Cyber Week is the run of days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday in which retailers concentrate their deepest discounts of the year, and in which US online spending and advertising auction prices reach their annual peak. It exists because two separate shopping days, Black Friday in stores and Cyber Monday online, gradually merged into a single promotional block. In 2026 the core period runs from Thursday, November 26 to Monday, November 30. Adobe forecasts US online spending of $47.5 billion across those five days, about 17% of the whole November-December season.

There is no single definition. Adobe and Digital Commerce 360 count five days and often call the period Cyber 5. Salesforce counts seven, adding the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Amazon avoids the term altogether and runs a 12-day "Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday" event. Every figure attached to Cyber Week therefore depends on whose calendar is being used.

How the period is built

The five-day version follows the US holiday calendar. Thanksgiving, the fourth Thursday of November, opens it. Black Friday follows, then Small Business Saturday, a Sunday, and Cyber Monday.

Spending is not spread evenly. According to Digital Commerce 360's analysis of Adobe data, Cyber Monday took 32.2% of Cyber 5 online spending in 2025, Black Friday 26.7%, Thanksgiving 14.5%, Sunday 13.6% and Saturday 13.1%. Cyber Monday's share has slipped each year, from 32.8% in 2023 and 32.4% in 2024. Adobe's Cyber Monday 2025 total was $14.25 billion, with peak hours between 8pm and 10pm Eastern reaching $16 million a minute.

Amazon's deal submissions for the 2026 Black Friday and Cyber Monday events closed on October 20, and since April 23, 2026 a seller's list price has needed outside evidence before a strike-through price appears. Amazon announced on November 10 that its 2026 event runs from November 19 to 30 with daily themed "deal drops".

Discounts follow a predictable curve. Adobe's 2026 forecast puts peak discounts at up to 30% during Cyber Week, against up to 14% in early November and 10% to 15% through December. In 2025, realised peaks reached 30.9% for electronics, 29.6% for toys and 25.1% for apparel, according to Adobe's January 2026 recap.

Where advertisers meet it

For media buyers, Cyber Week is defined by price. Billy Grace's 2026 Black Friday playbook, which covered nine paid channels from September to December 2025, found median CPM (cost per thousand impressions) rose from about EUR 6.50 to EUR 8.83 in Black Friday week, roughly 36%. Conversion rates rose faster than costs, so median cost per order fell 18% and median return on ad spend (ROAS) rose 26%. The data is the vendor's own and measured in euros. Under last-click attribution, six of the nine channels looked loss-making in that week; under the company's own model, all broke even.

Bidding systems need help with a period this short. Google Ads offers seasonality adjustments, which tell Smart Bidding to expect a conversion-rate change over a set window. According to Google's help documentation, they are "ideal for short events of 1-7 days" and may not work as well beyond 14 days. Google also warns that Smart Bidding "already manages seasonal events", so the tool is meant only for large expected shifts. In a 2024 poll, 65% of 169 practitioners said they used the adjustments for Black Friday.

Platforms now sell the peak as a product. Meta launched Ads Super Burst on October 15, 2026, offering 3 to 24 hour windows with optional category exclusivity, pitched partly at holiday sale days. Affiliates and partners drove 21.8% of Cyber Monday 2025 online revenue, according to Adobe; social media drove 3.6%. Partnership platform impact.com reported that creator-driven transactions rose during Cyber Week.

Origin and evolution

The anchor day came first. In a press release dated November 28, 2005, Shop.org, the digital arm of the National Retail Federation (NRF), named the Monday after Thanksgiving "Cyber Monday". Ellen Davis of the NRF is generally credited with the coinage. Scott Silverman, then head of Shop.org, later told eMarketer: "we saw a trend that customers were seeing a surge in shopping the Monday after Thanksgiving." The explanation at the time was that people returned to fast office internet connections after the long weekend. Silverman also said Shop.org "never claimed that Cyber Monday was the biggest shopping day of the year."

The week followed within six years. On December 4, 2011, comScore reported "$6 billion in 'Cyber Week' US online spending", with three separate days above $1 billion. By the late 2010s, the count had settled on starting from Thanksgiving, as retailers opened online sales on the holiday itself and Black Friday migrated online. Adobe reported Cyber Monday 2020 at $10.7 billion, then the largest US online shopping day on record.

The format spread internationally, often under the same name. According to Wikipedia's history of the term, Amazon brought Cyber Monday to Germany in 2010 and to Japan in 2012, Chile held its first in November 2011 and Colombia in 2012. In Europe, the week now sits beside the EU's rule, applicable since May 28, 2022, that any announced price reduction must reference the lowest price of the previous 30 days.

The latest evolution is automation. Adobe recorded generative AI traffic to US retail sites up 670% on Cyber Monday 2025. Salesforce attributed $67 billion of global Cyber Week 2025 online sales, or 20% of orders, to AI and agents, though "influenced" is broadly drawn.

Why it matters for marketers

Adobe measured Cyber Week 2025 at $44.2 billion in US online spending, up 7.7%, out of $257.8 billion for the season. For 2026 it forecasts $47.5 billion, up 7.4%, with Cyber Monday at $15.1 billion and Black Friday at $12.9 billion, growing faster at 9.2%. PPC Land noted that Black Friday was 81% the size of Cyber Monday in 2024 and is forecast at 85% this year, narrowing the gap between the two days.

Salesforce's seven-day count produces larger numbers: $336.6 billion of global online sales for November 25 to December 1, 2025, up 7%, and $79.6 billion in the US, up 5%. Shopify merchants recorded $14.6 billion over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend, up 27%. The NRF counted a record 202.9 million shoppers, online and in stores, across the five days.

New customers are a large share of the volume. Billy Grace found around 66% of Black Friday and Cyber Monday orders came from first-time buyers, which is why the period is used for acquisition as much as for revenue. Payment patterns change too: buy now, pay later spending passed $1 billion on Cyber Monday 2025 for the first time, according to Adobe.

Limitations, criticisms and disputes

The first dispute is definitional. Adobe's five days, Salesforce's seven, Amazon's twelve and Billy Grace's Monday-to-Monday "Black Friday week" all describe the same moment but cannot be compared directly. Adobe measures retail transactions, Salesforce its commerce platform, and the NRF surveys 3,099 adults. Even Adobe revises: PPC Land noted that the 2024 season was reported at $240.8 billion, while the 2026 forecast chart shows $241.4 billion without explanation.

The discounts are also questioned. In the UK, consumer group Which? tracked 175 products at eight retailers from May 2024 to May 2025 and found 83% were the same price or cheaper at least once outside the four-week Black Friday window. Its previous study, of 227 deals in 2023, put the figure at 92%. The methods differ, but the direction does not. In November 2025 the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opened investigations into eight firms over time-limited sales and pricing practices, and Australia's competition regulator ran a Black Friday advertising sweep targeting retail pricing tactics the same month.

Dilution is the third criticism. Amazon's October event, Prime Big Deal Days, ran on October 6-7, 2026 in 22 countries, and 34% of consumers began holiday shopping in October or earlier in 2025, according to Google. In the UK, Marketing Signals found "Black Friday" searches down 36% since 2019. Growth rates for Cyber Week remain positive, but they have slowed, from 8.2% in 2024 to 7.7% in 2025 by Adobe's measure.

Finally, attribution inflates the period. Peak-week revenue is easy to credit to the last ad clicked, while returns arrive in December and January.

Cyber Week versus adjacent terms

  • Black Friday is a single day, the Friday after Thanksgiving. Outside the US, retailers often use "Black Friday" to mean the whole promotional fortnight, which overlaps Cyber Week.
  • Cyber Monday is the single online day that closes Cyber Week. It remains the largest day in Adobe's data but is losing share.
  • Black Friday Week is Amazon's branded event, from November 19 to 30 in 2026, and starts a week earlier than the five-day Cyber Week.
  • Cyber Week (Tel Aviv) is unrelated: an annual cybersecurity conference hosted by Tel Aviv University's Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center.

Recent developments

The 2026 period begins in less than two weeks, and the infrastructure around it is shifting towards AI shopping. On November 4, Amazon launched the Shop Direct Merchant Workspace, letting outside retailers appear in US Amazon search and its Alexa for Shopping assistant, while a Blend audit found bot protection refused its AI shopping agent at 29 of 200 retailers. Google's retail holiday guide claimed Etsy's 2025 holiday sales rose 36%, partly credited to AI Max; PPC Land found the guide's footnotes did not always match its claims. Adobe expects AI traffic to retail sites to rise 130% this season, with Cyber Monday up 88%, much slower than 2025's growth from a small base. Whether agents shift Cyber Week spending, or merely change who clicks, will be measurable only after November 30.

Timeline

  • 2003 - 1-800-Flowers.com's Tony Valado proposes "White Wednesday" for online holiday shopping, according to Wikipedia.
  • November 28, 2005 - Shop.org's press release names "Cyber Monday".
  • December 4, 2011 - comScore reports $6 billion in "Cyber Week" US online spending, with three days above $1 billion.
  • November 2011 - Chile holds its first Cyber Monday.
  • 2010-2012 - Amazon brings Cyber Monday to Germany (2010) and Japan (2012).
  • August 28, 2019 - Google introduces seasonality adjustments for Search and Display.
  • 2020 - Cyber Monday reaches $10.7 billion, then the largest US online shopping day, per Adobe.
  • May 28, 2022 - EU rule requiring the 30-day lowest prior price for announced reductions applies.
  • November 25, 2025 - Which? finds 83% of tracked Black Friday products were the same price or cheaper at other times.
  • December 2, 2025 - Adobe reports Cyber Week 2025 at $44.2 billion and Cyber Monday at $14.25 billion; NRF reports 202.9 million shoppers; Shopify reports $14.6 billion.
  • December 5, 2025 - Salesforce reports $336.6 billion in global Cyber Week sales.
  • January 7, 2026 - Adobe reports a $257.8 billion US online season.
  • September 28, 2026 - Adobe forecasts Cyber Week 2026 at $47.5 billion.
  • October 6-7, 2026 - Prime Big Deal Days in 22 countries.
  • October 15, 2026 - NRF forecasts $1.013 trillion in US holiday sales.
  • October 20, 2026 - Amazon's Black Friday deal submissions close.
  • November 19-30, 2026 - Amazon's Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday event.
  • November 26-30, 2026 - Cyber Week (five-day definition).

Summary

Who: US retailers and marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart and Shopify merchants run Cyber Week promotions; Adobe, Salesforce and the NRF measure them; advertisers and platforms including Google, Meta and Amazon Ads price and sell media around them; regulators such as the CMA police the discounts.

What: Cyber Week is the multi-day sales period from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, defined as five days by Adobe and seven by Salesforce, in which US online spending, discounts and ad auction prices reach their annual high.

When: The term appeared in comScore reporting by 2011, six years after "Cyber Monday" was coined in 2005; the 2026 edition runs from November 26 to 30, with Amazon's wider event from November 19.

Where: Mainly the US, measured online, with the format and name adopted in Canada, Latin America, Europe and Japan.

Why: Two separate sale days merged into one promotional block as shopping moved online, concentrating about 17% of US season spending into five days and forcing advertisers to plan bids, budgets and attribution around a short, expensive peak.