Black Friday and Cyber Monday set records — but combined, they still only made up half of Alibaba's Singles Day online sales (BABA)

alibaba singles day

Cyber Monday online sales hit $7.9 billion this year, up 19.3% from 2017.
While Cyber Monday set American online shopping records, it was far less than Alibaba's Singles Day sales — even when combined with Black Friday sales.
Here is how the biggest online shopping days so far in 2018 measure up.

As the Black Friday dust settles, it is time to see how the kickoff to this year's holiday shopping season measured up.

According to the National Retail Federation, 41.4 million people shopped only online from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday. That's more than six million more than the 34.7 million who shopped exclusively in stores.

That led to new online sales records, with major shopping days like Cyber Monday and Black Friday seeing double-digit sales growth over 2017 figures.

Still, the growth wasn't enough for the American holiday shopping season to catch up with Alibaba's Singles Day.

The day of e-commerce deals on November 11, or 11/11, generated more than $4.68 billion in sales in its first 10 minutes. Twenty minutes in, sales had surpassed $6.5 billion — exceeding total Black Friday online sales, according to Adobe Analytics data.

Online sales for biggest shopping days

Here's how online sales in the kickoff to holiday shopping have measured up against Singles Day:

Singles Day: $30.8 billion in GMV (gross merchandise volume), up 27% from 2017
Cyber Monday: $7.9 billion, up 19.3%
Black Friday: $6.22 billion, up 23.6%
Thanksgiving Day: $3.7 billion, up 28%

And, a few more sales comparisons:

Amazon Prime Day: Shoppers spent roughly $4.2 billion at the e-commerce giant over the 36-hour event in July, according to Wedbush Securities Inc. analyst Michael Pachter.
Wednesday before Thanksgiving: Online sales hit $2.4 billion, up 31.8%, the biggest year-over-year sales increase of the last week.
US Singles Day sales: American shoppers spent $1.82 billion on Singles Day, according to Adobe data, up 29.1% from 2017.

Alibaba is determined to continue its e-commerce dominance, pushing for growth to keep Singles Day in the top spot for years to come.

"Everywhere I go, which is pretty much everywhere in the world, there are not very many people who do not know about 11/11," Alibaba president Michael Evans told Business Insider on Singles Day in Shanghai.

"Many people ask the question — how can we participate next year? People are very interested, I think partly because they've heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday and they think that's quite big."

He continued: "They've heard of Amazon Prime Day. But, we sold as much in five minutes as Amazon sold in an entire Prime Day."