Nov. 28 (UPI) — Cyber Monday this year was the largest online shopping day in U.S. history — $6.59 billion — and almost right on target with what analysts predicted.
In its final update Tuesday, Adobe Insights reported sales increased about 17 percent over last year.
Adobe Analytics analyzed one trillion visits to more than 4,500 retail sites and 55 million stock keeping units.
Most analysts predicted $6.6 billion would be spent online Monday.
By mid-morning Monday, online sales had already surged to $840 million.
Consumers had said they planned to do 51 percent of their shopping online, compared with 42 percent in stores, according to Deloitte’s survey — the first time online sales would pass in-person sales.
Adobe said top sellers on Cyber Monday were the Nintendo Switch, PJ Masks and Hatchimals & Colleggtibles figurines, Apple AirPods, streaming devices like Google Chromecast and Roku, and video game Super Mario Odyssey.
From Nov. 1 through Monday, $50 billion was spent online and is on track to reach $100 billion by the New Year, the firm said Tuesday.
Last year, the National Retail Federation said online sales accounted for $123 billion of $658 billion total holiday shopping.
Thanksgiving day sales reached $2 billion, according to Adobe, as more retailers opened their doors on the holiday. On Black Friday, a record $5 billion was spent, a 17 percent increase from 2016. Small Business Saturday and Sunday recorded a combined $5.12 billion in online sales.
Adobe also said sales with mobile devices hit $2 billion for the first time on Cyber Monday.
“Shopping and buying on smartphones is becoming the new norm and can be attributed to continued optimizations in the retail experience on mobile devices and platforms,” said Mickey Mericle, vice president, Marketing and Customer Insights at Adobe. “Consumers are also becoming more savvy and efficient online shoppers. People increasingly know where to find the best deals and what they want to purchase, which results in less price matching behavior typically done on desktops.”
Heading into Cyber Monday, the biggest discounts were given for toys, televisions and computers.
Amazon announced that its Black Friday weekend — Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday — hit a record for sales. Amazon does’t release actual sales information, but reported “millions of Amazon devices” were sold.
The company said its Echo Dot and Amazon Fire TV Stick “were not only the best-selling Amazon devices, but they were the best-selling products from any manufacturer in any category across all of Amazon.com.”
