7 Top Takeaways from Black Friday and Cyber Monday Weekend

We can’t tell you if your people have been naughty or nice – we’ll leave that to jolly old St. Nick. But with a people-based marketing platform that reaches a verified audience of more than 250 million monthly, we can definitely tell you how ads have performed.

Take Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the weekend in between. We pulled advertising performance data across our exchange and have made a list of our findings. And yes, we’ve checked it twice. Here goes:

1. The first official shopping days of the holiday season produced a gift for marketers.

Total conversions were 36% higher and total clicks were 19% higher than the typical time period.

 

2. Shoppers are more comfortable making purchases from their mobile devices today than they were in 2018.

That’s clear to us because a large percentage of our inventory is on mobile, and total conversions year-over-year are up 27% and total clicks year-over-year are up 4%.

 

3. Phone ads saw the most traffic, but tablet ads had the best conversion rates.

Tablets had a 25% higher click-through rate and 9% higher conversion rate than phones. However, phones received 3x more clicks and 2x more conversions than tablets. (Side note: Given the astounding number of people using their phones to read emails, it’s critical to think “mobile first” when creating an email campaign.)

 

4. Ads in news and shopping newsletters performed the best.

Those newsletters received 11x more clicks and 10x more conversions compared to other categories. The poorest performing newsletter categories were “real estate,” “pets,” and “personal finance.” In total, they saw 20x lower clicks and 30x lower conversions as compared to the average time period.

 

The advertiser sectors “technology and computing,” “style and fashion,” and “shopping” performed the best collectively with 10x higher clicks and 4x higher conversions as compared to the overall exchange average.

 

6. Women and older audiences responded the best to Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.

Females had a 15% higher conversion rate than males and were responsible for 35% more clicks. In addition, the age groups 45–54, 55, 64, and 65+ performed the best with a collective 27% higher click-through rate and 35% higher conversation rate than other age groups.

 

7. Night owls weren’t shopping on Cyber Monday and Black Friday.

The hours of 9 am to 3 pm performed the best with 50% higher clicks and 46% higher conversions as compared to the average time period. The hours of 1 am to 5 am performed the worst with 80% fewer clicks and 73% fewer conversions as compared to the average time period.

So there it is: We hope our findings can help you plan for next year’s big shopping weekend and the campaigns you’ll run in the new year. For some additional analysis, please check out the Street Fight piece that features some wise words from our senior vice president of global marketing, Kerel Cooper.

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Learn more about how LiveIntent can help diversify and scale your digital advertising strategy into a channel that offers the same benefits, features and functionality: Email. Learn more on our Advertising Solutions page.