2020 Cyber Monday Wrap-Up - USA

Black Friday may be the most publicised shopping day of the year, but for ecommerce sales, Cyber Monday is the bigger day. This year Cyber Monday ecommerce sales are forecast to grow to $12.89bn, 38% more than 2019, and manufacturers shouldn’t forget about Saturday or Sunday either, as the weekend between Black Friday and Cyber Monday accounts for $9.83bn* in ecommerce sales as well.

Manufacturers therefore must ensure that their search strategy is optimised for the entire Cyber 5 weekend, not just for Black Friday.

In this analysis, Edge by Ascential will look at the most popular search terms across the five days of the Cyber 5 holiday weekend to see how Amazon rankings have changed, and which brands were in place to excel.
 

Television

Samsung had the greatest share for “TV” on three days of Cyber 5 with the exception of Saturday and Cyber Monday. On Cyber Monday, it was TCL that was best-performer as it occupied half the search results, it also had a 40% share on Saturday.

Samsung and TCL shared the spoils on Black Friday and Cyber Monday for “4K TV” with 30% each of the top ten. Results at the weekend were significantly different, in particular on Sunday, where Hisense, which previously had not been in the top ten, garnered a 60% share.

Consumer Electronics

Acer was arguably the best-performing brand in Laptops, as it controlled at least 30% of the top ten search results throughout the weekend. Although Microsoft only appeared in the top ten on three days, it controlled the top position on each of those days thanks to investment in the paid positions.

For the term “Smart Home,” Kasa Smart Plugs had the greatest share on all days but Saturday. Its best performance was on Black Friday with 60% of Share, although this dropped to 40% on Cyber Monday with Amazon and Eufy gaining some ground.

Unsurprisingly, Amazon’s Fire Tablets had a significant share of search across all days for the term “Tablet”. However, like “Laptops”, Microsoft controlled the top spot with paid ads,  indicating the tech giant came into the holiday weekend with a specific strategy to beat its rivals.

Home Appliances

Vitamix had the joint-greatest share on Black Friday and Cyber Monday with Black+Decker and Blendtec respectively. However, Vitamix also managed to feature in the top ten on the Saturday or Sunday where Nutribullet and Hamilton Beach were prominent.

For “Coffee Machine,” Keurig led the way with 40% of results on Sunday and Cyber Monday, and controlled 30% share on Black Friday, finishing behind Nespresso (De’Longhi). No Nespresso machines made the top ten on Cyber Monday.

Bissell dominated results for “Vacuum Cleaner” on Thursday and Black Friday with half of the top ten including the coveted second and third results. Bissel also led the way on Cyber Monday with a comfortable lead over Eureka, despite overall share slipping to 40%. 

Health & Beauty

Moroccanoil occupied the top three positions on the first four days of Cyber 5, however dropped completely out of the top 10 once Cyber Monday rolled around. Paul Mitchell had a 40% share, having not appeared on any other day of Cyber 5, but it was Conair products in the top two spots.

Colgate clearly invested in pushing its new “hum by Colgate” range as it had the top three positions on every single day of Cyber 5. Oral-B did its best to compete and occupied the spots behind Colgate on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Derek Lam and Tokyomilk had equal representation on Black Friday, although Tokyomilk controlled the most visible top three positions. On Cyber Monday the same situation played out with Clean Classic and Vera Wang enjoying equal share but with Clean Classic controlling the top three results.
 

Baby

LÍLLÉbaby had a strong 40% share for “Baby Carrier” on Black Friday and the day after, however come Cyber Monday, it had no products returning in the top ten with Boba gaining a 50% share, improving from 40% the day before.

No brands performed particularly strongly for “Baby Monitor.” Goodbaby had a 20% share for the first four days of Cyber 5 but dropped to 10% on Cyber Monday, while Vava saw its share increase to 20%.

Graco was the leading brand for “Stroller” with 40% of results on Black Friday, Saturday and Cyber Monday, far ahead of the other brands. However, it did not return any products on Thanksgiving, when Baby Jogger had 40% of results.

Sports and Leisure
 

Fitbit was largely the best performer across both the “Activity Tracker” and “Fitness Tracker” search terms. It controlled 30% of results on Black Friday for both terms and the same percentage for “Activity Tracker” on Cyber Monday. However, for “Fitness Tracker” it fell to 10% while Lintelek and Yamay each had two products each in the top ten.

“Weights” returned a large number of products that were not sold or fulfilled by Amazon, so it was no surprise that 22 different brands appeared in the top ten positions across Cyber 5. Wolfyok had the greatest visibility of the brands with 30% of results on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

As we’ve seen, most categories saw significant changes in key search results over the Cyber 5 period. Some brands such as Moroccanoil and Nespresso appeared to favour Black Friday itself, while others, like Boba and TCL, targeted Cyber Monday. These changes illustrate how intensely brands jockeyed for position to take the largest possible share of the flood ecommerce revenue this year.

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