Adobe released its holiday sales forecast today, predicting growth of 2.5% between November 1 – December 31, 2022. While that number is underwhelming, Adobe provided context to help understand how it will impact merchants.
Adobe analyzes over 1 trillion visits to US websites in making its annual forecast. It said one significant factor in its forecast is Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale this week, which will entice some shoppers to start their shopping early – before what Adobe considers to be the start of the holiday shopping period (November 1st).
The holiday season will also be impacted by an uncertain economic environment, as shoppers contend with elevated prices offline (food, gas, housing) and the rising cost of borrowing, according to the report.
However, Adobe Vice President Patrick Brown stated: “The shape of the holiday season will look different this year, with early discounting in October pulling up spend that would have occurred around Cyber Week. Even though we expect to see single-digit growth online this season, it is notable that consumers have already spent over $590 billion online this year at 8.9% growth, highlighting the resiliency of e-commerce demand.”
Adobe noted that last year’s holiday shopping season grew 8.5% year-over-year, when consumers were uncertain about returning to physical stores due to lingering pandemic concerns.
Here’s what Adobe said about the timing of this year’s online shopping:
“Cyber Monday is expected to remain the season’s and year’s biggest shopping day, driving a record $11.2 billion in spending, increasing 5.1% YoY.
“By comparison, Black Friday online sales are projected to grow by just 1% YoY at $9 billion, while Thanksgiving sales are set to fall to $5.1 billion, down 1% YoY.”
Some additional findings:
- Adobe expects Cyber Week (Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday) will bring in $34.8 billion overall, up 2.8% YoY. This represents a 16.3% share of the full season, down from 16.6% in 2021.
- Collectively, electronics, apparel and groceries will contribute $103.8 billion in online spending this holiday season, nearly half of what Adobe expects for overall spending ($209.7 billion). These categories have emerged as major revenue drivers online.
Adobe’s analysis covers over 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories. Check out the full press release on the Adobe website.
And yet Etsy feels it isn’t removing enough of our profit.
Etsy Super SUCKS.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around how Adobe — Photoshop’s owner — is tracking trillions of web visits, and commenting publicly about their tracking. What do they get out of announcing that they are watching us like Google, Facebook, and Amazon? How much faster would our routers be if our computers weren’t constantly snitching to so many corporations about what we’re looking at on our screens? And what “value” is Adobe trading us for tracking us?
LOL…..Adjusted for inflation?