The holidays were in fact pretty happy for marketers and retailers, according to all the data that’s been coming in.

For instance, a preliminary Mastercard SpendingPulse tally shows that retailers (including restaurants) saw a 3.8% year-over-year (YoY) increase in sales across in-store and online between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24 — slightly higher than the National Retail Federation’s projected maximum growth of 3.5%.

To get a fuller picture of the 2024 holiday shopping cycle — and what the season’s trends could mean for the year ahead — here are eight key takeaways for marketers:

Online shopping just keeps growing and growing

Coming as no surprise, online shopping had a banner 2024 holiday season. Just-released Adobe Analytics data shows an 8.7% YOY jump in online spending in the U.S., for a total of $241.4 billion spent between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31. Mastercard puts U.S. online holiday spending growth at 6.7% (across a Nov. 1–Dec. 24 window), while Salesforce data shows 4% YOY online spending growth in the U.S. (Nov. 1-Dec. 31), for a total of $282 billion spent, per TechCrunch

Consumer enthusiasm for brick-and-mortar shopping continues to heat up

Mastercard tracked a 2.9% YoY increase in in-store holiday retail spend, while data from Visa shows total in-store holiday retail spend growing 4.1% — up from 1.6% last year.  
 
Additionally, Visa found that the majority of holiday retail spend in the U.S. occurred in brick-and-mortar stores, with 77% of total payment volume happening in-store vs. 23% online.  
 
Placer.ai data, meanwhile, shows a 1.5% year-over-year increase in indoor U.S. mall visits across all of 2024, and a 1.7% increase for open-air U.S. mall visits.

Cash-strapped consumers love a holiday sale — even if it means taking on debt

During the 2024 holiday season, Adobe found that for every 1% drop in the typical price for a given item, demand for that item increased by nearly 1% compared to the prior holiday season. Adobe says price drops contributed to an additional $2.25 billion in online spending, demonstrating the extent to which discounts motivated holiday shoppers, per CNBC.

The power of discounting is understandable considering that 36% of Americans took on debt to cover holiday expenses this season, according to LendingTree data. Those who did so took on an average of $1,181 of debt — an increase from 2023’s average of $1,028 — with 65% putting purchases on a credit card and 24% on a store card. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) was also popular, as 21% of consumers reported using the credit option, per LendingTree.

Overall, Adobe data shows that the use of BNPL increased 9.6% YoY, driving $18.2 billion in online spending during the 2024 holiday cycle, per CNBC.

Social and mobile are driving more