Peak isn't five days. Last season it was 25.
Black Friday is November 27, and most holiday plans still circle the same five dates: Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday. Last season's numbers tell a different story.
Adobe Analytics, which tracks US online shopping, counted 25 days in the 2025 holiday season on which consumers spent more than $4 billion online in a single day. The year before, there were 18. Cyber Week brought in $44.2 billion of the $257.8 billion spent online from November 1 to December 31. By my arithmetic, that's about 17 percent. Adobe also said Black Friday outgrew Cyber Monday "as consumers embraced earlier deals."
That's all US online retail, not Amazon alone. But Amazon's own 2025 event ran twelve days, November 20 to December 1, and in its 2024 recap Amazon said more than 60% of sales in its store during the event came from independent sellers.
The twenty days with no name
Cyber Week has five days. So at least twenty of last season's $4 billion days had no name. They're not on anyone's countdown.
That's the part I'd want a seller to sit with. A warning that lands on a Tuesday in December, or a listing that quietly drops off, can hit a day as big as anything in Cyber Week. Nobody will have told you it was a big day, because nobody named it.
The bots don't read your calendar either
Bidding bots don't tire and don't wait for a weekly report. They react within minutes, read the same demand signals and raise bids at the same moment, which pushes click prices up and drains budgets. In my view, they also don't care whether a day has a name. A busy Tuesday in December gets the same bid race as Black Friday, and a budget planned around five days can run dry on a day you never planned for.
Our take
Account health isn't a Black Friday checkbox. It's a condition you need for about sixty days, and the first two weeks of it are already under way. Marketplace Pulse describes holiday promotions as "now spanning the entire month," and Amazon Ads frames the season as build, peak and extend. The peak isn't moving. It's widening.
One first step: pull your own daily sales for last November and December and circle your five biggest days, then count how many fall outside Cyber Week.
If there's an open warning or an appeal you'd like a second pair of eyes on before the run, contact Market Wize at info@market-wize.com or https://www.market-wize.com.