TechTaffy

tech:

taffy

Cyber Monday was largest online sales day in history, says Adobe

By TechTaffy Desk

Adobe released its 2017 online shopping data for Cyber Monday and the holiday weekend overall. Cyber Monday is projected to hit a new record as the largest online sales day in history, with $6.59 billion by the end of the day says Adobe. This marks a 16.8 percent year-over-year (YoY) increase. In comparison, Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day brought in $5.03 billion and $2.87 billion in revenue respectively. Adobe predicts this will be the first-ever holiday season to break $100 billion in online sales.

Top sellers on Cyber Monday included the Nintendo Switch, PJ Masks and Hatchimals & Colleggtibles figurines, Apple AirPods, streaming devices like Google Chromecast and Roku, and Super Mario Odyssey, the video game, according to Adobe. The holiday shopping season so far (November 1 to 27) drove a total of $50 billion in online revenue, a 16.8 percent increase.

Overall web traffic to retail sites increased by 11.9 percent on Cyber Monday, with the season average at 5.7 percent. Mobile set a new record representing 47.4 percent of visits (39.9 percent smartphones, 7.6 percent tablets) and 33.1 percent of revenue (24.1 percent smartphones, 9.0 percent tablets).

Smartphone traffic specifically grew 22.2 percent YoY while revenue coming from smartphones ($1.59 billion) saw 39.2 percent growth YoY, a new all-time high. Mobile transactions are closing at a 12 percent higher rate compared to Cyber Monday 2016. For purchases made on smartphones, Apple iOS led with an average order value (AOV) of $123, in comparison to Google Android at $110.

Additional findings include:

  • Top sellers: Best-selling electronics include Google Chromecast, Apple iPads, Samsung Tablets, Apple AirPods, and Sony Playstation VR. Video games and consoles include Super Mario Odyssey, Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Xbox One X. Toys include PJ Masks and Hatchimals and Colleggtibles, Funko Pop and L.O.L. Surprise dolls, as well as Ride On Cars.
  • Large and small retailers win: Large retailers (over $100 million in annual revenue) saw higher AOVs and desktop conversion rates. Small retailers (under $10 million in annual revenue) saw 30 percent higher conversion rates on smartphones than large retailers.
  • Top retail promotion drivers: Search drove the majority of online sales on Cyber Monday at 41.7 percent (paid search at 22.9 percent, organic search at 18.8 percent). Direct traffic and email drove 24.8 percent and 24.9 percent respectively. Paid search saw the strongest growth at 8.3 percent YoY.
  • Record Thanksgiving week online sales: November 23 through 26 totaled $13.03 billion, a 14.4 percent increase YoY. Thanksgiving Day spend totaled $2.87 billion (18.3 percent growth YoY) while Black Friday hit $5.03 billion (up 16.9 percent YoY). Thanksgiving weekend (November 25 and 26) saw $5.12 billion in revenue. Online spend surpassed at least $1 billion every day in the lead up to Thanksgiving.
  • Full holiday season online sales: For the rest of the season, 13 days are projected to exceed $2 billion in online sales bringing the total to 18 $2 billion days this holiday season, over double the number from last year.

The Adobe Sensei artificial intelligence and machine learning framework was used to identify retail insights from trillions of data points that flow through analytics, says Adobe. The research is based on an analysis of one trillion visits to over 4,500 retail sites and 55 million SKUs.

[Image courtesy: Adobe]

Just in

Series A

Tembo raises $14M

Cincinnati, Ohio-based Tembo, a Postgres managed service provider, has raised $14 million in a Series A funding round.
Around the web

Raspberry Pi is now a public company — TC

Raspberry Pi priced its IPO on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning at £2.80 per share, valuing it at £542 million, or $690 million at today’s exchange rate, writes Romain Dillet. 
Fundings

AlphaSense raises $650M

AlphaSense, a market intelligence and search platform, has raised $650 million in funding, co-led by Viking Global Investors and BDT & MSD Partners.
Around the web

Elon Musk’s xAI raises $6B to take on OpenAI — VentureBeat

Confirming reports from April, the series B investment comes from the participation of multiple known venture capital firms and investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding, writes Shubham Sharma. 
IT

Capgemini partners with DARPA to explore quantum computing for carbon capture

Capgemini Government Solutions has launched a new initiative with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to investigate quantum computing's potential in carbon capture.