Black Friday and Cyber Monday have evolved far beyond their origins as two frenzied days of doorbuster deals. Today, they represent the centerpiece of an extended holiday shopping season that begins weeks before Thanksgiving and stretches well into December. Retailers now launch early-bird promotions, while consumers increasingly shop online, blending convenience with competitive pricing.
But even as the holiday shopping season expands, the peak of activity remains around the Thanksgiving weekend. U.S. shoppers spent a record $11.8 billion online on Black Friday 2025, with mobile devices driving more than half of all purchases—a clear sign that digital commerce has come to dominate the holiday landscape even as in-store sales.
This shift has transformed consumer expectations. Shoppers are looking for deals, yes. But they also want confidence that their purchase will fulfill their needs, and that confidence can only come from rich, engaging product experiences that help them make confident decisions. Enhanced Content—interactive elements like 360° product views, videos, lifestyle imagery, and comparison charts—has become a critical differentiator. Syndigo’s research shows that product pages featuring Enhanced Content deliver an average 39% lift in add-to-cart conversion rates, underscoring its role in capturing attention and driving sales when competition is at its fiercest.
Holiday shopping is no longer a simple transaction; it’s an experience, and product content is at its core. Consumers browse multiple sites, compare options, and expect immersive content that answers questions instantly. Brands that invest in Enhanced Content not only stand out but also build trust and loyalty in a crowded marketplace. As the holiday season becomes increasingly digital and data-driven, rich media isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s the engine powering e-commerce success.
Holiday Snapshot: Enhanced Content Demand and Performance on Black Friday 2025
As the world’s largest platform for creating, managing, hosting, and distributing Enhanced Content, Syndigo gets a close-up view of how it gets viewed, used, and interacted with throughout the year.
Enhanced Content supplied by Syndigo on behalf of thousands of retail and consumer brands was viewed over 51 million times from November 23 – December 1 2025: the 8-day span including the week leading up to Thanksgiving (the 48th week of the year) through Cyber Monday. Here’s how demand for and use of rich e-commerce content during that time compares to the rest of the year, and to the peak holiday seasons of the past.
More Items with Enhanced Content Per E-commerce Site
There was not a large expansion in the number of e-commerce sites and platforms that enable brands to publish various kinds of rich product content over the last two years.
However, the total number of product detail pages (PDPs) that host Enhanced Content did increase significantly year-over-year, showing that there was a remarkable surge in adoption across assortments on the sites that do support it.
As more and more brands leverage rich media across greater portions of their catalogs, Enhanced Content is becoming a must-have essential to stay competitive on the digital shelf.
A Slight Dip in Average Visits Per Page with Enhanced Content
The 2025 peak holiday season saw a slight dip in average visits per page with Enhanced Content. This is largely due to the growing proliferation of rich e-commerce content across entire catalogs, including more niche or seasonal items that generally get less attention and traffic than flagship products.
Time Spent on Pages with Enhanced Content Remains Higher
The 2024 peak holiday season started a trend of consumers paying more attention to PDPs with Enhanced Content, spending about 20 seconds more on pages with it than previously and indicating that consumers are increasingly valuing rich, informative, engaging and entertaining information about products. This trend remained steady through the 2025 Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales event.
During the holidays, it’s common for online shoppers to compare multiple options across different sites to make sure they’re getting the right item. Enhanced Content is helping those shoppers make confident decisions faster by providing them with easily digestible, accessible data that they can understand and act on. The result is more time on the page but fewer sessions (number times a single user goes to a page in a day) per visit overall as the consumer gets to the conversion faster.
A Look at the Holidays Ahead
Enhanced Content has cemented its place as an essential part of the holiday product experience for online shoppers. As competitive use and consumer expectations grow, it becomes more and more of an essential—not a nice to have.
Start now to optimize your PDPs for the next holiday season and the rest of the year. Explore the fastest, easiest way to publish rich content across your entire catalog.
