American consumers are driving record-breaking Black Friday sales, with online spending hitting $8. 6 billion by early evening and projections now suggesting the total could surpass initial forecasts, according to Adobe Analytics. By 6:30 p. m. ET, online spending showed 9. 4% growth compared to last year, exceeding Adobe’s original estimate of 8. 3%. Adobe now predicts total Black Friday online sales will reach between $11. 7 billion and $11. 9 billion, setting a new single-day online shopping record. The data is based on analysis of over 1 trillion visits to U. S. retail sites and covers 100 million products across 18 categories. Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, noted that nearly half of surveyed U. S.

consumers believe Black Friday offers the best deals this season, prompting many to shop before Cyber Monday. This strong performance positions a robust Cyber Week, spanning Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, which Adobe projects will total $43. 7 billion—a 6. 3% increase from last year—and represent 17. 2% of the holiday season’s overall spending. Top-selling items include televisions, the new Nintendo Switch 2, Apple AirPods 4, and Oura Ring 4, along with kitchen products like KitchenAid mixers and storage containers, washers and dryers, bicycles, and basketball hoops. Adobe’s survey found 50% of respondents plan to shop for apparel and accessories, 40% for toys, and 36% for computers and electronics online on Black Friday. The spending surge is fueled by deeper discounts than expected: electronics had markdowns up to 29%, toys 28%, apparel 25%, and televisions 24%, with computers, appliances, furniture, and sporting goods seeing cuts ranging from 19% to 23%. Shoppers are increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) tools, with AI-driven traffic to retail sites expected to grow 600% year-over-year. Nearly half of surveyed consumers have used or plan to use AI for deal-finding, product research, and recommendations. This trend aligns with efforts by companies like OpenAI, which recently added a shopping research feature to ChatGPT that creates personalized buyer’s guides through interactive questions and web data aggregation. Mobile shopping dominates, accounting for 58. 6% of online sales so far, totaling $5. 1 billion—a year-over-year increase of 11. 3%—and surpassing last year’s 55% mobile share. Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) options also gained traction, expected to facilitate $761. 8 million in Black Friday spending, an 11% increase from last year. Most BNPL purchases (82. 4%) occur on mobile devices, predominantly for electronics, apparel, toys, and furniture.