With Black Friday spilling over into Thanksgiving dinner, the “holiday creep” is already testing its limits this year. Wal-Mart, however, is taking it even one step further by starting Cyber Monday on Black Friday.
The world’s largest retailer, eager to start making that holiday cash, won’t even wait for the weekend to pass before offering big online sales. In fact, they don’t even intend to wait until the turkey is cooked. Wal-Mart’s Cyber Monday will kick off at 12:01 a.m. EST on Friday morning; however, Walmart.com will start its online Black Friday sale at 12:01 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day.
By offering their Black Friday sales online on Thanksgiving, Wal-Mart is blurring the lines between the two sale-snatching celebrations Americans typically indulge in after Thanksgiving.
Not only are they starting their online sales earlier than usual, Wal-Mart will also beef up its product offering from 8 million items to more than 23 million.
“By tripling our online product assortment, we’re able to offer a lot more new brands and choices to customers all season long,” said Steve Breen, senior vice president of 
merchandising for Walmart.com.
Every holiday season, retailers try to one-up each other in order to grab a larger share of consumers’ wallets earlier and earlier. Offering online deals is, undoubtedly, a smart move as more and more shoppers are making their holiday purchases online. Back in 2011, $1.1 trillion in sales were web-influenced, and even more sales can be attributed to the Internet today. In fact, global e-commerce generates over $931,000 every 30 seconds.
The National Retail Federation estimates that about 137.4 million people will shop either online or in stores this holiday weekend. According to Adobe Digital Insights, Cyber Monday is poised to be the largest sales day of 2016, generating roughly $3.36 billion.