Record $12.7B online sales seen for Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday

Online sales over the extra-long Thanksgiving weekend are on track to hit a record $12.7 billion, goosed by an expected chart-topping performance on Cyber Monday, according to estimated tallies from Adobe Digital Insight.

For Cyber Monday, Adobe projected $3.36 billion in receipts, which represents a 9.4 percent increase from the year before. Overall, if the Adobe’s figures hold up, this year’s Thanksgiving weekend shopping tally, stretching from Thursday through Monday, would log a 14.5 percent rise over 2015’s figure.

The annual Monday shopping spree got off to a strong start with an estimated $554 million haul for retailers from midnight to 10 a.m. ET, according to Adobe. From Thanksgiving day on Thursday through Sunday, Adobe data show $9.36 billion in  e-commerce sales. 

Cyber Monday “could retain its position as the top online shopping day of the season,” said Becky Tasker, managing analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, “but only if retailers continue to push as good [a range] of deals today as they have over the holiday weekend,”

Top sellers for electronics goods this weekend were Sony PS4, Microsoft Xbox, Samsung 4K TVs, Apple iPads and Amazon Fire. For toys, the leaders were Lego sets, Shopkins, Nerf, Barbie and Little Live Pets.

How much this all translates into dollars remains to be seen, as discounting is rampant: The highest discounts were seen for tablets (24 percent off), televisions (22 percent), toys (16 percent) and computers (11.4 percent). 

Mobile accounted for 37 percent of sales through Sunday. Black Friday marked the first day in retail history to top $1 billion in mobile revenue -- at $1.2 billion, a 33 percent rise.