Brands traded ad efficiency for massive scale, protected by high margins.
Toys executed the most aggressive "pay-to-play" strategy of the event. Brands tripled their ad investment to flood the category with traffic, driving a massive increase in glance views and a surge in ordered revenue.
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By refusing to offer event-level deals, the category expanded gross margins by +11%
Brands were able to effectively "buy" market dominance without sacrificing category profitability
The only ceiling on this growth was operations, as the demand surge caused out-of-stock losses to skyrocket
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Key Takeaways
Toys brands executed the most aggressive advertising strategy of Cyber 5 2025, tripling their ad investment with a +290% lift compared to last year's flat spending
The aggressive marketing investment paid off with a +188% lift in ordered revenue over baseline, vastly outperforming last year's Cyber 5 performance
Revenue loss due to out-of-stock situations skyrocketed by +509% over baseline, with Cyber Monday 2025 experiencing a catastrophic 776% increase
Brands protected profitability by refusing to discount, holding firm at just +1% discount depth while gross margins expanded by +11%
Return on advertising spend collapsed to -30% compared to last year's +8% efficiency as cost per click surged +49%
Glance views surged +67% over baseline with a 98% lift on Black Friday alone, but conversion rates showed mixed results
