Thanksgiving Day shoppers showed up early and increasingly on mobile devices and with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to grow ecommerce sales overall in 2025. However, year-over-year growth appeared to soften from 2024 as data from some of the leading online retail platforms showed shoppers paying more per item at the expense of sagging order volumes.
Leading into Black Friday, online shoppers still set a new record for Thanksgiving purchases on Nov. 27. Online sales increased 5.3% year over year to reach $6.4 billion for the day, according to analysis from Adobe Analytics. That growth was lower than the 8.8% increase Adobe documented in 2024. In addition, Adobe saw online sales peak midday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. 2025. That was earlier than the evening range of 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. when Thanksgiving online sales peaked in 2024.
Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the Cyber 5, the five-day period that runs through Cyber Monday, which falls on Dec. 1 this year. Adobe also refers to this period as Cyber Week, as does Salesforce, which includes the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
US consumers set Thanksgiving online spending record in 2025
What shares of Thanksgiving ecommerce sales were from mobile devices
61.6% of Thanksgiving Day online spending happened on mobile devices in 2025, according to Adobe data. That was up from 59.5% in 2024 and the first time that Adobe has recorded mobile’s share of online Thanksgiving sales rising above 60%. In total, Adobe saw Thanksgiving mobile spending rise 9.4% year over year to reach $3.9 billion.
Shoppers not only chased deeper discounts that Adobe had not expected until later during Cyber Week. They did so in greater numbers with help from AI.
“The magnitude of discounts was the big story on Thanksgiving yesterday, as retailers leaned into delivering great deals to drive consumer demand online,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights. “This was further propped up by impulse-led mobile shopping and the use of generative AI which assisted shoppers in locating the best deals, two trends that helped deliver higher-than-expected overall spend on Thanksgiving.”
Meanwhile, ecommerce platform provider Salesforce also observed lighter year-over-year growth on Thanksgiving in the U.S., even as global online sales growth remained stable. By the end of the day, Salesforce saw digital sales globally increase 6% from Thanksgiving in 2024 to $35.6 billion. At the same time, digital sales in the U.S. increased 3% to $8.4 billion. In 2024, U.S. digital sales were up 8% year over year, according to Salesforce’s analysts.
Salesforce expects Thanksgiving to see the highest share of mobile activity during Cyber Week, with 80% of site traffic and 75% of digital orders occurring on mobile devices, both globally and in the U.S.
How online shoppers used AI on Thanksgiving
Both Adobe and Salesforce observed AI platforms playing larger roles in ecommerce on Thanksgiving. Those findings come after OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and the AI search platform Perplexity, among other platforms, launched new shopping tools ahead of the holiday season.
Adobe found that AI traffic on Thanksgiving to U.S. retail sites grew by 725% from Thanksgiving in 2024. Notably, Adobe also saw higher conversion rates among shoppers arriving from AI services. It assessed that shoppers from AI services were 54% more likely to purchase than those from other referral sources.
Salesforce analysts came to a similar conclusion, sharing that they observed shoppers from third-party AI agents converting at higher rates than those from social media on Nov. 25 and 26. Globally, Salesforce found that traffic from agentic AI sources converted 600% better than other traffic, while in the U.S., agentic AI sources were 300% better at converting. Agentic AI refers to AI tools that can operate autonomously, performing a range of tasks for agentic commerce and other activities. These tasks vary across multiple levels of agentic commerce capabilities.
Retailers who deployed their own branded AI agents on their websites this holiday season are seeing 8.7% year over year growth over the first two days of Cyber Week, compared to 6.4% growth for retailers without agents. Traffic from third-party consumer AI agents, including ChatGPT and Perplexity, increased 205% worldwide and 252% in the U.S. year over year on those two days, according to Salesforce.
On-site agentic commerce’s role in Thanksgiving sales
“Digital traffic has skyrocketed, indicating shoppers are engaging early to see what’s new and build out their wish lists,” said Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights at Salesforce. “This year, more shoppers are leaning on AI and agents to research products, help them budget, and prepare for the holiday season — a trend retailers are addressing by building their own agentic experiences for shoppers using platforms like Agentforce Commerce.”
Agentforce Commerce is Salesforce’s integrated agentic AI offering for its retail customers. The company found that retailers using agents on their sites saw sales grow 8.7% year over year on Tuesday and Wednesday, more than the 6.4% growth seen by retailers that were not using agents.
Adobe Analytics data is based on more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories, according to the company. 215 online retailers in the Top 2000 use Adobe Analytics for their web analytics, and 106 use it for site design and development. Top 1000 online retailers also use it for content delivery and management, as an ecommerce platform, a marketing platform, for personalization and more.
Salesforce draws on global shopping data from billions of consumers through its Agentforce Commerce, Marketing and Service platform. In North America, 78 of the Top 2000 online retailers use Salesforce as their ecommerce platform. In 2023, those 78 online retailers combined for more than $187.97 billion in web sales.
The Top 2000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of North America’s largest online retailers based on annual ecommerce sales and more.
What Thanksgiving shoppers bought online
Adobe noted spikes in purchase categories across home appliances and electronics on Thanksgiving, when compared with activity in October 2025. Highlights included a 740% rise in video game console sales. Elsewhere, average spending on refrigerators and freezers increased 720%, with spending on exercise equipment, as well as washers and dryers, up 640%.
The company listed specific products that it expects to see among sales leaders across categories, such as Labubu dolls in toys, the iPhone 17 in electronics and Nintendo’s Switch 2 in game consoles.
Discounts helped drive activity, with Salesforce identifying the highest discounts by category globally on the two days before Thanksgiving as those in makeup (40%), skin care (30%) and general apparel (28%). Meanwhile, both globally and in the U.S., the average discount rates for those days stayed flat from 2024 at 22% and 24%, respectively.
Other Thanksgiving ecommerce trends
The ecommerce platform Shopify reported that the U.S. merchants it serves saw their peak sales hour for Thanksgiving activity on Nov. 27 occur at 11 a.m. Eastern. The top three product categories for those merchants were clothing tops, cosmetics and activewear.
Salesforce identified the highest-performing product categories by sales growth on Thanksgiving as home furniture (up 27% year over year), active apparel (up 12%) and toys & learning (up 10%).
Across online retail, buy now, pay later (BNPL) users were responsible for $447.7 million in spending, according to Adobe. That was up 4.1% from Thanksgiving in 2024.
However, Salesforce saw BNPL usage overall remain flat globally year over year among the online retailers it tracks. The company attributed that to consumers preferring convenience and alternative, traditional lending options. In the U.S. specifically, Salesforce observed BNPL usage decline 5%.
Black Friday predictions
Outline projections for Black Friday, Adobe forecasted that online spending would increase 8.3% year over year to $11.7 billion. By the company’s own estimates, that result would outperform year-over-year Cyber Monday growth, which it expects to hit 6.3% as online sales for that day reach $14.2 billion.
Adobe surveyed 1,000 consumers in November 2025 and found that 49% of respondents believed they would find the best deals of the holiday season on Black Friday.
The company also forecasted that mobile shopping would remain elevated on Black Friday, driving 56% of the day’s online sales and accounting for $6.6 billion in spending, which would be up 11.1% from 2024.
Click here to read last year’s update on Thanksgiving Day ecommerce sales.
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