Black Friday Broke Records. The Real Story Is How AI Changed the Way We Shop

If you only looked at the numbers, you’d think Black Friday was business as usual—just bigger. And, to be clear, it was definitely bigger. Adobe, which tracks more than a trillion retail site visits across 18 categories, says consumers spent a record $11.8 billion online yesterday, up 9.1 percent from last year and even above the company’s own forecast. Between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., Adobe says shoppers spent $12.5 million every minute. By any metric, that’s a massive number of people shopping for deals. It’s a record for Black Friday sales online, but if you look a little closer, you realize it’s also a massive number of people shopping in very different ways than they used to. Black Friday has already changed quite a bit in the past few years. What was once a single day defined by incredible deals and lines outside big-box stores has stretched into a weeks-long digital shopping season. And, let’s be honest, people aren’t camping outside a Target anymore; they’re sitting on their couch, scrolling their phones. The AI holiday The most interesting part of the story is how things have shifted even more this year. Adobe’s data shows that AI-generated traffic to retail sites jumped 805 percent year-over-year. Not only are people using AI tools to find deals and compare products, but also shoppers who landed on a site from an AI assistant were 38 percent more likely to convert than everyone else. That’s surprising, and yet it makes perfect sense. One of the things AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are good at is instantly surfacing the best price across half a dozen retailers. This year, there were plenty of headline features: Electronics, toys, apparel, TVs, and appliances were discounted between 24 and 30 percent. AI tools just made it easier to find them. And those deals didn’t just convince people to buy more. Adobe says that people spent more on higher-end items. The share of units sold from the most expensive tier of products spiked: 64 percent in electronics, 55 percent in sporting goods, 48 percent in appliances. With the right combination of discounts and AI-assisted shopping comparison, people weren’t just looking for deals—they were looking for the best value. Mobile continued to dominate Depending on the hour, around 55 percent of online Black Friday sales happened on a phone—$6.5 billion worth. That’s up 10 percent from last year and represents billions of dollars processed through screens smaller than a wallet. Mobile phones reward frictionless experiences. And it turns out, AI is very good at removing friction. When the easiest way to shop is to ask ChatGPT for a recommendation and the best deal, it changes the way retailers have to think about Black Friday. Not only that, but the timeline seems to have shifted. Adobe says one of the biggest spikes happened from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Shopping habits shifted toward the times when people are already using their phones. You don’t need to wait for a sale to “start” when an AI assistant can surface the best price the moment it exists. AI shopping is here to stay Adobe expects U.S. consumers to spend more than $250 billion online this holiday season, with Cyber Monday alone projected to hit $14.2 billion. But the part worth paying attention to isn’t the total—it’s how we got there. Shoppers are trusting AI to do the busywork and find them the best value. For a shopping event that used to be all about physical stores, that’s a significant shift that retailers have to pay attention to. The challenge is that they no longer control the narrative—the AI assistant does. The lesson here may not seem obvious, but the reality is that retailers need to redefine what loyalty means when more shoppers start their journey with an AI prompt instead of walking into a store or pulling up your website. When an assistant compares every retailer at once, being “top of mind” matters far less than being the lowest-friction, highest-confidence option in that moment. That means loyalty isn’t something you win with flashy ads or homepage banners—it’s something you earn through the operational details an AI actually cares about. Black Friday broke spending records. But the more interesting record is the one you might overlook: how many of those purchases started with someone typing a question into an AI instead of typing a URL into a browser. EXPERT OPINION BY JASON ATEN, TECH COLUMNIST @JASONATEN