Online Shopping Around Black Friday Hits $4.45 Billion This Year

Mobile sales also grew, with 40% of all online sales coming from mobile devices, an increase of 23.8% over Thanksgiving Day 2014. The company said it is an “estimated decrease from last year” but did not give the percentage decline due to an internal change in the way it calculates data.

Between midnight and 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, more than $1 billion was spent online, according to Adobe, and they projected that the full day would surpass $1.7 billion, up 22% over past year.

“Thanksgiving came on the scene two years ago, and it’s really blown the doors off”, Wingo said.

Adobe also predicted that online spending on Thursday and Friday totaled a record $4.45 billion.

But Target, along with other bricks-and-mortar retailers still face an ongoing threat from e-commerce giants like Amazon.com Inc. which has been offering shoppers free, two-day shipping membership program.

For the first time, there’s expected to be more people visiting retailers’ web sites through their smartphones than on desktop computers or tablets during the first weekend of the holiday shopping season that begins on Thanksgiving Day.

With more than 1,200 of the world’s leading retailers, malls and entertainment venues, ShopperTrak deploys over 80,000 devices across 97 countries and territories.

On Thanksgiving, email promotions accounted for 14% of online sales, says Adobe, rising 25% from last Thanksgiving.

But more shoppers are making purchases online.

He told Bloomberg: ‘Across the board, much less traffic than was anticipated, ‘ he said. Likewise, eBay says it expects mobile sales during the holidays will be “significantly” higher than the 41 percent mobile sales made up of total revenue in the third quarter.

MasterCard Advisors will publish its report of Black Friday sales next week. For October 2015 sales excluding automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services – the so-called core retail sales figure – rose 0.2 percent from a year earlier.

With an mixed start to the holiday season for retailers for now, TheStreet takes a look at some clear winners and losers for the big shopping weekend.

ComScore predicts that mobile will account for most of the growth in e-commerce holiday shopping this year, although starting from a significantly smaller base than desktop sales. The iPad had a conversion rate of 4.4 percent, and it was 3.6 percent on Android tablets.

The NRF’s forecast is based on several economic indicators including consumer credit, disposable personal income and prior results for monthly retail sales releases.

One retailer with high stakes riding on this holiday season is J. Crew, whose sales slump has sent its bonds into a downward spiral, sparking talk of a possible debt restructuring.