Using aggregated, anonymized data from roughly 300 leading brands across our platform — and building on last year’s Black Friday Trends Report — we analyzed how promotional behavior evolved in 2025. This includes: 

As the incentives engine powering some of the world’s best-loved retailers, Talon.One offers a front-row seat to how customer behaviour is shifting in real time. The result is a practical benchmark for brands who want to measure their 2025 performance and set their 2026 strategy.

The defining shift in 2025 was timing. BFCM 2025 arrived earlier - and stretched longer - than any year before.

In 2024, we saw a sales spike begin on November 21. This year, the surge started even earlier.

Influenced revenue rates - that is, any sale made with a promotion or discount attached - saw a steep rise on November 16, almost two weeks before Black Friday. Brands including Dyson, John Lewis and Curry’s launched deals within the first week of November, signalling a shift toward an elongated BFCM season.

Retailers didn’t just start their BFCM deals earlier; they pulled customers into a long runway of value moments spanning October and November. 

For years, online shopping patterns followed a predictable arc: a deep pre-BFCM slump, followed by a huge, peaky, and often unprofitable Black Friday spike. Shoppers had been conditioned to hold off purchasing until the full breadth of Black Week deals dropped — creating volatility that hurt margins and distorted demand planning.

This year marked a turning point. With retailers deliberately optimizing the BFCM season, they were able to successfully soften the pre-Black Friday dip in spending. 

Our data shows these activations stabilized conversion rates, preventing the traditional slump.

Looking ahead to December, this year’s shopping season has also laid the groundwork for stronger post-BFCM reactivation. Historically, very few BFCM shoppers returned before the end of the holiday period. But this year, we anticipate that loyalty-driven value - points, earned rewards, and exclusive member perks - will generate a meaningful bounceback effect, sustaining traffic well into December.

In the current climate, value is the top priority for shoppers, and retailers have responded by increasing their Black Friday discounts. The modest uplifts tells us that retailers acted strategically rather than resorting to deep, margin-draining cuts.

2025 reinforced the importance of loyalty as a core driver of customer engagement during the holiday season. Shoppers enrolled in programs at record rates, showing that they’re willing to hand over data and engage more deeply if it guarantees consistent value. 

Across Talon.One retailers, we saw a 50% increase in daily new members on Black Friday compared to the previous 30-day average. 

Overall, loyalty enrollment doubled compared to last year’s Black Friday - showing that loyalty programs are now the “first filter” for meaningful incentives. Retailers used loyalty memberships as the gateway to better discounts, higher-tier bundles, and priority access. 

Across all Talon.One retailers, simple item discounts continued to account for the majority of BFCM promotions. They remain the most familiar, easiest to execute, and fastest to communicate value to customers. 

But beneath that familiar foundation, we saw a meaningful rise in more structured, value-engineered mechanics designed to protect margins and lift overall basket value. These layered mechanics allowed brands to stretch beyond blanket markdowns, using promotions more strategically to influence shopper behaviour.

Retailers increasingly paired their core discounts with:

Black Friday continues to be the ultimate stress tests for promotional infrastructure - and this year, Talon.One delivered industry-leading performance at global scale. 

Across Black Friday week, Talon.One powered:

The ability to support real-time incentives at this volume and speed is essential as promotions become more personalized, more dynamic, and more deeply embedded within the customer journey.

Scalability is now table stakes. As retailers deploy higher volumes of personalized promotions, the infrastructure behind them must be resilient, real-time, and globally performant.

BFCM 2025 made one thing clear: the holiday shopping landscape is no longer defined by a weekend but by an entire season of orchestrated value moments.

The winners in 2026 will be the retailers who: