Online Holiday Sales Peak on Series of Cyber Mondays

November 13, 2006

New York, Performics, the performance-based marketing division of DoubleClick, today unveiled e-commerce trends for the 2006 holiday shopping season. Upon analysis of Performics’ data, which includes e-commerce sales data from 2003 through 2005, Performics discovered that “Cyber Mondays,” the Mondays between Thanksgiving and Christmas, generate major e-commerce sales peaks for online retailers. Cyber Monday was originally defined as the first Monday after Thanksgiving by Shop.org. Although it has been touted as the largest online shopping day of the year, further analysis of Performics’ data indicates that this is just the first of a series of four Cyber Mondays during the holiday season.

Mondays, in general, tend to be the busiest online shopping days of the week during the peak retail season, with the second and third weeks seeing the most online activity. Cyber Mondays indexed at 11 percent more sales than other holiday shopping days in 2003, and have grown each year to a high last year of 19 percent more sales. In order to capitalize on Cyber Mondays, marketers must take advantage of the nimbleness of search engine marketing. Search keywords, copy and bid prices can be adjusted in real time, making search a dynamic channel, capable of absorbing unspent or underperforming budgets from other channels even late in the season. Online marketers can best leverage search engine marketing by understanding that:  

• Studies suggest nearly everyone who makes an online purchase searches prior to doing so, and many of those searches lead to purchases in categories other than the area of initial search.
• Being visible for generic words and phrases is the cyber-equivalent to a compelling window display, attracting new customers and pulling them into a website. Performics is a division of DoubleClick
• This year Christmas falls on the fifth Cyber Monday, resulting in extra shopping days that retailers can take advantage of by offering guaranteed shipping or switching to gift card or electronic gift certificate strategies in the final shopping days.
• Many shoppers use search to research in-store purchases or to find local stores offering desired products. Consider “Brand + location” and “Product + location” keywords to connect online with these local shoppers. 

“Monday sales peaks are common on e-commerce sites throughout the year,” said Cam Balzer, vice president of strategic planning at Performics. “During the holiday season, the Cyber Monday peaks provide touchpoints for adjusting marketing strategies along the seasonal arc from Thanksgiving to Christmas. This year gives retailers a fifth Cyber Monday, with extra shopping and shipping days to take advantage of the holiday season.” 

Methodology

This trending analysis is based on Performics’ year-over-year e-commerce sales data for online retailers. Performics tracks e-commerce sales volume in conjunction with the management of affiliate and/or search engine marketing programs for more than 300 advertisers. The data have been normalized to mimic the offline metric of same store sales and to account for growth in Performics’ client base to ensure the data better reflect overall trends in e-commerce and organic industry growth.