Cyber Monday is a marketing propaganda term that refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday being the busiest day of the year for retail electronic commerce.  The term was created by the National Retail Federation and announced in conjunction with the deployment of their own website CyberMonday.com designed to serve as a portal for Cyber Monday deals and offers.

Since its inception, critics contend that consumer purchasing habits represent more of a static growth throughout the holiday season as opposed to one day in which companies "see any (unusual) traffic" on websites. It has been postulated that through mainstream media adoption of the term, combined with retailers hoping to drive more traffic to their sites, that the "Gimmick" of Cyber Monday could become a "Real Trend".

The term "Cyber Monday" is a neologism invented by Shop.org, part of the U.S. trade association National Retail Federation. It was first used within the ecommerce community during the 2005 holiday season. According to Scott Silverman, the head of Shop.org, the term was coined based on research showing that 77% of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2004. In late November 2005, the New York Times reported that "The name Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked."