Online Holiday Sales Pass US$29 Billion

• Posted: Monday, January 14, 2008
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Internet Advertising, Market Survey, Online Services

By Jeffrey Grau, Senior Analyst

US online spending during the 2007 holiday season (November and December) totaled $29.2 billion, a 19% increase over 2006, estimates comScore.

comScore said that “Green Monday” (Monday, December 10) was the season’s heaviest spending day online, ringing up $881 million in sales, a hefty 33% increase over the same day in 2006.

Online spending was also heavy on other notable days such as Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. For each of these days, year-on-year sales growth exceeded the 19% growth rate for the entire holiday season. One explanation for this is that consumers held back spending in early November in anticipation of big promotions offered later in the holiday season.

“Ultimately, the softness in the growth of online retail sales during the first ten days of November proved difficult to overcome and prevented the season’s growth rate from reaching our forecast of 20%," said Gian Fulgoni, Chairman of comScore.

comScore’s online holiday sales growth rate closely approximates eMarketer’s forecast of 18.5%, published in November 2007. While 18.5% growth is considered strong by most analysts, it is a noticeable drop off from the prior year’s 24.8% rate and is the lowest online holiday sales growth rate since at least 2003. Two reasons for forecasting slower growth were a maturing e-commerce sector and a more difficult economic time for consumers.

Read more - eMarketer.

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