Cyber Monday Date in the current year: December 2, 2024

The Monday after Thanksgiving was first called Cyber Monday in 2005. The term was coined by Ellen Davis, who then worked as manager of media relations for the National Retail Federation, and Scott Silverman, the head of Shop.org (an annual conference hosted by the NRF). It was first used in a Shop.org press release published on November 28, 2005.

The term was based on a 2004 research showing that the Monday after Thanksgiving was one of the biggest online shopping days of the year. The New York Times assumed it was related to people returning to work after the Thanksgiving weekend. Back then, most people had a slow Internet connection at home, so they used a high-speed connection at work to buy online whatever they hadn’t bought on Black Friday. Retailers decided to benefit from this fact and encourage people to shop online, and that’s how Cyber Monday was born.

Although today most people have a high-speed Internet connection at home, Cyber Monday has become a well-established tradition and a significant source of revenue for e-commerce retailers. Since the inception of Cyber Monday, online spending on this day has been increasing steadily. According to Adobe Analytics, total online sales reached $7.9 billion in 2018 and $9.4 billion in 2019. Mobile transactions have also increased significantly, having totaled $3.1 billion in 2019.

Inspired by the success of Cyber Monday in the United States, online retailers in other country began to offer big sales and discounts. However, these campaigns aren’t necessarily held on the Monday after Thanksgiving, since American Thanksgiving isn’t really a thing outside the United States. Some countries still use the term Cyber Monday, while others use other names. For example, Indian version of the campaign was named the Great Online Shopping Festival (it was discontinued in 2015), and Chinese retailers prefer to hold sales on Singles’ Day (November 11).

Black Friday and Cyber Monday aren’t the only shopping campaigns held after Thanksgiving. For example, there’s Small Business Saturday, a campaign aiming to support small, local businesses. It takes place on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in the United States and on the first Saturday of December in the UK.

* date for 2024