Adobe predicts record $12B in Cyber Monday sales

Adobe (ADBE) projects Cyber Monday online spending to top $12 billion, making it the biggest US e-commerce shopping day ever. Shoppers have already dropped $10.3 billion on Cyber Weekend sales, up nearly 8% year-over-year.

With widespread discounts and buy now, pay later flexibility, Adobe VP of Growth & Insights Patrick Brown, expects huge demand for electronics and toys as shoppers take advantage of promotions. Brown expects discounting to reach 30% off.

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SEANA SMITH: Cyber Monday is set to break records. Adobe expecting folks to spend upwards of $12 billion today. That's higher than initial projections. And it would also make this year's Cyber Monday the biggest online shopping day of all time. Now shoppers have already spent a whopping $10.3 billion over Saturday and Sunday. And surpassing the e-commerce spend on Black Friday.

Now sales across the three days were up almost 8%. Though people are shopping more, many though, are turning to buy now, pay later to stretch their budgets. Adobe predicting that the BNPL usage will hit a record high today.

With us now for more, we want to bring in Patrick Brown. He's Adobe's Vice President of Growth Insights. Patrick, it's great to have you here. So breaking down some of the spending that you're anticipating to see today and really what we've already seen play out over the last several days is that because we're seeing an increase in demand or is it simply because higher prices are driving these year over year jumps?

PATRICK BROWN: Yeah, it's a great question. And so what we're looking at just a quick touch on the actual data is we're looking at through Adobe Analytics, actual online transactions. And we break those into about 18 different products SKUs because it's like 100 million product SKUs that we're looking at. And 18 different categories like electronics and toys. And we trend that over time.

And so what we're seeing when we turn that in our data is strong growth like you called out, which was about a 5% increase on Thanksgiving, acceleration of about 8% through Black Friday. And then even another 8% over the weekend. So really strong growth. The biggest driver for that we see is the discounting. And so we see discounts of around 20%, 25% on products like electronics and toys through the weekend. And we expect that to peak with discounts around 30% today on Cyber Monday.

One of the big drivers, like you did call out, is an increase in buy now, pay later. And so people are seeing bigger discounts. They're leveraging credit and different ways to defer payments to be able to take advantage of some of those good deals that they are seeing. And we're expecting that to peak today.

DIANE KING HALL: So you're expecting that to peak today when you think about the discounting trend. I have seen some brands advertise cyber week. So can we expect to see an extension of some of the discounting through the balance of this week, Patrick?

PATRICK BROWN: Yeah, that's usually what happens. And I think what retailers are seeing is they're seeing some of the strength in the numbers as well. And so depending on how they're looking for the year, they may choose to peak their discounts today, or they may choose to extend them, depending on what they're seeing from a sales perspective.

I think consumer demand, given the numbers that we're seeing and even the increase in our expectation for today is showing to be resilient. Consumers are looking to spend. And I think retailers are realizing that. And we likely will see some of those discounts extending through into December.

SEANA SMITH: Patrick, what are some of the hot sellers? What are people spending on?

PATRICK BROWN: Consistently, it's electronics and toys. Those are the things that really lead the day. We saw a massive increase in online sales in electronics. 171% increase week over week leading into Thanksgiving. And then other categories like toys, jewelry, personal care products, it starts to spread out through the other different categories.

Cyber Monday usually is about technical things, appropriately called. We see electronics. We see TVs. And that's also where we see the peak discounts. We expect today to reach nearly 30% in discounting and some of the areas like electronics.