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Cyber Monday Is Bonanza For Retailers

As more data trickles in, this holiday season is shaping up to be a marquee year for online retailers.

“Cyber Monday might have started as a made-up holiday to give underdog e-commerce sites jealous of Black Friday a day of their own, but it has become an undeniably real thing -- surprising even the people who invented it,” writes The New York Times.

Last year, for the first time, the Monday after Thanksgiving was the biggest online shopping day of the year by sales, and the first day ever that online spending passed $1 billion, according to comScore.

This year, with a record-breaking Black Friday -- shoppers spent $816 million online, 26%more than last year … online retailers are gearing up for Monday to once again be their best of the season.

“That’s an impressive jump considering the 2009 to 2010 increase in Black Friday spending was only 9%,” TechCrunch notes. “Thanksgiving Day saw an 18% increase in online spending to $479 million. U.S. consumers have spent $12.7 billion already in the first 25 days of the November to December 2011 holiday season, up 15% from the corresponding days last year.”

“Cyber Monday may finally be living up to its name,” AllThingsD writes. In particular, “Amazon is a prime example of a retailer working hard to pry open wallets today,” it adds.

Last year, Amazon said Cyber Monday was its peak day with more than 13.7 million items ordered worldwide, setting a record for 158 items sold per second. “Today, it will be important to achieve that pace again,” AllThingsD writes.

“Why are more and more shoppers making purchases online?” asks Time Magazine’s Moneyland blog. “For one thing, a larger swath of consumers is finally comfortable with the concept of sending credit-card numbers out over the ‘Interweb.’”

Also, “analysts said heavy promotional activity helped drive demand,” notes BBC News.

“The interesting trend this year is that the emergence of mobile devices is helping front load more online holiday sales as shoppers aren’t waiting for those two big days to kick off their spending,” GigOm writes, citing comScore data.

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