Adobe

According to analytics reports from Adobe and RetailNext, online sales trumped bricks-and-mortar over Black Friday weekend and the trend looks to continue throughout the 2015 holiday season.

Despite a few hiccups with site availability, Cyber Week 2015 on the whole was a huge success for the retail industry and bodes well for the remainder of the holiday season.

According to data from Adobe, from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, consumers spent $11 billion online. This marked a 15% increase from Cyber Week in 2014 and represented 30% of a total $39.5 billion in November online sales. Adobe predicts consumers will spend $1 billion a day online every day from Dec. 1- Dec. 18.

Cyber Monday 2015 will be a day for the retail record books, at least until next holiday season.

Consumer spending across digital channels showed significant year-over-year growth over this year's Thanksgiving weekend.

According to data from ComScore, desktop spending surpassed $1 billion on both Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Consumers sitting at desktop PCs spent a total of $1.1 billion, up 9% from $1.01 billion in 2014. On Black Friday, desktop spending grew 10% to $1.66 billion from $1.5 billion.

Visual social media network Instagram is taking a new step toward becoming a platform for commerce.

Instagram has launched a new program called Instagram Partners that is designed to help companies advertise on the social network. Each certified partner must have expertise in at least one of three defined areas: ad tech (buying and selling ads at scale), community management (managing comments and gaining consumer insights), and content marketing (sourcing and delivering content at scale).

Mobile will drive more than half of Thanksgiving Day online shopping visits (51%) for the first time in 2015.

That is just one mobile-friendly statistic from the new Adobe 2015 Digital Index Online Shopping Predictions. The Index also forecasts mobile will account for close to a third (29%) of all holiday sales, a 12% increase from 2014. iOS will drive 22% of sales, Android just 7%.

Mobile will drive more than half of Thanksgiving Day online shopping visits (51%) for the first time in 2015.

That is just one mobile-friendly statistic from the new Adobe 2015 Digital Index Online Shopping Predictions. The Index also forecasts mobile will account for close to a third (29%) of all holiday sales, a 12% increase from 2014. iOS will drive 22% of sales, Android just 7%.

Looking at another emerging customer engagement channel, Adobe predicts social media will drive 2% of referred visits (flat growth), with revenue per visit highest on Facebook ($1.24).

Starbucks Corp. is reportedly seeing value in a new addition to its drive-through order windows.

According to Bloomberg, Starbucks is rolling out video screens to 2,400 drive-through lanes in stores across the U.S. during the next 12 months. In one major differentiator from the drive-through screens found at many quick service chains, Starbucks screens will feature a real-time audio/video feed of the barista taking the order.

Images of items the customer orders will appear on the screen to ensure they are placed correctly.