comScore: Online sales from Thanksgiving through Cyber Week up 24%

Reston, Va. -- For the holiday season-to-date, $31.5 billion has been spent online, marking a 9% increase versus the corresponding days last year, according to comScore. However, as noted in previous releases, Thanksgiving Day was six days later this year than last and causes more heavy spending days to fall in the year ago period, thereby diluting growth rates at this point.



Green Monday (Dec. 9) saw $1.4 billion in desktop online spending, up 10% versus year ago, representing the third heaviest online spending day of the holiday season-to-date.



Cyber Week, the week beginning with Cyber Monday, posted strong growth online, raking in approximately $8 billion in spending for an increase of 24% compared to the same week last year. The Saturday and Sunday following Cyber Monday saw $1.7 billion in spending via desktop computers, up a robust 71% versus last year. Also noteworthy is that Cyber Week fell just $16 million shy on Dec. 6 of boasting five billion dollar days during the work week. For the period from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Week, online buying from desktop computers increased a very strong 24%.



“Online buying for the period since Thanksgiving has been very strong and indicates that e-commerce is on track to meet expectations,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.



Fulgoni said it appears that the abbreviated calendar between Thanksgiving and Christmas is compelling shoppers to complete more of their online buying during the weekends – with this most recent weekend boasting a big 71% gain from last year, following on the heels of last weekend’s 34% jump.



“The weekend is typically a lighter period of online buying than during workdays, but the weekend surges we’re seeing may be attributable to the effects of showrooming, with the in-store shopping experience increasingly getting disrupted by comparison shopping on mobile phones, leading to more conversions online after leaving the store,” Fulgoni said. “Of course, it’s also likely that many consumers realize the holiday spending clock is ticking and are urgently buying their gifts whenever they have time. And that, in turn, works to the benefit of e-commerce.”