Amazon announced last week that Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018 have [once again] generated the most amount of sales in the company’s history. While they haven’t provided us with exact numbers, this is no surprise for you either, right?!
“Black Friday and Cyber Monday continue to break records on Amazon year over year, which tells us that customers love shopping for deals to kick off the holiday shopping season” Jeff Wilke, CEO Worldwide Consumer.
The Key Word in Jeff’s statement is “deals”. Consumers are searching and waiting for them. To some, this is just like a drug telling them “I should buy this now. I might not need it, but the price dropped by 50%. I have to have it!”. Amazon is a machine that’s creating and feeding people with this drug and this year was no different. By starting the deals earlier in the week, Amazon has created the concept of Black Friday Week.
Did you know that small and medium-sized businesses grew more than 20% on Black Friday?!
The extended period itself is the one that’s killing the [now traditional] concept of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In Europe for example, the Black Friday deals started the Monday before Black Friday > carried on during the weekend > and then there was also a week of Cyber Monday Deals. While the highest amount of traffic was still on Friday, the prolonged duration of the deals is changing what we know to be Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Did you know that the All new Echo Dot was the #1 selling product on Amazon globally?!
According to Adobe Analytics, in the US alone, Turkey 5* has seen a faster growth in online sales than the traditional Cyber Monday and Black Friday. (Turkey 5 is the name given by Amazon to the days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. The above refers to Thanksgiving, Saturday, and Sunday).
The latest shopping behaviour also challenge the idea of Black Friday as the in-store shopping, and Cyber Monday as the day to purchase online. While this behaviour is more specific to the US, consumers aren’t looking at this in the same way anymore.
With Black Friday becoming Black Friday Week, should we expect a Black Friday Month next year?! What’s sure is that deals and advertising (AMS, AMG, and advertising outside of Amazon) are becoming more and more important to any brand or seller on Amazon. And Amazon itself is the one influencing this.
We didn’t have a nice ACOS on Black Friday.
I guess we were not prepared or took action when it was to late (one week before)
Live and learn, Philip 😀
I’m sure you’ll do better next year. keep in mind that optimisations will need to be done at least 2 weeks before the event in order for the campaigns to build relevancy.