• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, December 4, 2008

Separate data released Wednesday by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) and comScore point to slower online retail activity so far this holiday season.

The proportion of time that consumers spent on e-commerce sites hit an all-time low in October at 12.8%, according to new findings from the OPA. When it comes to spending, comScore reported that online retail sales from Nov. 1 to Dec. 1 were down 2% from a year ago, despite a 13% increase during the four-day period from Black Friday to Cyber Monday.

The reduced share of time spent on retail sites in October especially contrasts with the pattern in prior years, when the month marked the start of an uptick in e-commerce activity.

"Typically, what we've seen every year since we began doing this in 2003 is that October would be when time spent began increasing for the holiday season," said Stuart Schneiderman, director of research for the OPA. "It's a reflection of what's going on offline, where people are holding back spending."

The nearly 13% of time consumers spent on retail sites in October compares to 15% a year ago, according to the OPA's Internet Activity Index. That proportion increased to 17% in November and 17.5% in December 2007 before falling to 16% in January. Whether e-commerce sites will see similar gains this year is less certain because of the deepening recession.

At the same time, time spent on content sites increased to 45.3%, compared to 42.7% in January, as people turned to the Web to keep track of the unfolding financial crisis and the presidential election. "We saw a lot of growth in financial news and the business sector and the national and international segments as people leveraged the Internet for news and data during these critical times,' said Schneiderman.

Rounding out the online categories tracked by the OPA were communication-focused sites such as Yahoo Mail, where people spent 28% of their time, community sites such as Facebook and MySpace (8.7%), and search (5.2%).

In terms of online sales, comScore emphasized the spike in buying in recent days, driven by an increase in discounts and promotions. The $846 million spent on Cyber Monday, up 15% from a year ago, was the second-biggest online one-day shopping total to date.

"This is an extremely encouraging development for retailers and we can but hope that their aggressive discounting has still left room for profits," said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni, in a statement. Overall, the Web measurement firm has predicted a flat e-commerce holiday season in 2008 at $29.2 billion.