• by Masha Geller , January 3, 2003

Happy New Year and Happy 20th Birthday to all of us! Just in case anyone needs a reason to continue celebrating, according to technology historians, the Internet was born 20 years ago this week, on New Year's Day in 1983. That was the deadline for the Defense Department's Arpanet to begin using TCP/IP technology to link computers worldwide, which was the antecedent of the Internet we know today.

And there is definitely something to celebrate for the online industry. The numbers are in and while most of the offline retail world is very disappointed with the holiday shopping season, online did very well.

According to BizRate, online registers rang up $7.92 billion for the holiday season (Nov. 25-Dec. 25, 2002). This figure represents a 23% increase over the holiday period last year (Nov. 19-Dec. 25, 2001). That number may seem low, but there were six fewer shopping days this holiday versus last year and if you add six days back in for true comparison, holiday 2002 really grew by 42.8% to $9.18 billion. Incidentally, the 40% growth figure has already been corroborated by comScore ad several other online spending trackers.

Just in case you’re already thinking 12 months ahead for some campaigns, pay particular attention to the second Monday in December. BizRate says that the peak shopping day in 2002 was Monday, Dec. 9, when sales hit $367.0 million. The second and third busiest shopping days were Monday, Dec. 2 and Wednesday, Dec. 11, accounting for $366.2 million and $364.6 million respectively. In 2001, the peak shopping day was Monday, Dec. 10, with $253.8 million in sales.

Additionally, spending on the last weekend before Christmas Day was $297.6 million - up 92% from the same weekend last year.

And, for the third year in a row, women were responsible for the majority of online purchases, and increased their share of buying to 60% from last holiday's 56%. This is a significant trend given that in 1998, women accounted for only 39% of all online holiday transactions.