While Black Friday sees a high number of in-store visits, online traffic spiked this year, with 90 million and 52 million individuals on Facebook and Instagram, respectively, creating a combined total of more than 300 million engagements around content shared for the occasion.
This data comes directly from Facebook, which chronicled the ways customers talked about and engaged with Black Friday Nov. 24 from a social perspective. According to the data, Black Friday is more than just a day for shopping, but also a social event during which customers talk about and engage with posts from brands.
Holiday numbers
Black Friday is the busiest day of the year for retailers, but its influence extends online as well and not just in the form of ecommerce for Cyber Monday Nov. 27.
A review of the data provided by Facebook shows a massive spike in conversation about shopping and retail leading up to, during and after Black Friday.
Traffic steadily rose on the days leading up to Thanksgiving and spiked drastically on Black Friday itself before slowly dying down over the next few days.
Numbers for Facebook and Instagram. Image credit: Facebook
These engagements ranged from talking about shopping to engaging with a post from a brand or retailer or watching a video.
Video in particular was a surprising winner on Black Friday, with more than 450 million video views related to shopping on that day alone.
Nearly one in three shoppers have said video is a great way to discover new products, and the number of videos viewed on Black Friday shows that brands should boost their video content on that day in order to capture that sizable audience.
Additionally, Instagram Stories were a big hit, with one in three businesses posting something to their Instagram Story on the day and a spike in engagement with those stories from customers.
Video engagement
Facebook has been pushing itself as the perfect tool to get customers engaged with a brand ahead of Black Friday, and many brands made use of it accordingly.
U.S. fashion brand Michael Kors worked with Facebook to seek out older high-spending consumers through CRM and audience targeting to achieve an 18-point lift in ad recall.
Michael Kors looked to entice users aged 35 to 54 with a high household income for its Italian-made Bancroft handbag. The ad campaign saw the highest lift with 45 to 50 year olds (see story).
Timeline of engagements. Image credit: Facebook
While Singles' Day catches the eye of most luxury retailers rather than Black Friday deals, those that continue to skip the discount-focused day will miss out, as even affluent consumers still appreciate a good deal.
A survey from Deloitte showed that consumers planned on spending more last Thanksgiving compared to the previous year, with more than 76 percent of Americans planning to shop over the Black Friday weekend. Many luxury brands are finally taking the leap to incorporate a strategy for the major sales day such as Prada, Omega and Gucci, who are partnering with Walmart.com to feature heavily discounted luxury goods online over the weekend (see story).
Black Friday is clearly a retail opportunity, but Facebook has showed that through its platform along with Instagram, it can also be a powerful marketing platform as well.
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Facebook and Instagram saw huge spikes in engagement from Black Friday customers. Image credit: Facebook 
