In the latest edition of Omni Talk’s Retail Fast Five, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Mirakl, Ownit AI, and Ocampo Capital Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss: The Implications From This Year’s Cyber Week Results

For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/JwnJXUy6y20

According to Adobe Analytics, Cyber Week, the five day period, even though it felt much longer between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, brought in online sales of $41.1 billion, which was an 8.2% increase over last year.

This was bolstered by record spending online during Thanksgiving, which was up 8%.

8.8% exactly year over year.

Black Friday, which was up 10.2% year over year over the weekend of November 30th to December 1st, also up 5.8% year over year.

Other notable statistics include first that consumers spent a total of $13.3 billion on Cyber Monday, up 7.3% year over year and surpassing Adobe's initial projection of $13.2 billion.

Mobile shopping also dominated on Cyber Monday.

50%, 57% of online sales came through a mobile device.

Buy now, pay later also hit a new milestone.

BNPL usage hit an all time high on Cyber Monday, driving $991.2 million in spend.

Chatbots, powered by generative AI, also made a mark on the holiday season.

On Cyber Monday, traffic to retail sites from chatbots, I.

E.

Shoppers clicking on a link to a retail site increased by 1,950%.

Can't even believe that's a real number.

And then finally, basic zero.

Yes.

Social media influencers share revenue came in at 20.3% on Cyber Monday, which was up an impressive 6.8% year over year.

Chris, what are your takeaways?

I got the hell out of here and went to Mexico.

But what were your takeaways from being out in stores and online over Cyber Week?

First of all, my number one takeaway.

Nice read of all those statistics.

Yeah, that was great.

Secondly, secondly, like when did Cyber Week become that?

When did it become Black Friday?

December, Monday.

I always thought it was Monday forward.

Like I don't know when this happened.

So someone clue me into that because that was news to me.

I don't, I had no idea.

You don't know.

But yeah, I guess, I don't know.

I guess I used to talk about it differently.

But there are, I have a lot of takeaways beyond, beyond those two things, Ann.

And in addition to that, I want to get to the implications because I think the implications of this year's Cyber Week, quote unquote, are pretty, pretty startling actually, when you get right down to it.

So one, I think it's a continuation of the trends we've long seen, particularly at this point in the year where, you know, and the specifically the statistic I would point to you are the overall online growth, the mobile dynamics and the BNPL usage.

Like all those are trends that have just continued forward.

Generative AI is going to follow that same trajectory, if not go even faster, based on some of the other headlines we covered on the show and are going to talk about later in today's episode as well.

And then three, as I've long said, influencers are the new merchants and to see them being responsible for 20% of revenue via affiliate linking is pretty darn telling.

Yeah, so, so those are my three.

But then fourth, poor stores.

Poor stores.

Yeah.

Lots of different figures out there.

And yeah, it feels like storage traffic was at best like flat and, and, but also probably down, you know, across the week.

But it's hard to tell.

People always have different numbers on that.

But, but I was personally shocked when I went into the stores on Saturday, the mall and the stores, I was surprised at how little traffic there actually was.

So that implies to me a couple things.

One, it applies that retailers that don't get to the punchline to the joke of digital next year you're going to see them unleash a whole host of store only door busters in a way that we've never seen before.

So that's going to be my tell in terms of who gets this and who doesn't understand where retail is going in is the door busters next year.

But those that do, yeah, they're going to unleash their brands via TikTok live streaming, ensure that their products show up in the right way and are shoppable via AI platforms.

So it's going to be a tale of two retailers and next year which way are we going to go?

And my bet is on the latter being successful, not so much on the former being successful.

What did you think?

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean I was actually surprised this year the mobile spending surpassing desktop, that that was I think a big number to pay attention to for all the reasons that you called out, especially the AI personalization that I felt like was being done.

And now, I mean I'm, I'm going through this anecdotally and what messages I was getting from retailers who I'm subscribed to text notifications from or who I have, you know, whose app I have on my phone.

I think that was really interesting here.

And it gets at the, it actually to me gets the door busters question, which I want to see if we do actually see more door busters or if.

Because this generative AI being applied to personalization of these offers that we're talking about to me as a customer versus you as a customer, like I wouldn't be surprised to see if we see even further mobile penetration there and now that people are tracking us a little bit more closely, like if we start to see those doorbusters move from the store to mobile and online as a way for the retailers really to have a better sense of like how much inventory do we have, what demand do we have, what incentives can we get for people to come on so that we can develop that one to one relationship with our customers in an even stronger format.

Because I was getting so many texts like multiple times a day throughout the week last week and this week.

And so I think that that's something that I think we're going to continue to see monitored very closely and continue to see whether that's an influencer sending that or the retailers themselves build as we go on to future Cyber Week deals.

But you know, the last thing that I'll call out, Chris, is that the retailers did seem very thirsty this year.

Do you familiar with that Gen Z term thirsty?

Yeah, I, I am, but I don't know how in terms of my understanding of the term thirsty.

I'm not sure how.

I've been reading, I've been reading a lot about this.

I've been hearing a lot about this from other friends, you know, even at the Thanksgiving dinner table, like what are you guys excited about for Black Friday?

It's my favorite question to ask and the response has been overwhelmingly like this deal fatigue, like when is, when am I going to get the best deal?

And if you have my contact information, I'm, I'm subscribed to your text program like don't send me a deal and say this is the best deal you're going to get.

It's 45% off something that never goes on sale.

And then the next three days you're offering me a different one.

Like that to me is the real room for improvement here from retailers is that I think that there's too much deal display going on.

So pick one thing, go with it.

Really invest in AI to tell you who your best customers are and how to approach them with the right promotional strategy because right now it just feels like it's, it's not strategic.

So that would be the one thing that I think I'll be keeping an eye out for next year for Cyber Week.

Yeah, interesting that, that whole idea is interesting.

It's, it's harder to do than you would imagine because of the markdown cycles that come into play.

But I think the other point too is like, you know, that that'll get, we'll get to, in the next few headlines too is like, yeah, with Genovei coming on, do you invest in the platform?

Did you invest in your own platform?

So if people start using natural language queries in their searches on Walmart or Target or whatever, are you prepared for that?

Can you serve up ads in those?

That's how you get to the personalization you're talking about.

It's going to be hard to do when you don't have the first party data necessarily, if you go through the open AI and the perplexity and all that kind of stuff too.