Digital content sales spike Christmas Day
More than five days reached individual sales highs of $1 billion or more, but perhaps more interesting is the spike in digital content sales on Christmas Day. Throughout the year, experts predicted strong sales for tablets and digital devices; comScore reports digital content/subscription sales (music and video downloads, ebook sales, app sales, etc.) spiked to represent 20% of conversions on Christmas Day. Normally this category represents about 2% of sales.
“Holiday e-commerce spending has remained strong throughout the season, and we have now reached a record $35 billion in U.S. online sales for the season-to-date,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “We can now say with certainty that the $1.25 billion spent on Cyber Monday will rank it as the heaviest online spending day of the season for the second consecutive year, but we should also note that it was accompanied by nine other billion dollar spending days this year.”
Meanwhile, IBM Core Metrics reports that, through mid-December, ecommerce sales increased 11% with mobile increasing more than 140% (year over year) to hit almost 9% of sales.
“I’m predicting that when the final numbers come in for the entire month of December, we’ll see an online sales increase of between 9.5% and 10% for this December over last year’s. But the real question is this: with so many people buying iPads for loved ones, how will the anticipated jump in iPad adoption change online shopping patterns?” writes John Squire, Chief Strategy Office, IBM Core Metrics.
