At A Glance
Black Friday 2023 revealed that consumers didn’t stop spending, they shopped more selectively. They bought earlier, prioritized mobile, and valued convenience and flexibility. For 2024, marketers should prepare sooner, unify data across channels, and focus on personalized, omnichannel experiences powered by Experian’s identity and audience solutions.In this article…
Holiday 2024 campaign planning is already underway, and the competition for attention will be fierce. Before budgets are finalized and promotions launch, it’s worth taking a data-led look at trends from Black Friday 2023, and what that means for your 2024 strategy.
Experian’s data shows that although shoppers remained cost-conscious, they didn’t stop spending. They simply changed how they spent—shopping earlier, mixing online and in-store purchases, and prioritizing value and convenience. For marketers, these behaviors highlight the importance of connected, data-driven experiences built on trusted identity and insight.
2025 Holiday spending trends and insights report
Download our latest report, in collaboration with GroundTruth, for data-driven insights you can use to refine your messaging and reach the right audience in their preferred channels this holiday season.
What 2023 taught us about holiday spending
Consumer spending slowed but didn’t stop. Inflation and cautious budgets reshaped buying habits, yet U.S. shoppers spent a record $9.8 billion online, a 7.5% increase year-over-year. In-store visits grew 4.6%, proving omnichannel engagement is now standard. Shopify also reported $4.1 billion in global sales across apparel, beauty, and home goods, with 75% of purchases on mobile.
Key takeaway for 2024
Consumers didn’t stop spending, they became more deliberate. Marketers must meet value-conscious shoppers with connected, data-driven experiences across every channel.
When consumers shopped in 2023
Shoppers didn’t wait for Black Friday weekend. Experian’s 2023 Holiday spending trends and insights report found that early deal-seeking peaked in October, as shoppers responded to pre–Black Friday promotions. Cyber Week (Black Friday through Cyber Monday) still played a major role, representing 8% of total holiday spending.
Key takeaway for 2024
Start promotions earlier and align creative, audience targeting, and measurement strategies by mid-summer to capture early intent.
View our 2025 Holiday spending trends and insights here.
Behavioral spending trends to expect in 2024
Marketers can expect several 2023 Black Friday trends to continue through the 2024 holiday season:
Online and mobile will dominate
Online spending continues to outpace in-store, and mobile is leading the charge. In 2023, 54% of all online Black Friday sales occurred on mobile, up 10% year-over-year. Optimizing mobile UX, digital wallets, and push notifications will be critical to keep brands visible at the point of decision.
Consumers will shop earlier
Gallup found that one in four consumers now starts holiday buying by September. Marketers need to push planning and production cycles forward and launch early-bird incentives across digital and in-store channels.
Experiences over things as gifts will grow
A growing segment of shoppers, particularly those with higher disposable income, are gifting experiences (concert tickets, classes, travel packages) over physical items. In a 2023 survey, one in five respondents said they’d prefer to get an experience as a gift over an item. Retailers can adapt by bundling tangible gifts with experiences or hosting “giftable” events that deepen engagement.
Preference for digital channels will continue
Connected TV (CTV) ad spend is expected to grow 20% in 2024, offering new opportunities to reach audiences where they watch. With Experian’s identity and audience solutions, you can target consistently across CTV, social, and digital platforms to manage frequency and performance more effectively.
What consumers bought in 2023
Clothing and electronics led both in-store and online purchases in 2023, followed by toys, health and beauty, and household appliances.
| Category | Percent of in-store buyers | Percent of online buyers |
|---|---|---|
| Clothing and accessories | 82% | 79% |
| Electronics | 73% | 66% |
| Toys | 49% | 44% |
| Health and beauty | 48% | 44% |
| Household appliances | 44% | 36% |
These patterns show that trusted brands win across every channel. Marketers can use Experian’s purchase-based and category-specific audiences to target high-intent buyers ready to buy both online or in-store.
Marketing strategies that worked in 2023
Last year was a year of growth, albeit slow growth, despite economic uncertainty. Here are some of the marketing strategies deployed that contributed to this growth.
Influencer collaborations
Influencers shaped shopping behavior more than ever: seven in 10 shoppers said creator recommendations influenced a purchase. Live product showcases and social content helped brands reach new audiences and reinforce trust.
Cross-channel marketing campaigns
Successful brands unified experiences across email, SMS, CTV, and web.
To maximize sales during the Cyber Five holiday season, activate Experian Audiences as part of your omnichannel campaign. Our offerings include meticulously curated behavioral segments based on discount indicators such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Coupons/Sales. These segments help you target shoppers who are ready to take advantage of your promotions and are primed for early conversion. Our marketing data was ranked #1 in accuracy by Truthset, which means you can power better marketing initiatives, like insights, targeting, and measurement using the highest rated data.
App-only and loyalty offers
App-exclusive deals boosted app-driven sales by 12% year-over-year. Brands that offered exclusive deals through their mobile apps incentivized customers to download and use the app for their purchases, which helped to increase sales through a dedicated channel.
Limited-time and early-access offers
Flash deals, one-day sales, and member-only previews continued to drive urgency during Cyber Week. Retailers that offered limited, targeted value (like Bath & Body Works single-day storewide promotions) achieved higher conversion efficiency than broad discounting.
Predictions for Black Friday 2024
Based on what we’ve seen in 2023, we expect the following trends to shape consumer behavior on Black Friday and beyond in 2024.
Mobile will lead digital sales
Expect mobile to exceed 55% of online sales. Black Friday mobile orders increased from 2022 to 2023, with over 50% of all Black Friday sales occurring on smartphones.
As a marketer, this means you should ensure your website is optimized for smartphones and tablets. Ensure load speed is quick, navigation is simple, designs are intuitive, and mobile payment options are available. You also have an opportunity to invite your customers to sign up for SMS or push notifications so they can shop deals immediately after they’re rolled out.
While mobile should be a priority, we still recommend investing in multiple channels to capture online shoppers everywhere they’re buying. Our Offline and Digital Graphs can help you unify data, capture user activity, and view your target audience holistically to optimize ad spend, allocate resources effectively, and improve ROI.
Early planning will define success
Brands will finalize creative and inventory by midsummer to meet September shoppers. Data enrichment can help you prepare early Black Friday promos by providing deeper insights into your customers and what they want.
On average, Experian has 250 behavioral and demographic marketing attributes per individual, which means we can decorate households and people with marketing data to get a full customer profile and fill in any gaps you have on your audience. You can also consider implementing sell-side targeting to help your promotions reach the right people.
BNPL usage willrise
As inflation persists in the U.S., shoppers will still be looking for ways to stretch their money this year, and many may seek out BNPL arrangements. According to Deloitte, 37% of shoppers have used these services, and these arrangements have proven to increase conversions by up to 30%.
With so many shoppers wanting the financial convenience of making large purchases without the immediate financial burden, marketers can use data enrichment to identify their target segments most likely to use BNPL and create personalized offers and promotions for them. Your strategy should include high-value offers and messaging that appeal to budget-conscious shoppers and a checkout optimized for BNPL options.
Channel switching will surge
Consumers will move fluidly between mobile, web, and in-store experiences, which means integrating data from various touchpoints will be crucial to understanding and predicting customer behavior. Marketers must develop cohesive omnichannel strategies with consistent messaging and promotions across channels. Your campaigns should span multiple channels so customers can engage with your brand in various ways.
We work with major platforms, marketers, and agencies, which means we have existing partnerships across the ecosystem for you to connect with and bring your consumer data to life to meet your needs.
Paid search will drive the most sales
Adobe reported paid search as the largest revenue driver during Cyber Week 2023, responsible for 30% of online sales. In 2024, marketers should prioritize paid search strategies and focus on using relevant, high-performing keywords for your campaigns. You can continuously refine your strategies using AI and data analytics to target high-intent customers. Additionally, integrating insights from customer behavior data will help you create more personalized, impactful ad copy and heighten the effectiveness of your paid search efforts.
How Experian enables 2024 holiday success
Experian’s marketing solutions help brands connect identity, insights, and outcomes across every touchpoint:
- Audience intelligence. Activate curated seasonal and behavioral audiences based on verified purchasing and discount-seeking patterns.
- Identity connection. Link ad exposures to household and individual behaviors through Experian’s Digital Graph connecting digital and offline data for a unified customer view.
- Omnichannel activation. Reach shoppers across more than 150 channels through our data and technology partnerships.
- Performance measurement. Use Experian Outcomes and lift analysis to tie spend directly to visits, conversions, and sales impact.
Drive your 2024 holiday success with Experian
The brands that win Black Friday 2024 will be those that plan early, act confidently, and measure with accuracy. Experian’s identity and data foundation powers connected commerce across every channel.
Get in touch with our team to plan your 2024 Black Friday and holiday campaigns.
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by AdExchanger // Friday, March 15th, 2019 – 12:06 am “Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today's column is written by Preethy Vaidyanathan, chief product officer at Tapad, a part of Experian For years marketers asked, “How do we get more data?” Now that they've mastered data mining, marketers want to know what’s next. The time has come for organizations to make their abundance of digital data actionable, increase ROI and reach consumers with consistent, personalized experiences across all touchpoints. A seamless consumer experience can only be achieved by consolidating digital data. Organizations, however, are finding that consolidating data silos is more time-consuming and complicated than initially expected. The challenges One of the most pervasive obstacles companies face in when consolidating data is adopting inefficient and costly tactics that quickly become outdated. For instance, over the last couple of years, many companies turned to enterprise data warehouses to consolidate data silos, but some were too expensive or poorly suited for raw, unstructured and semi-structured data. This led companies to adopt data management initiatives, which bogged down many enterprises. Perception among senior level executives is another challenge. Many still question the need for digital transformation – achieving greater efficiencies through updating business and organizational processes with new technologies. Gartner found that more than half (54%) of senior executives say their digital business objective is transformational, while 46% say their objective is optimization. Digital transformation and data consolidation require time and effort. So, many large organizations work to overcome data silos as part of a multiyear digital transformation versus an immediate action item, delaying the benefits the company sees from taking on this project. All of these challenges make delaying progress in data consolidation easy, but companies should remember the impetus for doing so: creating a seamless customer experience that, in turn, drives business results. Brands with higher quality customer experience grow revenue faster than direct competitors with lower quality customer experience. The approach Many brands go into the digital transformation process assuming they have massive amounts of customer data, and that much of it is valuable or will be in the future. They might spend months aggregating that data in data stores or data lakes – at great expense. The trouble is that their data was scattered across multiple databases, which means it’s highly fragmented. As a result of this fragmentation, marketers can’t activate their data in ways that enhance the customer experience. To do so, companies must ensure their digital data is highly flexible so it can provide a holistic view of the consumer journey across every digital, in-store, in-venue and offline channel. I’d recommend that organizations taking on data centralization initiatives prioritize use cases that offer the company the greatest benefit. This is where organizations should establish a “crawl, walk, run” approach to data centralization to ensure key executives buy into the process. Starting with a subset of use cases, such as customer retention or upsell, or with a campaign, which is an even smaller starting point, allows executives to see the benefits of data consolidation projects relatively quickly. Once they validate these initial benefits, they can expand the range of use cases or campaigns, as well as the marketing ROI for their business. While data centralization is a long-term project that may take several years to complete, it doesn’t mean a business can’t get started now and see measurable results quickly. Break down data consolidation into stages so the organization can experience wins along the way. At the end of the day, data consolidation will help organizations deliver more effective marketing campaigns that drive business growth. Contact us today
Tapad's technology enhances Bidtellect clients frequency capping and audience extension capabilities cross device. NEW YORK, Feb. 28, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Tapad, part of Experian, is a global marketing technology company and leader in digital identity resolution solutions, today announced a new partnership with Bidtellect (now Simpli.fi), a leading native Demand-Side Platform (DSP). Bidtellect's paid content distribution platform will leverage The Tapad Graph™ as its first cross-device partner. The integration will offer Bidtellect's clients in the U.S. and Canada cross-device frequency capping and enhanced audience extension capabilities. The combination of Tapad's leading cross-device technology, with Bidtellect's unparalleled scale and optimization capabilities, will allow content marketers within brands and agencies to develop even more strategic, effective content marketing campaigns. The Tapad Graph™ will allow content marketers to gain greater reach and create more relevant, unified messaging with targeted delivery, when used in conjunction with Bidtellect's technology. Marketers can expect to benefit from amplified reach, and enhanced, privacy-safe engagement with desired audiences as a result of this partnership. "Partnering with Tapad, the leaders in cross-device data, provides Bidtellect with a complete solution that leverages both probabilistic and deterministic mapping strategies," said Mike Conway, Chief Technology Officer at Bidtellect. "The Tapad relationship expands our audience size by providing the opportunity to reach the same user across multiple devices and, when used in conjunction with our frequency capping functionality, ensures increased reach, reduced ad saturation, and elimination of wasted ad spend." As the partnership progresses, Tapad will also work with Bidtellect to provide advanced attribution for conversions and engagement metrics including connectivity and amplification. These advanced insights will help brands and agencies develop a more holistic approach to content marketing, so they can build audiences and influence bidding algorithms that directly impact their business. "We're thrilled to be working with Bidtellect as the company's first cross-device partner," said Chris Feo, SVP of Global Data Licensing and Strategic Partnerships at Tapad. "At Tapad, we are continuously advancing our identity resolution solutions to keep pace with the ever-changing needs of marketers. As a part of that commitment, we look to work with partners where our technology is able to enhance their offering to better serve marketers. We are looking forward to creating that superior experience with the Bidtellect team." Contact us today
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