Good Friday Online Spending Explodes Toward $5 Billion

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Good Friday Online Spending Explodes Toward $5 Billion

© courtesy of Amazon.com Inc.

As e-commerce continues to take over holiday shopping, Good Friday activity reached a new level. The sales number for the day was close to $5 million according to data from Adobe.

The research showed:

Based on Adobe Analytics data, $3.54 billion have been spent online as of 8pm ET, 15.6% growth YoY. Adobe affirms its forecast that Black Friday will reach $5 billion in online sales. The average order value (AOV) is slightly higher for this year’s Black Friday at $134, up 0.9% YoY.

The source of most shopping was particularly troubling to most researchers. People are searching and shopping on their smartphones, a way for consumers to shop for items in stores and then buy them from e-commerce sites online, a phenomenon know as “showrooming” Adobe pointed out:

Mobile set new records, driving $1.4 billion in revenue ($980 million from smartphones; $400 million from tablets); This represents 55.7% of visits (46.1% smartphones; 9.6% tablets), 10% growth YoY, and 38.9% of revenue (27.7% smartphones; 11.3% tablets), 9.6% growth YoY—both new records.

What the Adobe data does not show is where those smartphone shoppers shopped. Presumably, a number went to Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) the behemoth of e-commerce which is still growing rapidly.

To sum up the holiday season so far, Taylor Schreiner, director, Adobe Digital Insights said:

“The strong online performance of Black Friday this season shows that consumers are moving further away from leaving their homes to do holiday shopping. Mobile in particular has ramped up in a significant way, driving $1.4 billion in online revenue on Black Friday alone. The fact that nearly a billion dollars of this came through smartphones shows that hesitancy around shopping on smaller screens has begun to dissipate.”

If those smartphone consumers are not “showrooming”, the news is even worse for traditional retailers. At least a “showrooming” consumer might buy something in a store. By staying at home to buy gifts for the holidays, shoppers are driving the stake even deeper into the heart of traditional retail

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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