It appears the holiday shopping season is in full swing online, as comScore says $17.5 billion has been spent online using desktop computers. That’s an 11% increase vs. the corresponding days last year.
Friday, Nov. 21 has been the heaviest online spending day of the season to date at $914 million in desktop spending. Two other individual shopping days (Wednesday, Nov. 12 and Wednesday, Nov. 19) have also surpassed the $900 million threshold.
“Although current growth rates are trailing slightly the anticipated full season growth rate, it is important to note that this gap should be essentially made up with the extra shopping day between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year compared to last year,” said Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman emeritus. “In addition, given the recent strength on certain individual spending days it is likely we’ll see our first ever billion dollar spending day occur prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, before the heaviest part of the season even kicks off.”
Thanksgiving Day Expected to Continue Strong Gains
Several of the key online shopping days are set to occur within the next two weeks, beginning with Thanksgiving and Black Friday (Nov. 27-28), followed closely by Cyber Monday (Dec. 1) and finally Green Monday (Dec. 8).
Although Cyber Monday and Green Monday have historically been the most important days of the online holiday shopping season, Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday have rapidly gained in importance in the past few years.
Among the key shopping days, comScore says Thanksgiving has had the highest five-year growth rate at 166% , while Black Friday has grown 124% during that time – both significantly outpacing the growth of Cyber Monday and Green Monday.