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It’s hard to believe, but it’s almost time again for marketers to begin their holiday campaign preparations. Leading up to these preparations, it’s important to reflect on consumer trends from Black Friday 2023 and derive insights for the coming year to shape successful marketing strategies.
Spending trends we saw in 2023
In 2023, consumer holiday spending was forecasted to rise at the slowest pace in five years due to inflation and cost of living concerns. Forrester reported that consumers weren’t spending less, but they were spending slower and paying less for what they bought to stretch their dollar further.
Despite slower spending, data showed a 7.5% increase in e-commerce sales from 2022 to 2023, with a record $9.8 billion spent online and the most substantial growth of in-store traffic in recent years, up 4.6% from the previous year. Shopify even reported record 2023 Black Friday sales numbers offline and offline, reaching $4.1 billion, with significant spending across personal care, clothing, jewelry, shoes, and decor. Around 75% of these sales occurred on mobile and 25% on desktop.
When people shopped in 2023
We also saw notable shifts in how, when, and where people shopped on Black Friday. One significant trend noted in our 2023 Holiday spending report was the increasing preference for early holiday shopping, particularly online. Consumers quickly responded to early discounts and promotions, which caused a surge in spending during October. Cyber Week, encompassing Black Friday through Cyber Monday, also played a significant role, accounting for 8% of total consumer holiday spending.
2023 trends we expect to see in 2024
As you gear up for the holiday season, understanding Black Friday trends from 2023 will be vital, as Black Friday 2024 is expected to see a continuation of several key trends alongside emerging ones:
- Mobile shopping will continue its growth trajectory.
- Consumers will keep seeking early deals.
- Marketers will prepare promotions sooner than ever.
- Flexible payment arrangements like “buy now/pay later” (BNPL) will drive conversions amid continued inflation.
- Channel switching will become more common.
- Paid search will drive the most sales.
Let’s talk about what past trends and future predictions mean for your marketing strategy and how you can use them to inform your 2024 holiday campaigns.
Emerging consumer behaviors
Consumer behaviors and preferences have been changing and reshaping the Black Friday shopping landscape over the last few years. Looking ahead to Black Friday 2024, several trends from last year are likely to continue shaping the shopping experience.
Early shopping
The early holiday shopping trend will continue to become more pronounced. Many consumers now begin their end-of-year shopping well before Halloween, seeking to take advantage of early deals and discounts, enjoy more time to compare prices and products, avoid crowds, secure popular items early, and spread out their budget. In 2023, Gallup found that one in four holiday shoppers even starts as early as September. This means your business must begin planning sales and promotions earlier in the season and roll them out sooner.
The value of experiences
We’re seeing an interesting shift toward gifting experiences over physical items among consumers with more disposable income. In a 2023 survey, one in five respondents said they’d prefer to get an experience as a gift over an item. Those in higher income brackets are allocating more of their holiday budgets to experiences that create lasting memories, such as theme park passes, art classes, concert tickets, and so forth. This trend will require retailers to get creative, potentially:
- Hosting giftable in-store events
- Enhancing the in-store experience
- Using experiential marketing to make deeper consumer connections
- Partnering with other companies to provide bundled gift/experience packages
Preference for digital channels
Media consumption habits and preferred engagement channels are also undergoing significant changes. Consumers increasingly turn to digital channels like streaming TV and connected TV (CTV) for entertainment and information. CTV ad spending, in particular, is expected to grow by 20% in 2024 and by low double digits into 2027. This shift will influence how retailers reach and engage with consumers, and it underscores the importance of digital marketing strategies and personalized online experiences.
Mobile vs. desktop online spending
The preference for mobile over desktop for online transactions is growing; in 2023, mobile devices comprised 54% of online sales, with online purchases up 10.4% from 2022 on Black Friday. More and more, consumers are using mobile devices to research, browse, and buy online. Marketers need to optimize their mobile and website experience to make the shopping experience seamless across all devices.
Key products and categories
Research has shown that the most popular in-store purchases of Black Friday weekend in 2023 included clothing/accessories and electronics.
- 82% of shoppers bought clothing in-store to inspect colors, material, and fit
- 73% said they would buy electronics in store to compare quality
These categories were followed by:
- Health and beauty (49%)
- Household appliances (44%)
- Sports/leisure (32%)
Interestingly, the same categories were also the top sellers online during Cyber Week 2023, with 79% of buyers seeking clothing/accessories and 66% intending to purchase electronics. Amazon was one of the most popular shopping destinations for Cyber Week 2023, with over a billion items sold. Some of the top-selling items included the Amazon Fire TV Stick and Ring Video Doorbell. This indicates a consistent consumer preference across different shopping channels and suggests shoppers are comfortable buying a wide range of products online, even during traditional in-store shopping events.
Looking ahead, retailers can reasonably anticipate continued demand for clothing/accessories and electronics, both in-store and online.
Marketing strategies that worked
Last year was a year of growth, albeit slow growth, despite economic uncertainty. Here are some of the marketing strategies deployed that contributed to this growth.
Influencer collaborations
Data from a 2023 Black Friday report showed that seven of every 10 shoppers acknowledged an influencer’s role in their purchase decision. Partnering with influencers to promote Black Friday deals and hosting live streaming sessions with influencers showcasing products helped reach new audiences and build credibility. Influencers’ recommendations resonated strongly with their followers, which drove traffic and increased sales.
Cross-channel marketing campaigns
Black Friday gives marketers a unique opportunity to engage audiences across touchpoints. Using a mix of channels, such as social media, email, websites, SMS, in-store promotions, and print media, tends to create more impactful campaigns.
Last year proved to be diverse in terms of marketing channel mix. Marketers embraced a cross-channel approach to connect with their users during holiday sales, which was evident in the increased usage of channels like email, SMS/MMS, web push notifications, and emerging channels like Roku messages. Using multiple channels to promote Black Friday deals increased visibility and reached a wider audience. This comprehensive approach ensured marketing messages reached customers wherever they were.
To maximize sales during the Cyber Five holiday season, activate Experian audiences as part of your omnichannel campaign. Our offerings include meticulously curated behavioral segments based on discount indicators such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Coupons/Sales. These segments help you target shoppers who are ready to take advantage of your promotions and are primed for early conversion. Our marketing data was ranked #1 in accuracy by Truthset, which means you can power smarter marketing initiatives, like insights, targeting, and measurement, using the highest-rated data.
App-only deals
In 2023, mobile app sales increased by 2% from 2022, generating a 12% increase in app purchases and $2 billion more in revenue than the year before. Businesses offering exclusive deals through their mobile apps incentivized customers to download and use the app for their purchases, which helped boost sales through a dedicated channel.
Limited-time offers
Time-limited offers are the essence of Black Friday and Cyber Week, giving shoppers a timeframe for getting the lowest prices of the year on certain products. Creating urgency is a highly effective way to get people to make a faster purchase decision.
Bath & Body Works is exemplary at using limited-time offers; once a year around Black Friday, they run a “Buy 3, Get 3” sale on the whole store for a single day, which encourages customers to stock up while getting their holiday shopping done.
Flash sales and hourly deals are shorter limited-time promotions that generate excitement, traffic, and sales. By highlighting specific products with steep discounts, retailers encourage customers to make instantaneous purchases. Amazon is known for these, which they refer to as Lightning Deals or product discounts available for only a few hours.
Early-bird discounts and exclusive previews
Retailers wanting to avoid overcrowded stores or website crashes can reward those who shop early with exclusive discounts or sneak peeks into Black Friday deals. This creates a feeling of urgency and privilege that leads to a purchase. Best Buy offers its Best Buy Plus and Best Buy Total members exclusive savings during a sale period just for them. They get early access to discounts toward the end of October, after which they open up their early bird deals to the public.
Predictions for Black Friday 2024
Based on what we’ve seen in 2023, we expect the following trends to shape consumer behavior on Black Friday and beyond in 2024.
Consumers will use their phones to shop more often than they already do
Mobile shopping is easy and discreet, allowing customers to shop from anywhere while staying on top of sales. Black Friday mobile orders increased from 2022 to 2023, with over 50% of all Black Friday sales occurring on smartphones. This indicates a growing trust in smartphone transactions among shoppers, which is why 2024 will likely reflect this trend.
As a marketer, this means you should ensure your website is optimized for smartphones and tablets. Ensure load speed is quick, navigation is simple, designs are intuitive, and mobile payment options are available. You also have an opportunity to invite your customers to sign up for SMS or push notifications so they can shop deals immediately after they’re rolled out.
While mobile should be a priority, we still recommend investing in multiple channels to capture online shoppers everywhere they’re buying. Our Graph can help you unify data, capture user activity, and view your target audience holistically to optimize ad spend, allocate resources effectively, and improve ROI.
Marketers will start preparing their Black Friday campaigns earlier than ever
With increasing market competition and pressure to accommodate early bird deal seekers, marketers will likely start preparing their discounts, inventories, and promotional materials earlier in the summer.
Data enrichment can help you prepare early Black Friday promos by providing deeper insights into your customers and what they want. Enriching your existing data with behavioral, financial, and demographic information can help you create precise audience segments and personalized content, anticipate customer preferences, optimize channel placement, and tailor your promotions effectively. On average, Experian has 250 behavioral and demographic marketing attributes per individual, which means we can decorate households and people with marketing data to get a full customer profile and fill in any gaps you have on your audience. You can also consider implementing sell-side targeting to help your promotions reach the right people.
If you plan to run early promotions, try not to create deal fatigue among your consumers. Focus on building a few high-quality promotions that will attract your target customers.
BNPL arrangements will become more common for conversion
Given lingering inflation in the U.S., consumers will still be looking for ways to stretch their money this year, and many shoppers may seek out BNPL arrangements. According to Deloitte, 37% of shoppers have used these services historically, and these arrangements have proven to increase conversions by up to 30%.
With so many shoppers wanting the financial convenience of making large purchases without the immediate financial burden, marketers can use data enrichment to identify their target segments most likely to use BNPL and create personalized offers and promotions for them. Your strategy should include high-value offers and messaging that appeal to budget-conscious shoppers and a checkout optimized for BNPL options.
Channel switching will surge
Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are starting to become channel-agnostic, with consumers browsing online, on mobile apps, in physical stores, and on social media. As such, they expect a unified experience wherever they browse. Any inconsistency can disrupt the purchase journey and deter potential buyers.
As the shopping experience becomes more connected, consumers are moving between channels more frequently, which means integrating data from various touchpoints will be crucial to understanding and predicting customer behavior. Marketers must develop cohesive omnichannel strategies with consistent messaging and promotions across channels. Your campaigns should span multiple channels so customers can engage with your brand in various ways.
We work with major platforms, marketers, and agencies, which means we have existing partnerships across the ecosystem for you to connect with and bring your consumer data to life to meet your needs.
Paid search will drive the most sales
Research from Adobe shows paid search as the top sales driver of Cyber Week 2023, comprising nearly 30% of all online sales. Due to the high-intent customers captured by paid search and the surge in shopping on mobile devices, we expect to see paid search drive much of the Black Friday sales in 2024 — especially as advances in data analytics and AI allow marketers to optimize paid search campaigns more effectively. They can analyze vast amounts of data to refine keywords, ad copy, and bidding strategies for higher ROI and better targeting.
In 2024, it’s essential to prioritize paid search strategies and focus on using relevant, high-performing keywords for your campaigns. You can continuously refine your strategies using AI and data analytics to target high-intent customers. Additionally, integrating insights from customer behavior data will help you create more personalized, impactful ad copy and heighten the effectiveness of your paid search efforts.
Experian can help you win Black Friday 2024
Want your marketing campaigns to stand out and reach your audiences on Black Friday this year? Partner with Experian to create data-driven, targeted, impactful 2024 holiday campaigns.
Our data empowers you to gain valuable insights and optimize your holiday marketing strategies. We can connect online and physical transactions to our Experian household ID for a holistic view of customer behavior, connect ad exposure with foot traffic, or employ control group lift analysis to measure campaign effectiveness. By activating our purchase-based holiday audiences, like last-minute and one-stop holiday shoppers, you can reach the segments most likely to spend with you. Integrating with over 150 channels, we’ll help your campaigns reach your audience wherever they are. You can even utilize our connections to various digital platforms and partners to expand your reach.
With Experian’s measurement offerings, you can make data-driven decisions about your activation strategies. Engage the right audiences and drive exceptional results this holiday season with Experian.
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Advertisers continue to increase their spending across addressable TV, connected TV (CTV), and digital. According to IAB's "2021 Video Ad Spend and 2022 Outlook" report, digital video ad spending is expected to increase by 26% to $49.2 billion in 2022. Understanding who consumers are and how to best reach them in their preferred channel is becoming more complex. Damian Amitin and Colleen Dawe discuss how a seamless identity strategy can address the complexity of the emerging TV space. The evolution of identity resolution Around ten years ago, the idea of digital “identity resolution” or “Device Graphs” was born. This idea connected cookies and MAIDs to understand when many IDs were the same person or household. In more recent years, our industry began to connect that initial understanding to the CTV ecosystem. But, a large part of the TV ecosystem existed in silos, like first and third-party audience data, and the growing advanced TV market. The goal of identity resolution has always been to understand the consumer better. To achieve more accurate targeting and measurement in the CTV ecosystem, we must incorporate the following: What we know about the household and consumer from an ID perspective Who the consumer is as it relates to audience data, as well as the wealth of first-party data in the advanced TV space We know the cookie is a flawed way to collect data. While Google delayed the deprecation of third-party cookies, there are other challenges that we face right now. Such as the glaring gap in Safari traffic and the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) turning to “opt-in." Understanding consumer behavior across devices and platforms continues to challenge marketers and publishers. These challenges are creating the need to find more stable identifiers. Though the cookie remains valuable, it has an uncertain future. This has led advertisers to place bigger bets on the combination of addressable and CTV. The overlap in addressable and CTV data leads to fragmentation Personally identifiable information (PII) makes up the majority of addressable TV households' data. Part of the attraction to CTV is that their IDs remain universal, persistent, and stable. Analysts project that CTV ad spending will hit $23B in 2023. Consumers now have an average of 4.7 streaming subscriptions per household. It’s no surprise then, that Disney+, HBO, and Netflix released or announced ad-supported tiers. Addressable TV and CTV are often thought of as distinct markets across the industry. But, in the context of identity, we should look at them through the same lens. Millions of households still consume TV and video content via a set-top box or through apps on CTVs. This is in addition to what they consume on their laptops, tablets, and phones. Of the top 11 cable and satellite providers, 65 million U.S. households still have a box in their homes. On the other hand, approximately 96 million U.S. households have at least one or more Smart TVs and streaming services. With about 126 million total U.S. TV households, that’s a lot of overlap. There are still significant numbers of both addressable and CTV homes. How can we address fragmented TV consumption? Through a holistic and comprehensive approach to identity. An approach that captures addressable TV, CTV, and digital identifiers. An approach that captures all audience attributes inside of a single identity graph. This is the ideal approach for publishers, AdTech vendors, and brands. Discover how to unlock holistic identity How can we achieve a holistic identity? Through a three-pillared approach: First-party data onboarding Digital identifiers Consumer data First-party data onboarding Bringing offline data from a brand’s consumers is very valuable due to the quality of the data. Because the data is being collected right from the source, you know it’s accurate. It provides the foundation you can build your identity strategy from. Digital identifiers Once you create a foundation with first-party data, you need to connect it. Either with an internal or licensed digital ID graph. Then you can understand the connections between all devices within the household. Consumer data After you know which devices tie to a single consumer, you'll want to act on that knowledge. The next step is to partner with a data provider that can help you understand your consumers. Establishing this partnership will help improve targeting, measurement, and the customer experience. To achieve a well-rounded customer view tomorrow, we need to start today The three-pillared approach bridges the gap between the offline and online worlds. This provides a well-rounded view of customers and audiences. However, the ability to tie these aspects of identity together still presents several challenges. To achieve the three-pillared approach today, you need to use many vendors and fragmented data sources. Often with conflicting data. As we look forward, the tools to do this are becoming more advanced and unified. The players in our ecosystem should adopt a seamless identity strategy. One that provides a privacy-safe yet full-picture solution. That means capturing and unifying all devices within a household. While also understanding the consumer behaviors and profiles behind those devices. As TV becomes more sophisticated, our data and services will enable you to unlock a holistic identity. Chris Feo, SVP of Advanced TV and Platforms, spoke with Broadcasting & Cable about how our data powers measurement, audience insights, and results for businesses within the TV space. "As more and more companies enter the general TV space, whether you're a publisher, an advertiser or anyone in between that's doing measurement, insights, analytics, our data or our services will play a role in some part of that value exchange." – Chris Feo, SVP of Advanced TV and Platforms, Experian Marketing Services Keep up with your customers and their data Once we create an informed identity strategy, we can begin to understand the makeup of each household and the individuals within. In this new world, personalizing the experience for an audience is key. Where do they prefer to spend their time? What type of content are they most engaged in? Only then can we as an industry provide an optimal experience for each consumer. All while driving greater ROI for advertisers and publishers. Are you ready to know more about your customers than ever before? Let's get to work together to achieve your marketing goals. Contact us to learn how we can connect the complex dots of identity resolution. About our experts Damian Amitin, VP of Enterprise Partnerships, Experian Marketing Services Damian Amitin is the VP of Enterprise Partnerships and joined Experian during the Tapad acquisition in November 2020. Damian is a senior sales and partnerships executive, specializing in the identity resolution and marketing data ecosystem. Damian helps brands, publishers, and technology vendors enable enhanced ID resolution through The Experian/Tapad platform to attain a 360 view of the customer across targeting analytics, attribution, and personalization. Colleen Dawe, Senior Account Executive, Experian Marketing Services Colleen Dawe is a Senior Account Executive on the Advanced TV Team within Experian Marketing Services. With 15 years of experience working within the television ecosystem, Colleen works with clients to bring the value and expertise of Experian to support their objectives in the areas of data, identity, activation, and measurement.