Online Holiday Sales Up 15%

By Alan Wolf -- TWICE, 12/28/2011

Reston, Va. - Online sales for the Nov. 1 - Dec. 26 period rose 15 percent year-over-year to $35.3 billion, comScore reported.

The market research firm also cited a "dramatic increase" in Christmas Day purchases of digital content including music, TV shows, movies, e-books and apps. Digital content typically accounted for 2.8 percent of daily online sales during the holiday season, but its share of spend shot up to 20 percent on Dec. 25, and is expected to remain elevated all this week.

comScore credited the Christmas Day increase to consumers loading up their just-opened smartphones, tablets and e-readers with new content, many using digital gift certificates.

The biggest online shopping day of season remains Cyber Monday, with nearly $1.3 billion in sales, followed by "Green Monday" - the Monday that precedes Christmas by at least 10 days - which netted e-tailers $1.1 billion in sales.

But the biggest year-over-year spike still belongs to Black Friday, when online sales soared 26 percent, to $816 million.