Black Friday and Cyber Monday have been growing in importance to holiday e-commerce for more than a decade, despite the persistent myth that early holiday promotions would pull demand forward to take the wind out of these promotions. Retailers other than Amazon will have difficulty activating consumers outside of established tentpoles, according to a recent feature in eMarketer. 

However, because Amazon hosted a mid-October event last year, demand was materially pulled forward. As a result, the Cyber Five period (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday) noticeably underperformed season-average growth rates. Nevertheless, Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Thanksgiving were still the top three ecommerce spending days for the season. 

What’s in store for this year? EMarketer expects the Cyber Five to deliver strong sales volume and solid (if unspectacular) growth rates. The forecast by eMarketer is that the period will marginally increase its share of holiday e-commerce from 18.4 percent to 18.5 percent but will still down from its high of 20.0 percent in 2019.

According to eMarketer, each Cyber Five shopping day will surpass $5 billion. The top two days—Cyber Monday and Black Friday—will top $10 billion, but Thanksgiving Day and the weekend will post the strongest growth rates. Click here to read the full story from eMarketer.