Cyber Monday — the final day of the extended Thanksgiving weekend that traditionally kicks off holiday season spend — broke another e-commerce record: US shoppers racked up a total of $9.2 billion in online sales, according to figures from Adobe.
To put that number into some perspective, at its peak, consumers were spending $11 million per minute; this was the first day to see sales via smartphones break the $3 billion mark; and this was $1.3 billion more than shoppers spent on Cyber Monday a year ago (remember the days when breaking $1 billion was a big deal?). There has so far been just over $72 billion spent online since the beginning of November.
The $3 billion of products purchased via smartphones accounted for about one-third of all sales. In itself, this is huge, as smartphone growth was up 46%: in other words, smartphone growth is outpacing and very much driving overall growth of online sales.
another trend Adobe is tracking points to why the biggest online retailers like Amazon are getting increasingly involved in the advertising business. Adobe notes that paid search accounted for 24.4% of sales (up 5.2% on last year), more than three percentage points more than actual direct traffic (21.2% and declining). “Natural” search accounted for 18.8% of sales, while email accounted 16.8% (up 8.9% YoY). Social media, as a category, has “minimal impact” when it comes to driving online sales (just 2.6%) but — true to form — it’s proving to be a big influencer, driving some 8% of visits and up 17.5% over a year ago.
