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Holiday Shopping Recap: Key Insights From Our Consumer Team

The 2024 holiday shopping season has wrapped, but before we take down the holiday lights and put away our festive sweaters, we want to take a closer look at the trends and takeaways from this major buying moment.

With only 27 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this holiday season, it was the shortest shopping period since 2019. Inflation had an impact, too, with consumers prepared to spend more but hoping to score bigger deals, according to Mintel’s Holiday Shopping Market Report.

So what did this mean for consumers? With a shorter window to buy holiday gifts for friends and family, they sought out the best deals to maximize their shopping efforts. We saw this ring true in the early selling moments of the season, particularly with online shopping. Shoppers spent a record $10.8 billion online on Black Friday, over 10% more than they did last year. And Cyber Monday was the biggest U.S. online shopping day ever, with U.S. consumers spending $13.3 billion, up 7.3% from 2023.

As we consider the news cycle this holiday season, several trends stand out. Our Consumer Team has capitalized on these trends to break through, spotlighting everything from tech gadgets to retailers to outdoor apparel. Here’s a look at our findings:

Hands-on product time boosts holiday magic: Consumers are increasingly savvy about what makes a good purchase, and media are jockeying for readers’ eyes — and all-important affiliate revenue — by producing highly curated gift guides of vetted products. To land a spot on the Nice list, repeated hands-on experience with products ahead of the holidays proves that seeing is believing. Our Microsoft Surface and Store teams seeded product months ahead of the holidays, helping land a spot in Today's “love language” inspired holiday gift guide.
For editors, bigger is better when it comes to offers: While we might not be seeing 75% off “Doorbuster Deals” of the past, media are prioritizing heavily discounted products in gift guides and roundups, even if it means promoting older models. During outreach for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, our iRobot team promoted the Roomba s9+ and Braava Jet m6 bundle, older models on deep discount, which was covered by outlets ZDNET and People.
Consumers are increasingly turning to social media for gift inspiration: Looking for the perfect Secret Santa gift? Just open Instagram. Consumers trust the recommendations of the influencers they follow and are increasingly looking at their carefully curated social network feeds for viral gift ideas. Building relationships with these creators can lead to organic inclusions, lending credibility and moving consumers toward the path to purchase.
Relationships matter to cut through clutter: With five fewer holiday shopping days than in 2023, media are feeling the crunch in bandwidth and coverage timelines. We are seeing the impact on e-commerce reporters who are often setting up auto-responses to deal with the high volume and massive influx of pitches. Cultivating relationships with the right reporters and providing embargoed advance views of upcoming deals helped Microsoft Store break through the noise to land deals in top tier outlets such as Mashable.
Leveraging affiliate programs can help break through: Beyond our media best practices, such as product seeding and consumer calls to action, affiliate programs through e-commerce sites like Amazon can help drive interest (and are occasionally a requirement). Outlets can make a small commission when purchases are made through their affiliate links, so we prioritize these offers when we can. We’ve seen this pay off with articles dedicated to retailer-specific deals — for example, a Columbia shoutout in Travel + Leisure (“I'm an Outdoor Gear Expert, and These Are the Best Amazon Black Friday Deals for Campers and Hikers — From $8”) and Philips in Buzzfeed (“All the Best Cyber Monday Deals at Amazon”).