Black Friday — and the holiday shopping season in general — may be more important than ever for retailers in 2025.
But the event has evolved dramatically in recent years.
“The Black Friday that we have come to know and love has changed,” Circana’s Chief Retail Advisor Marshal Cohen told Retail Dive.
Headed into the shopping event this year, consumers were dealing with hits to federally funded support programs and continued inflation as retailers faced dropping consumer sentiment, despite continued spending.
“We've kind of put ourselves in an interesting position of making Black Friday very important, but not as engaged and not a frenzy and not as much of a purchase urgency that we've seen in years past,” Cohen added.
While the term “Black Friday” sounds focused on a singular day, the shopping event has ultimately become more of a multiday event of savings. To that point, it may be too early to tell how much consumers shopped based on early numbers, CI&T Global Director of Retail Strategy and Insights Melissa Minkow said.
“I think it’s too fluid and too confusing at this point to limit Black Friday to just one day given how frequently consumers are being offered deals,” Minkow told Retail Dive.
A clearer picture will emerge as numbers come out from the full Thanksgiving week and Cyber Monday period. Broadly speaking, however, year over year comparisons may be hard to do at the end of 2025 as well, given that 2024 was an election period and such years have historically dampened retail sales.
U.S. e-commerce sales hit $11.8 billion on Black Friday, marking a 9.1% year-over-year increase, per Adobe Analytics data. Meanwhile, Salesforce data found that online Black Friday U.S. sales grew 3% to $18 billion. Shopify’s offline sales data collected from its point of sale channel saw 26% growth year over year in the U.S.
Top line sales growth online and in store rarely tells the full story, though.
There are already insights to glean, with the biggest Black Friday loser emerging: the consumer. Here are the highs and lows from Black Friday so far.
WINNERS
Artificial intelligence usage
AI traffic to U.S. retail websites grew 805% compared to 2024 on Black Friday, per Adobe’s data. AI tools were used the most for the video games, appliances, electronics, toys, personal care and baby product categories. Adobe also found that shoppers who landed on a U.S. retail site from an AI service were 38% more likely to convert to a sale, versus coming from a non-AI traffic source.
Salesforce data found that traffic from third-party AI agent channels increased 300% in the first half of Black Friday compared to last year both globally and in the U.S. Additionally, $3 billion in U.S. online sales were driven by AI and agents during the day.
For customer service, agentic service conversations on Black Friday grew 42% compared to Thanksgiving, per Salesforce.
Retailers with exclusive store perks
With many retailers offering similar discounts on similar products, differentiation for consumers is harder to come by. Companies who offered exclusive gifts and freebies in store may have succeeded at giving shoppers a reason to make the trek to their stores versus others.
“What we saw [Friday] was the only stores that were really busy early in the morning, was basically Target,” Circana’s Cohen said.
The mass retailer offered a free limited-edition tote bag filled with giveaways to the first 100 guests in line at stores on Friday. Meanwhile, Lowe’s gave away a bucket with products to the first 50 customers along with a chance to win an in-stock appliance up to $2,000.
A lack of merchandising newness may have dampened the interest and excitement from shoppers on Black Friday as many of the hottest products are similar to last year’s, Cohen said.
“Build it and they will come, give me a gift, and I'm going to show up,” Cohen added. “So you've got to incentivize the consumer to come to you versus someone else. Now, prices aren't the answer, because everybody's got similar prices.”
LOSERS
Online order volume
Online order volume in the U.S. dropped 1% year over year on Black Friday while average selling prices increased 7%, per Salesforce data.
“Black Friday delivered an important signal for the U.S. economy,” Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights at Salesforce, said in a statement. “On the surface, sales were strong, hitting $18 billion, a 3% jump year-over-year. But with the average selling price for goods climbing 7%, U.S. shoppers continued to feel the bite of inflation.”
Additionally, units per transaction dropped 2% year over year according to Salesforce.
Flat online discounts for consumers
Online discount rates remained flat on Black Friday compared to 2024, Salesforce found, with average discount rates peaking at 28% in the U.S. and 27% globally.
“Most of the affordable specialty apparel retailers offered the same large percentage off deals for the 2025 Black Friday weekend as they did in 2024,” Gartner Analyst Brad Jashinsky said in emailed comments. “The non-discounted prices of some products have increased, but the overall discount messaging has been consistent for many retailers.”
In the electronics category, peak discounts online Friday in the U.S. hit 29% off the listed price compared to a peak of 30.1% in 2024, per Adobe data. Meanwhile, toys discounts peaked at 30% versus 28% last year, televisions were nearly flat at 24.3% versus 24.2%, and furniture was flat at 19%.
“It’s pretty much the deal levels and discount levels that retailers have been offering on various products throughout the year,” CI&T’s Minkow noted.
Buy now, pay later … sort of
Consumers looking to short-term financing is both good and bad. Retailers benefit from consumers making purchases during the holidays, even if it means taking on credit. However, it can have consequences later on if those consumers struggle to make payments.
Buy now, pay later usage on Black Friday was up 8.9% year over year, driving $747.5 million in online spend, per Adobe Analytics.
“There may not be as many gifts, but they're going to spend as much as they can possibly spend, and worry about it in 2026,” Circana’s Cohen told Retail Dive. “That's to be continued at another time. That's the big story of what's going to happen post holiday as the consumer has to navigate all of this extended credit that they've utilized.”
The financing option was most utilized when shopping on mobile devices according to Adobe, which found mobile drove an 80.7% share usage versus desktop yesterday.
HONORABLE MENTION
Store traffic
Measuring store traffic can sometimes be a tricky business, but some early numbers are showing it was a mixed bag on Friday.
Early data from RetailNext — which is collected from tens of thousands of U.S. stores across hundreds of brands operating on its smart store platform — found that in-store traffic on Black Friday was down 3.6% compared to 2024.
“The headline isn’t the drop in traffic, it’s what it confirms,”Joe Shasteen, RetailNext’s global manager of advanced analytics, said in emailed comments. “The era of the impulse holiday spree is ending. Consumers are in control, and they’re treating Black Friday as one data point in a much longer hunt for value.”
Data from AI retail insights company Passby found that the U.S. market saw a 1.17% year over year increase in store traffic based on 53 million analyzed visits. The technology group found that the health and beauty sector specifically saw a drop in visits while department stores thrived.
