Cyber Monday, the online shopping spectacle, lived up to expectations with sales growing 12 percent year-over-year to a record $2.98 billion, according to Adobe Digital Index.
Deep discounts and flash sales lured shoppers online making it the “largest online sales day in history,” Adobe says, which anonymously tracks data from 80 percent of the nation’s top 100 retailers across 4,500 websites.
On average, shoppers received a 20 percent discount. “Cyber Monday had the most positive social sentiment with 56 percent relating to joy or admiration, versus 40 percent for Black Friday,” Adobe notes.
Savvy shopper sites, such as RetailMeNot, was the most common place people found discounts (32 percent), followed by search ads (26.6 percent) and direct sales (21.3 percent). Despite the looming specter of ad-blockers, display ads saw the largest growth of 50 percent over last year in pointing people to sales.
Demand was so high that out-of-stock rates on the Internet’s most sought-after products, like Star War toys and video game consoles, were more than two times more likely to be sold out compared to any other day. That helps explain why Target briefly buckled yesterday morning because it received an “unprecedented” amount of traffic.
Across the four day weekend, including Thanksgiving and Black Friday, online sales jumped 15 percent over last year totaling $11 billion, accounting for nearly 30 percent of November’s total of $39.5 billion.
There was a two-way tie in brands associated with Cyber Monday. Amazon and Walmart both garnered a lot of mentions online with the former generating the most while Walmart gathered 59 percent as much as Amazon during the same time reports Amobee Brand Intelligence.
Amazon said this morning that its top-selling times were all Amazon-made products, like the Fire TV consoles and tablets.
Images via Shutterstock.
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