded.

The visiting friends and family have caught their flights home, the leftovers have been eaten, and most of the shipping confirmation emails have finally stopped flooding your inbox. For a moment, the pace of the season slows just enough for marketers to look up from campaigns, dashboards, and promos and ask a simple question: what actually happened this year?

Behind the rush of Black Friday and Cyber Week—the doorbuster deals, the extended “last chance” offers, the endless scroll of promo codes—there’s a clear story taking shape about how people chose to shop, and it offers important signals for how marketers should be thinking about 2026.

Cyber Week by the Numbers

The 2025 holiday season opened with another record-breaking surge in online shopping. Consumers spent $11.8 billion online on Black Friday—a 9.1% year-over-year increase—and drove $44.2 billion in digital sales across the full Cyber Week period. Early forecasts project more than $253 billion in online holiday spending by year’s end, reinforcing a digital-first shopping environment that now sits nearly 31% above pre-pandemic levels.

But Black Friday and Cyber Monday weren’t just bigger this year; they were broader. Shoppers moved across product categories and devices with remarkable intensity. Demand spikes in toys, (+680%), personal care (530%), and appliances (+392%), showed that holiday shopping is no longer limited to traditional gifting. Consumers are buying essentials, upgrading household items, and taking advantage of strategic discounts—often for themselves as much as for others.

At the same time, more shoppers used “Buy Now, Pay Later” options such as Afterpay or Klarna, with a reported BNPL spend of $10.1 billion since November 1st. Many also gravitated toward retailers offering reliable fulfillment options, fast shipping, and hybrid pickup methods like curbside and in-store.

How Consumers Shopped in 2025

Notably, shoppers didn’t patiently wait for Black Friday. Early promotions in late-October and early-November spread demand across a wider window, reducing reliance on the traditional “big moments.” And once the shopping process began, consumers were highly intentional—comparing prices, checking inventory availability, and waiting for the right offer.

Convenience also played a major role. Local pickup and same-day fulfillment influenced purchase decisions across categories, showing how often online demand translates into local action. Meanwhile, the path to purchase spanned more screens than ever. CTV and streaming TV ads drove early discovery during high-viewership holiday programming, while mobile and search captured comparison behaviors and high-intent queries for shoppers already primed by advertising on streaming services.

The path to purchase wasn’t linear. It was omnichannel, fluid, and fast-moving.

The Modern Path to Purchase: Omnichannel and Intent-Led

The brands that performed best this season were the ones that aligned with how consumers actually shop today. A household might first see a product in a CTV ad and make a mental note. While still watching the big screen, they’ll research options on their phone, compare prices on a laptop, and finally convert with whichever retailer offers the best combination of price, speed, and fulfillment.

Survey data supports this multi-screen reality. A recent study found that 93% of viewers use another device while watching TV, with most holding their phones nearby—messaging, browsing, or shopping while streaming. During the holidays specifically, that second-screen behavior translates directly into commerce: nearly 59% of viewers say CTV ads help shape their holiday purchases, and 36% use streaming ads for gift inspiration.

In this environment, success comes from reinforcing messages across touchpoints—not relying on a single channel to carry the journey. CTV plays an outsized role in awareness and mid-funnel engagement, while display, video, mobile, and even audio retargeting help capture shoppers as they compare, research, and ultimately decide where to buy. Marketers who deliberately connected these channels were best positioned to stay present throughout Cyber Week, rather than appearing once and hoping to be remembered.

From Insight to Action: How Advertisers Should Respond Now

So what do these behaviors actually impact for holiday and peak-season strategy going forward?

Make precision the default when demand is highest.
During key shopping windows, most consumers arriving on your site or seeing your ads aren’t casual browsers—they’re actively evaluating. That makes broad, undifferentiated targeting more expensive and less efficient. Activating at the ZIP or household level allows advertisers to tailor offers based on store footprint, regional demand, and delivery realities so that each impression is more likely to convert. For many brands, this means leaning into addressable advertising tactics to reach the right households around each location.

Put local relevance front and center.
Even with record e-commerce numbers, the last mile still determines who wins many sales. When shoppers can choose between multiple retailers selling the same product at a similar price, factors like “Can I pick this up nearby?” or “Can they deliver by the date I need?” become decisive. Campaigns that clearly communicate local inventory, nearby locations, and pickup options are more likely to capture those moments than those that rely on generic, one-size-fits-all creative. This is especially true for brands investing in broader multi-location marketing strategies.

Design for speed and adjustment, not just launch.
Cyber Week moved quickly—and not always predictably. The advertisers who performed best weren’t just those with compelling offers; they were the ones whose teams and platforms could move budget into top-performing areas, remove underperforming tactics, and rotate creative quickly when certain categories or messages started to outperform.

In other words: during peak periods, relevance, localization, and real-time adjustment drive more impact than simply “being present” with a fixed plan.

What These Trends Signal for Marketers in 2026

These holiday behaviors offer a preview of broader patterns that will matter all year.

Omnichannel presence needs to be always-on.
Consumers drift between channels, devices, and formats as a matter of habit. Viewers often treat CTV as an inspiration engine and their phones as the place where research and purchase decisions happen. Maintaining consistent visibility across CTV, display, video, mobile, and social is no longer a “nice to have” during peak season—it’s table stakes for sustaining performance throughout the year.

Local relevance drives conversion all year.
The same curbside and in-store pickup tendencies that spiked in late-December also influence everyday shopping decisions. With roughly one in six online orders at eligible retailers fulfilled through curbside pickup, consumers are clearly factoring local convenience into where they buy—not just what they buy. ZIP and addressable-level targeting should therefore be treated as foundational for multi-location brands, not as seasonal add-ons reserved for the holidays.

Intent signals matter more than volume.
Salesforce’s 2025 research notes that shopper’s digital traffic and page views nearly doubled in the weeks leading up to Cyber Week, signaling sharply higher browsing and evaluation before purchase. That level of research makes high-intent signals—search queries, contextual engagement, site activity, and repeat exposure—far more valuable than simple reach. In 2026, the brands that can quickly identify and act on these signals will be the ones converting the most efficient impressions.

CTV’s influence extends beyond holidays.
Viewers consistently say CTV ads help guide holiday purchases with nearly all CTV viewers shopping on other devices while they watch. As streaming becomes the default TV experience, that behavior doesn’t disappear in January. Treating CTV as a year-round discovery and mid-funnel channel—and tying it tightly to cross-device retargeting—will be critical for brands looking to connect awareness with measurable outcomes.

Agility should be built into every strategy.
The same flexibility that helped advertisers respond to Cyber Week—shifting budgets, adjusting creative, refining audiences on the fly—will be equally important during product launches, local events, and everyday promotions. With inflation, competition, and consumer confidence all shifting throughout the year, static media plans will struggle to keep pace.

Measurement clarity is non-negotiable.
As campaigns become more omnichannel and more localized, advertisers expect clear visibility into what’s working. That means reporting that can break down performance by channel, creative, audience, and geography—down to the ZIP code when needed—rather than a single blended view. Granular measurement is what enables the precision and agility that recent holiday seasons have rewarded.

Conclusion: A Season That Rewards Precision and Agility

2025’s Cyber Week broke records, but the more important story is how consumers behaved: earlier, more intentionally, and across more channels and devices than ever before. They rewarded relevance and convenience, gravitated toward brands that offered clear value and dependable fulfillment, and used CTV, mobile, and search together to make decisions on their own terms.

For marketers, the path forward is clear. Invest in precision so that every impression has a chance to matter. Maintain omnichannel visibility so you’re present wherever the journey starts—or restarts. And build agility into your plans so you can respond to real behavior in real time. The brands that do this won’t just win the holidays; they’ll be positioned to win all year long.

 
Ready to turn your holiday shopping insights into year-round performance?
Request a personalized Simpli.fi demo and discover how to keep your brand visible—and relevant—from first touch to final conversion.

Weston Wheeler Sr. Content Marketing Manager | Simpli.fi Weston Wheeler is a strategic content marketing leader with roots in educational leadership and creative writing, fields that continue to shape his thoughtful, narrative-driven approach to brand storytelling. As Senior Manager of Content Marketing at Simpli.fi, he blends analytical insight with creative execution to craft compelling content that resonates across channels. With deep experience in digital advertising and a track record of success partnering with global agencies and brands, Weston endeavors to bring precision, empathy, and innovation to every project.