ReveNews
Cyber Monday Grows Up and Becomes Serious
If you’ve been in the online marketing and advertising game for a few years, you remember the buzz surrounding the notion of “Cyber Monday” a few years ago. We weren’t completely sure of the metrics or the sustainability of the buzz, but we knew something exciting was happening in the online retail and shopping space that would transform the way we do business in the increasingly critical month of December.
Now it seems that the notion of Cyber Monday has matured into a serious market force. The NY Times has coverage of the big day with mentions of familiar companies such as FatWallet, UPromise (why does UPromise get a link and not FatWallet, btw??), Ice.com and HSN.com:
TWO years ago, Cyber Monday was a marketing gimmick in search of shoppers. This year, it seems to be a genuine trend that retailers have embraced.
In a survey of roughly 120 members of Shop.org, the trade group for online retailers, nearly three-quarters said they would offer discounts today for Cyber Monday, as the first Monday after Thanksgiving has become known. Shop.org said 32 percent of adults surveyed last week said they would shop online on Cyber Monday, up from 27 percent in 2006.
Doug Hart, an analyst at BDO Seidman, an accounting and consulting firm, said Cyber Monday sales would account for about 12 percent of the expected $39 billion in online revenue this holiday season. That is similar to the 15 percent share of holiday sales recorded by offline retailers on the day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday, he said.
So, here’s a toast to everyone’s success on this Cyber Monday 2007. Eventually, Cyber Monday will seem as quaint and accepted as Black Friday, but to see this sort of validation from the mainstream media after all these years is a nice step forward for the online revenue industry. Whether Cyber Monday will be driven by direct affiliates or loyalty programs is a whole other can of worms that we’ll be exploring later…
It’s huge this year. This Cyber Monday is going to bury last years. I’m seeing it on all the news shows. This is great. Even tho it isn’t the biggest online shopping day, which usually happens second week in December, 5th - 15th, I’m happy for all the hype.
And to top off our good fortune, 60 minutes ran a special last night about how much more unsafe it is to use your credit card at brick and mortar stores than it is to use it online. It’s a good time to be us!
I was meaning to catch that show, think I was watching football instead. Good it was positive. I was flipping thru the channels and managed to catch Pat Robertson saying beware of all the fraud with shopping online. And then he went off on how people should be careful about getting into debt and then the forgetting about what the season is really about, had to change the channel.
I’ll try to find info on the 60 Minutes show later. Was some of it about how your info is encrypted online and stuff like that? It is actually safer shopping online, good to get the word out on that and not some of the misinformation/nonsense I see from some news outlets.
> Even tho it isn’t the biggest online shopping day…
I’ve been seeing all (5 this year) of the Mondays between Thanksgiving and Christmas referred to as Cyber Mondays this year.
If that’s the case, I think those 5 days could all well be in the top 10 online shopping days of the year.
Maybe not the last one, since it’s only gift cards at that point.
Just heard on CNBC that Yahoo is having serious problems with its checkout process which is affecting a number of major online retail sites.
D’oh!