Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM)

Table of Contents

  1. Definition
  2. Why BFCM matters for marketing
  3. How it works
    1. The BFCM calendar
    2. How to calculate BFCM performance
  4. How to utilize BFCM
  5. BFCM compared with other retail sales events
  6. Best practices
  7. Future trends
  8. FAQs
  9. Related Terms
  10. Listen: The Agile Brand podcast
  11. Sources

Definition

Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) is the retail sales period that runs from the Friday after U.S. Thanksgiving through the following Monday. Black Friday is the Friday itself. Cyber Monday is the Monday after it, originally named as an online-shopping counterpart to Black Friday’s in-store crowds. Most retailers and analysts now treat the two days, plus Thanksgiving Day and the weekend between them, as one promotional event. The five-day stretch from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday is usually called Cyber Week, though some data providers (Salesforce, for one) define Cyber Week as a seven-day window starting the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

In 2026, Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 26. Black Friday is November 27 and Cyber Monday is November 30.

The name has two separate origins. “Black Friday” started as police slang in Philadelphia, where the traffic squad used it for the gridlock and crowds on the day after Thanksgiving; the term was in common police use by 1961, and Philadelphia Bulletin reporters helped spread it. The popular story that the name refers to retailers moving from “in the red” to “in the black” came later. Its earliest known use dates to 1981. “Cyber Monday” was coined by Ellen Davis of the National Retail Federation’s Shop.org division in a press release dated November 28, 2005, based on research showing the Monday after Thanksgiving was already one of the biggest online shopping days of the year.

See also: Average Order Value (AOV) · Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) · Seasonality in Marketing Measurement · Incrementality

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Why BFCM matters for marketing

BFCM is the single most concentrated revenue window on the U.S. retail calendar, and for many direct-to-consumer brands it’s the largest acquisition event of the year. Marketing teams plan creative, media budgets, email and SMS calendars, site capacity, and inventory around it, often starting in late summer.

The scale is large. Adobe Analytics recorded $44.2 billion in U.S. online spending across Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday 2025, up 7.7% year over year. Cyber Monday alone hit $14.25 billion, the biggest online shopping day Adobe has ever measured, with a peak of roughly $16 million spent per minute between 8 and 10 p.m. ET. Black Friday reached $11.8 billion online.

Foot traffic still matters too. The NRF counted a record 202.9 million shoppers, in stores and online, across the 2025 Thanksgiving-to-Cyber Monday weekend. That beat its own pre-season forecast of 186.9 million by a wide margin.

For marketers, BFCM touches several disciplines at once:

  • Customer acquisition. Discounts lower the barrier for first-time buyers, which makes BFCM a high-volume (and often expensive) acquisition window.
  • Media buying. Auction-based ad prices on search, social, and programmatic channels typically rise in Q4 as more advertisers compete for the same inventory.
  • Owned channels. Email and SMS volumes spike. Salesforce reported 56.3 billion marketing messages sent through its Agentforce Marketing platform during Cyber Week 2025.
  • Measurement. BFCM distorts year-over-year comparisons, attribution windows, and media mix models, so analysts have to account for it explicitly.
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How it works

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The BFCM calendar

Day2026 dateTypical focus
Thanksgiving DayThu, Nov 26Online “early access” deals; some stores closed
Black FridayFri, Nov 27Doorbusters in store; heavy online promotions
Small Business SaturdaySat, Nov 28Independent and local retailers (founded by American Express in 2010)
SundaySun, Nov 29Online browsing and cart building; growing in-store traffic
Cyber MondayMon, Nov 30Largest online sales day of the year in the U.S.
GivingTuesdayTue, Dec 1Nonprofit fundraising (founded in 2012 at New York’s 92nd Street Y)

The window keeps stretching. Retailers now open “Black Friday” pricing in early November, and Amazon’s October Prime Big Deal Days pull some holiday spend forward. Adobe’s 2026 forecast still has Cyber Week carrying 17.3% of all November–December online spend, though, so the core days haven’t lost their weight.

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How to calculate BFCM performance

BFCM doesn’t have a single formula. It’s an event, and teams measure it with a handful of standard calculations.

1. BFCM share of season revenue

BFCM share (%) = BFCM-window revenue ÷ total holiday-season revenue × 100

Adobe’s 2026 forecast puts Cyber Week at $47.5 billion of a projected $275.1 billion season. That works out to about 17.3%.

2. Incremental lift over baseline

Incremental revenue = BFCM-window revenue − expected baseline revenue for the same days

The baseline is usually built from a comparable non-promotional period, adjusted for seasonality, or from a holdout group that didn’t receive the offer.

3. Promotional contribution margin

Revenue growth can hide profit loss. Discount depth has to be netted out:

Promo contribution = (Units sold × (Sale price − Unit cost)) − Promo costs (media, fees, shipping subsidies)

An illustrative example (not benchmark data): a skincare brand sells a $60 serum with a $20 unit cost. At 30% off, the sale price is $42 and unit margin drops from $40 to $22. The brand needs to sell roughly 1.8 times its normal unit volume just to match its regular gross margin dollars, before counting any extra ad spend.

4. BFCM cohort value

Cohort repeat rate = Customers acquired during BFCM who purchase again within N days ÷ Total customers acquired during BFCM

Comparing BFCM-acquired cohorts against customers acquired at full price, on repeat rate and customer lifetime value (CLV), shows whether the event is bringing in lasting customers or one-time deal seekers.

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How to utilize BFCM

Common use cases:

  • New-customer acquisition. Brands accept thinner margins on a first order in exchange for a customer they can re-market to at full price later. The math only works if the LTV:CAC ratio holds up.
  • Inventory clearance. Retailers use BFCM to move aged or end-of-season stock before year-end.
  • AOV growth. Tiered offers (“$20 off $100, $50 off $200”), bundles, and free-shipping thresholds push basket size up. Shopify merchants averaged a $114.70 cart over BFCM 2025.
  • List building. Early-access sign-ups in October and November grow email and SMS lists ahead of the event. That’s zero-party data the brand owns afterward.
  • Loyalty rewards. Early or exclusive access for loyalty members rewards existing customers rather than discounting only for new ones.
  • Omnichannel fulfillment. Buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) and curbside options let shoppers skip shipping cutoffs and lines.
  • Payment flexibility. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) drove $1.03 billion in online spending on Cyber Monday 2025 alone, per Adobe.

Some brands choose not to participate. Patagonia and REI are among the better-known companies that have run counter-programming (repair campaigns, store closures) instead of discounts. That’s a positioning decision, and it carries its own trade-offs.

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BFCM compared with other retail sales events

EventTimingOriginPrimary channelTypical discount depthNotes
Black FridayFriday after U.S. ThanksgivingPhiladelphia police slang, early 1960sIn store and onlineUp to ~30% online (Adobe, 2026 forecast for Cyber Week)Still the top in-store traffic day
Cyber MondayMonday after U.S. ThanksgivingNRF / Shop.org press release, 2005OnlineSimilar to Black Friday; electronics deepestLargest U.S. online sales day
Amazon Prime Day / Prime Big Deal DaysJuly and OctoberAmazon, 2015Online, Amazon membersUp to ~19% (Adobe, October 2026)Pulls holiday demand forward
Singles’ Day (11.11)November 11Alibaba promotional event, 2009Online, China and AsiaVariesWorld’s largest online shopping event by GMV in most years
Small Business SaturdaySaturday after ThanksgivingAmerican Express, 2010Local and independent storesVaries“Shop Small” positioning, not deep discounting
Boxing DayDecember 26UK and Commonwealth traditionIn store and onlinePost-holiday clearanceClearance rather than gifting
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Best practices

  1. Plan the calendar early. Lock offers, creative, and inventory commitments by late summer. Q4 media gets more expensive as the event approaches, so prospecting audiences in September and October is usually cheaper than in November.
  2. Model the margin, not just the revenue. Run the contribution-margin math above for every offer before it launches. A 40% sitewide discount can produce a record sales day and a loss.
  3. Keep reference prices honest. In the U.S., the FTC’s Guides Against Deceptive Pricing (16 CFR Part 233) say a “was” price should be the actual, bona fide price the item was openly offered at for a reasonable period. Inflating a price just before the sale to make the cut look deeper is the textbook example of a deceptive comparison.
  4. Load-test the site. Traffic peaks are sharp. Shopify merchants hit $5.1 million in sales per minute at 12:01 p.m. ET on Black Friday 2025. Run load tests and freeze non-essential code deploys during the event window.
  5. Design for mobile first. Mobile accounted for 57.5% of U.S. online spend on Cyber Monday 2025 (Adobe) and about 70% of online orders globally during Cyber Week (Salesforce). Checkout friction on a phone costs more during BFCM than at any other time.
  6. Segment the offer. Give loyalty members early access, give lapsed customers a win-back offer, and avoid sending deep discounts to customers who’d buy at full price anyway.
  7. Manage email and SMS deliverability. Warm up sending volume gradually in the weeks before BFCM and keep authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) in order. Mailbox providers throttle senders whose volume jumps suddenly.
  8. Prepare customer service and returns. Staff up (or configure AI agents) for order-status questions, and publish holiday return windows clearly before the sale starts.
  9. Measure incrementality. Use holdout groups or geo tests to separate sales the promotion created from sales it simply discounted. See Holdout Campaign.
  10. Follow up after the event. BFCM-acquired customers need a post-purchase sequence. Without one, repeat-purchase rates for this cohort tend to trail full-price cohorts.
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AI shopping assistants and agents. Generative AI traffic to U.S. retail sites jumped 670% on Cyber Monday 2025 compared with the year before, according to Adobe, and Adobe expects AI-referred traffic to rise another 130% across the 2026 season. Salesforce estimated that AI and agents influenced 20% of global Cyber Week orders in 2025, about $67 billion in sales. As shopping agents compare prices and check out on a consumer’s behalf, product feed quality and machine-readable offer data start to matter as much as banner creative. See Agentic Commerce and Product Feed Optimization for AI.

A longer, flatter season. “Black Friday” pricing now starts weeks early, and October events compete for the same budgets. Even so, Adobe forecasts Black Friday 2026 online spend growing faster (9.2%) than Cyber Monday (6.2%), which suggests the core days still anchor the season rather than fading into it.

Higher prices, flat units. Salesforce found that average selling prices rose 6% during Cyber Week 2025 while global order volume grew just 2%. A lot of the reported growth is price, not more items. That’s an important distinction when reading headline numbers.

Payments and mobile. BNPL and mobile wallets keep gaining share. Adobe projects $21.3 billion in BNPL online spend for November and December 2026, with 82% of it on mobile devices.

Social and creator commerce. Social platforms drove about 15% of global retailer site traffic during Cyber Week 2025 per Salesforce, and TikTok’s share of social traffic grew 55% year over year.

Delivery over discount. Shoppers are increasingly weighing guaranteed delivery dates and easy returns alongside price, which pushes fulfillment and last-mile delivery into the marketing conversation.

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FAQs

What does BFCM stand for? BFCM stands for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It refers to the Friday after U.S. Thanksgiving, the following Monday, and usually the weekend in between.

When are Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2026? Black Friday is Friday, November 27, 2026. Cyber Monday is Monday, November 30, 2026.

Why is it called Black Friday? Philadelphia police used the term in the early 1960s to describe the traffic jams and crowds on the day after Thanksgiving. The “retailers go into the black” explanation is a later rationalization, first recorded in 1981.

Who created Cyber Monday? Ellen Davis of the National Retail Federation’s Shop.org coined the term in a November 2005 press release. It was meant to encourage online shopping on a day research already showed was busy.

Is Cyber Monday bigger than Black Friday? Online, yes. Cyber Monday 2025 generated $14.25 billion in U.S. online sales versus $11.8 billion for Black Friday, per Adobe. Black Friday remains the bigger day for in-store shopping and draws the most combined shoppers, according to NRF.

What is Cyber Week? Cyber Week usually means the five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. Some providers use a longer window. Salesforce’s 2025 Cyber Week ran from November 25 to December 1.

Why do BFCM sales figures differ so much between sources? Each source measures something different. Adobe tracks U.S. online transactions on retail sites using Adobe Analytics. Salesforce models global spend across more than 1.5 billion shoppers in 89+ countries. Shopify reports gross merchandise volume from its own merchants only. NRF surveys consumers. Comparing a figure from one source with another’s prior year will produce misleading growth rates.

Does BFCM hurt brand equity? It can. Frequent or deep discounting can train customers to wait for sales and lower the price they consider fair. Brands manage the risk by limiting discount frequency, using value-adds (gifts with purchase, free shipping) instead of straight price cuts, or restricting the deepest offers to loyalty members.

How early should marketers start BFCM planning? Many teams start offer and inventory planning in July or August and begin audience building in September. Creative, site testing, and email warm-up typically run through October.

Do BFCM customers come back? It depends on the brand and the offer. The only reliable way to know is to track BFCM-acquired cohorts against full-price cohorts on repeat purchase rate and CLV over 90 to 365 days.

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  1. Average Order Value (AOV)
  2. Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL)
  3. Buy Online, Pick Up In Store (BOPIS)
  4. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
  5. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
  6. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
  7. Incrementality
  8. Seasonality in Marketing Measurement
  9. Shopping Agent
  10. Retail Media Network
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Listen: The Agile Brand podcast

Statistics in this entry reflect the 2025 BFCM results and 2026 forecasts published as of October 2026.

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Sources

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