Black Friday Weekend - In Review.

There's been mixed reviews for Black Friday weekend this year. Platforms like Shopify have reported incredible revenue growth for retailers but that data might not be all that it seems. When you consider all the new merchants trading on Shopify this year compared to last, numbers may have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Our friends at Northbeam have been keeping an eye on things across platforms and industries so lets dive into some data and you can see how you faired in comparison to the rest of the ecommerce landscape.

Black Friday Weekend, Year on Year Comparisons.

All data displayed below compares the period of Thanksgiving - Cyber Monday in 2022 vs 2023 which we will continue to refer to as BF/CM weekend.

Auction Metrics.

The platform auctions seem tough this year on first look with Google and Meta fairing the worst when it comes to cost efficiency. Google CPM and CPCs are up confirming the competitvness of the platform but click through rate dropped. We see CTR drop even further with Meta. Similarly we see Tiktok becoming more expensive as more and more brands throw their hat into the ring of Tiktok ads. CTR again dropped in comparison to last year which starts to pose the question as to whether it is still the cheap but high performing platform we've heard so much about!

Its not all doom and gloom though as we see Pinterest rise through the ashes to really positive auction insights. Although the percentage of investment for the platform is much lower, brands making good use of Pinterest should have seen some golden shoots over this BF/CM period with cheaper ads and a higher CTR.

Conversion Metrics.

Again we see a lot of red across this years conversion metrics with Tiktok struggling in particular. There could be a few reasons that we are seeing that trend such as:

• Consumer intent to buy is down because buyers are being far more cautious with their spending and are more aware of spending unnecessarily

• Consumer intent to buy is down because discounts are not as generous as we've seen in previous years. Where consumers have been used to seeing 50%+ discounts, we are now seeing 15%+ off and the incentive for consumers is far lower

• The impact of BF/CM has drastically reduced as brands now offer discounts far further in advance; sometimes weeks before Thanksgiving itself. This then dilutes the impact of the 4 day period as many may have already purchased what they wanted to in the lead up period

Now seeing ROAS figures drop does not necessarily less revenue generated as we'll discuss in the next section but could indicate just how much more expensive it is now to advertise over this period. If your profit margins are already taking a hit from discounting, perhaps assessing the true value of Black Friday would be smart before investing in the holiday again next year.

Revenue Comparisons

All data sets displayed are Blended Revenue. Revenue from all channels has been combined and compared to the same last year.

As we mentioned before, its not all bad news. We've seen a lot of red in our data so far but now its time for some green!

If your brand sits within Sport & Fitness and Beauty & Personal Care, you should have seen a real uptick in performance compared to last year. As consumers invest more time and money into taking care of themselves (or others) we see these industries thrive in comparison to those we may expect to perform well such as Food and Home & Garden.

One thing to note is the time at which consumers seem to be purchasing. It would seem that there is no longer a mad rush to purchase everything on Black Friday and Black Friday only. In fact, consumers seem to be spending across the whole of the weekend with Cyber Saturday being particularly popular.

Long Story, Short.

BF/CM is much more expensive, much more competitive but generally still successful for most industries.

Conversion data would point to consumers being far more calculated with what and where they are spending their money; potentially researching in advance what they will be buying rather than making impulse purchases based on promotional advertising.

Take a look at how this year BF/CM has affect your actual profits. Has an increase in ad spend and lower ROAS coupled with a lower profit margin affected the real success of this period for you.