Rithum is where 41.5K+ brands, suppliers, and retailers connect to 600+ global channels every day. More than $1.5B flowed through our platform in the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday alone.  

During those biggest shopping days of the year, we helped clients navigate real-time changes in shopper behavior, channel performance, and category mix. Here are the deepest shifts we tracked in holiday buying behavior—and the moves you can make now to stay ahead of them.

Shift 1: Social selling surges 152% 

On Black Friday, shopper spend through social channels more than doubled compared to 2024: social-driven sales were up 152% year-over-year on Black Friday and up 140% year-over-year on Thanksgiving Day. 

And it wasn’t just impulse buys or viral gadgets. Ceiling lights and extension cords were moving just as fast as the usual social-friendly products. Shoppers are increasingly comfortable having their whole journey—from discovery to checkout—inside creator-led environments. 

In terms of categories: 

• Clothing, Shoes & Accessories took the top spot. 

• Home & Garden outpaced long-time social favorite Health & Beauty. 

• “Unsexy” categories like Business & Industrial and Parts & Accessories also ranked among the top sellers—beating out classic gift areas like Sporting Goods, Toys & Hobbies, Musical Instruments & Gear, Music, and Books. 

The new flagship store is your customer’s couch. Shoppers bought almost as much on Thanksgiving Day as on Black Friday. Post-Turkey, living room scrolls are now a peak shopping moment.  

If you haven’t turned on social yet as a channel, now is the time to jump in. We saw one client grow their total GMV 227% year-over-year during the Cyber 5, and most of that revenue growth was due to social selling—even though social was a channel they turned on less than 6 months ago.  

Shift 2: Is Pre-Turkey-Tuesday the new Black Friday? 

Black Friday keeps stretching longer and longer, and what used to be a day is now multiple day long events. Across key marketplaces, a cluster of early Black Friday events generated 36% more revenue than the actual Black Friday-day sales.  

A few standout patterns*: 

• In one case, an early Black Friday event actually beat Black Friday itself, driving 58% more sales than the main day. 

• When you add up the three days leading into Black Friday (including Thanksgiving), they generated about three-quarters more sales than Black Friday alone. 

• The Tuesday before Thanksgiving was a standout: for marketplaces running multi-day events, that single day drove almost two-thirds of Black Friday’s volume on its own. 

This isn’t necessarily a surprise: we’ve seen sales pull forward into a longer window for the past few years, just like Prime Day has shifted from a single-day spike to multi-day, multi-period promotions that competitors pile onto. Black Friday is now just one chapter in a much longer promotional book.  

What we are always evaluating is how well various peak approaches work for our clients. The big question here is, Do early Black Friday deals cannibalize the event, or do shoppers still show up?   

This year, the extended runway paid off. But it can be a balancing act. Earlier sales give shoppers more time to research and respond to competing offers. Consumers know they can take a few more days to compare sales, and that those sales will be more aggressive. This intensifying competition in turn forces you to be more selective about where you place promotional dollars, as every click costs more.  

But so far, the risk of longer Black Friday window (and resulting higher competition) seems to pay off well. The key is to treat it as a precision exercise in staying agile to changing demands and not just a longer period of blanket discounting.  

Shift 3: UK sales up 27%; EMEA up 25% year-over-year   

Black Friday went global a long time ago, but shoppers and sales behave differently everywhere. In EMEA, promotions are still more tightly concentrated than in North America, with the one-day-Black-Friday itself carrying an outsized share of demand. Across our network, Black Friday sales revenue in the UK grew 27% year-over-year and EMEA grew roughly 25% year-over-year. In contrast, 2025 EMEA Cyber Monday delivered a much more modest 4% growth over 2024. In EMEA at least, it seems that the big bang Black Friday event is still very much a thing, even as the U.S. shifts toward a more dispersed “Cyber Month” pattern. 

Local regulations, cultural shopping habits, and varying levels of marketplace maturity all shape how and when shoppers buy. The lesson from 2025 early holiday sales is that brands and retailers operating across borders can’t simply copy-paste a U.S.-style playbook and expect consistent results. They need to calibrate timing, discount depth, and channel mix to local expectations, and plan around regional peaks rather than a single, globally synchronized event. 

Strategy, data, and agility will always beat sheer scale 

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the Cyber 5 are still big moments. But the real story is how they now sit inside an always-on, experiment-driven, home-centered era of commerce. The clients we see getting the best bang-for-their-Black-Friday-buck treat this season as part of a continuous learning journey. They go into peak with clear hypotheses and guardrails, then evaluate spend ruthlessly, adjust in real time, and stay agile on everything from channel mix to creative to discount depth.  

In this competitive ecommerce world, where every click is more expensive and every event moves faster than the last, you can’t just show up with the loudest promotions. You need a partner who can help you learn fast and move faster.  If you want to test smarter, react quicker, and squeeze more out of every peak, let’s talk about how we can help. 

*these numbers come from select marketplaces that ran multiple Black Friday events 

The post What $1.5B in Cyber 5 sales reveal: the 3 shifts defining 2025’s Black Friday  appeared first on Rithum.

The Rithum Managed Services team works with clients every day to provide strategy and execution in their e-commerce efforts — maximizing their presence on marketplaces and optimizing their digital marketing campaigns. 

With marketplaces on top of everyone’s mind this season, we spoke to our client strategy team about some of their advice to help brands and retailers prepare for the upcoming shopping season.

Q: It’s August, what are the three most urgent things sellers should be doing right now before the holidays? 

Laura Jackson, Senior Client Strategy Manager: To prepare for the rapidly approaching holiday season, sellers should focus on their strategies in three major areas: marketing, selling and fulfilling.

For marketing, now is the time to finalize holiday budgets and set up final advertising campaign structures so they can be implemented prior to the start of the holiday season. The more time allowed for optimizations to be made to the campaigns on the seller side and for the campaigns to build history and relevance on the marketplace, the better!

As far as selling, make sure that your items are not only available for purchase on marketplaces but the listing content is fully optimized too. Reviewing titles, descriptions, bullet points, images and appropriate item specifics now will ensure success during the busy holiday season.

In the area of fulfillment, remember that increased volume of orders can pose many challenges for sellers during the holiday season and strategize accordingly. Finish out the season successfully by ensuring appropriate stock levels on popular items and have a plan in place to to ship orders in a timely fashion.

Q: When it comes to product listings, sellers always hear about the importance of “optimizing” product content. What does that mean in real terms?

Brad Haynes, Team Lead, Client Strategy: You have to remember that your content is how a buyer will understand the product you’re selling and if it truly meets their needs. If you go into a physical store, you can look at the item, hold it, see all angles of it, look at the mechanics of it, ask an associate questions. You need to consider that when creating your product listings. Are your titles strong enough to catch someone’s attention when scrolling through multiple listings?  Do you have multiple images (at least four) to show the buyer all angles and different views of the product? 

Think about your product line as well. If you’re an apparel seller, and you were shopping for your own products, would you have all you needed to know to make your decision such as fit, size guides, fabric content, care instructions, colors, sizing, etc.? If you’re a consumer electronics seller, do you show all the compatible makes and models of other items that work with the products you’re selling?

Q: What should sellers be doing now to ensure their inventory doesn’t go out of stock?

Kristin Sester, Team Lead, Client Strategy: Be proactive and review your inventory forecasting plan early — looking at Q4 last year, year-to-date trends this year and projected growth goals for Q4 2022. Consider: What were last year’s top sellers during the holidays? What are this year’s new featured styles or product lines that should be prioritized? Make sure to have enough stock available for your most popular and prioritized products to satisfy early shoppers, the Cyber Five and last-minute shoppers. 

Be sure to have a backup plan and ability to offer product alternatives. Review your current inventory buffer settings and implement or adjust/increase accordingly to help prepare for increased orders and balance products across multiple channels. Take note of key Q4 inventory replenishment dates if using marketplace fulfillment services such as Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and plan to replenish items early in preparation for the holiday buying season.

Q: Any timely tips on making sure your delivery capabilities are in place and your packages reach consumers in time for the holidays? 

Brad Haynes, Team Lead, Client Strategy: Understand your last ship dates and plan accordingly.  You need to have your replenishment strategy in place by the middle of October, and it should consider how long it would take to restock certain items, focus on top-selling products, determine items for FBA and so forth. Start evaluating metrics from past holiday seasons and see if there were any issues around lead times, products being oversold, shipping carrier delivery timelines and adjust accordingly.  

If you found you were late shipping items last year, consider adjusting your lead time to ship to match the more accurate timeline. Be on the lookout for last ship dates from your shipping carriers so you can factor that into your last ship date to deliver to your consumers.  

If you had to cancel items for being out of stock, consider raising/adding a buffer to ensure you always keep quantity on hand. Understand your current stock at FBA. Are those top selling items? If not, consider replacing those with your anticipated top sellers for Q4. Determine your appropriate stock levels for FBA and start replenishing items now so you can get them shipping into FBA and available for purchase in time for Q4.

Q: Can sellers do anything to prepare for marketplace suspensions during the holiday season?

Kristin Sester, Team Lead, Client Strategy: A marketplace account suspension during the holiday season can be one of the biggest obstacles and detriments to a seller. Preparation should start now by reviewing and resolving any early warning signs and being cognizant of any marketplace performance notifications. Marketplace health monitoring should carry on with a proactive approach and top-notch customer service throughout Q4 and Q1 when holiday return and refund activities ensue.

To prepare, meet with key members of internal or external teams that will take ownership should there be any increased trends of fulfillment/shipping delays, order cancellation rates and customer complaints or negative reviews. Ensure that all members are aware of the marketplace guidelines and specific performance criteria/thresholds in their relevant area for each channel in which you list. Identify trustworthy teammate(s) who will proactively monitor your channel health, metrics and feedback at least three times per week from mid-October through the end of December and report any concerns to the appropriate owners for quick action.  

Q: How can sellers drive more traffic to their marketplace listings?

Nick Castillo, Team Lead, Client Strategy: You want to ensure that your content is optimized for search results on each marketplace. Focus first on titles, descriptions and bullets/features. Maximize the use of characters allowed, making sure that your content is legible and you’re not “keyword stuffing” with terms that are out of context. One size doesn’t fit all; you may need to customize the content to each marketplace for optimal results. Make sure your descriptions are formatted correctly and don’t include HTML formatting if it’s not allowed. Simpler is better. 

Next you’ll want to provide as many additional product attributes as possible beyond the minimal requirements. Not only are these additional product details used for search indexing but also filtering that shoppers use when browsing the catalog. This will help potential customers refine their search results and maximize click-through to your listings.

Finally, if available you can use keyword/search term fields to include additional words you couldn’t fit into your content. You can sometimes gear these toward related items or competitive items if allowed. If you’re using paid advertising that provides search term data this would also be a great place to include long-tail search terms that you find perform well.

If you’re interested in learning more about how our Managed Services team can help you prepare for this holiday season, contact us today.

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Check out part two of this Q&A with the Experts series where we dive into digital marketing best practices. 

The post Q&A with the Experts: E-Commerce Marketplaces Best Practices for the Holidays appeared first on Rithum.