This ticked-off cat isn't too thrilled about the snow, but plenty of online retailers are.
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET)A blizzard that pelted much of the Eastern Seaboard with over a foot of snow also led to a spike in last-minute online holiday shopping last weekend, traffic firm ComScore said Tuesday.
Online shopping continues to eat up a bigger chunk of holiday retail each year, but this season, with roads snowbound and temperatures well below freezing in some of the most populous areas of the country at the tail end of the holiday season, it was even more than usual. (Several cities in the mid-Atlantic, like Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., pulled in more snow in a single snowfall than they typically do in an entire season.) For the weekend of December 19-20, U.S. traffic to non-travel retail sites was up 13 percent from the equivalent weekend last year--and on Tuesday, December 15, right when the storms started hitting weather forecasts, it was up 21 percent.
That Tuesday marked the biggest online spending day in history, ComScore says.
"The major snowstorms hitting the eastern seaboard over the weekend appear to have given holiday e-commerce an additional boost, resulting in the heaviest online spending week on record at $4.8 billion," ComScore chair Gian Fulgoni said in a release. "Consumers have clearly continued to spend online later into the season this year, with several very strong spending days in the most recent week including the heaviest online spending day in history--Tuesday, December 15, with $913 million. Retailers have been very aggressive with late season promotions while informing consumers that they could still get their purchases shipped in time for Christmas, and these tactics seem to be paying off."
A survey from Coremetrics said that sales for "Cyber Monday," the Monday after Thanksgiving and typically a day for big online deals, showed healthy gains this year.
A snapshot of holiday sales.
(Credit: ComScore)This year's online holiday-shopping season has topped $19.9 billion so far--a 3 percent jump over the same period in 2008, according to ComScore.
Online sales were bolstered last week when consumers spent more than $800 million on two separate days, ComScore said. On Thursday, for example, consumers coughed up $852 million.
Monday has the potential to produce the best day of this year's holiday-shopping season, which started November 1 in ComScore's stats.
ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said that Monday "represents our best opportunity to finally surpass that elusive $900 million spending threshold. The early part of this upcoming week should bring us the heaviest online spending days of the season before consumers refocus their attention on brick-and-mortar retail locations to finish up their holiday shopping."
Considering that 2008 wasn't the great year for holiday sales, online or otherwise, it is also worth looking back to 2007. From November 1 through December 14 in 2007, ComScore reported, consumers spent $22.67 billion online.
ComScore's 2009 figures included up through Friday, December 11. It will be interesting to see whether the extra three days could push this year's online sales figures anywhere near 2007's level.
The new report is the latest from the e-commerce-tracking company showing healthier sales than last year. A recent report cited strong Cyber Monday sales figures.
Updated at 7:15 a.m. PDT with 2007 online sales figures.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
The 2009 holiday season thus far is revealing much stronger online sales figures than what was witnessed in 2008, market-research firm ComScore announced late Wednesday.
According to the company, which has monitored spending for the first 30 days of the November-December shopping season, sales are up 3 percent to $12.26 billion, compared to the same period in 2008. Cyber Monday sales hit $887 million in online spending, tallying a 5 percent gain over the same day last year. That amount also matched "the biggest spending day on record, December 9, 2008."
"We've seen an encouraging start to the online holiday shopping season and it would appear that retailers' aggressive and early marketing efforts have so far succeeded in persuading consumers to open their wallets online," ComScore chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a statement. "Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday were atypically strong online sales days this year, and Cyber Monday has continued that trend by outperforming the season-to-date average growth rate and matching last year's record day of $887 million in online spending."
The good news doesn't stop there. Cyber Monday also saw an increase in the number of buyers, ComScore found. The total number of online buyers grew 6 percent to 8.7 million people. That said, the average amount each person spent dropped 2 percent to $102.19.
True to the day's origins, the majority of sales originated from work computers. The company found that 52.7 percent of all purchases were completed in the office. Just 41.6 percent of shoppers picked up items from home, ComScore said.
ComScore wasn't the only company reporting strong numbers this week. eBay said that Cyber Monday transactions outpaced Black Friday's by a whopping 35 percent. More than 2.4 million transactions were completed on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, eBay said. The site even has a heat-map graphic that shows how the transactions pored in over the course of those days.
ComScore and eBay's data follows another strong report from marketing-optimization company Coremetrics, which said earlier this week that sales were up 13.7 percent at some online retailers that it received data from.
Omniture and ComScore, two Web-tracking powerhouses, are combining forces to launch a new system for measuring online audiences, the companies said Monday.
Teasing out online traffic figures has been a constant challenge for both advertisers and publishers. The two companies' goal is better analyze online audiences by teaming Omniture's reliance on Web site analytics with ComScore's approach of following patterns of Internet users.
Web sites tend to rely on either analytics or audience measurement to determine traffic patterns, which can often lead to conflicting results. By merging the two methods, Omniture and ComScore hope to give customers a more unified and more accurate view.
"Since the rise of digital advertising, advertisers and publishers alike have sought ways to reconcile their Web analytics and panel-based measurement data to establish a unified measure of online audiences," Omniture CEO Josh James said in a statement. "With this relationship, Omniture and ComScore will enable publishers who have rich, highly targeted audience segments to reliably demonstrate their value to advertisers and also help advertisers find these attractive consumer segments."
ComScore's new Media Metrix 360 system will play a leading role in the service. Launched in June, Media Metrix 360 already uses a hybrid approach, supplementing audience measurement with Web site analytics. The company had been criticized in the past for relying on too small a segment of the online audience to provide accurate data on traffic patterns.
Through this partnership, ComScore will also be working with Adobe Systems, which last week signed an agreement to acquire Omniture for $1.8 billion.
Updated 10:57 a.m. PDT with comment from MLB.com.
When is 2 million people too small a group to get a good feel for the latest trends?
When you're trying to perform the deceptively difficult calculation of just how many people visited a Web site.
ComScore, by some accounts the leading analysis firm that supplies publishers and advertisers with figures about how many people visit various Web sites, announced Tuesday a switch to a new method geared to provide more accurate Web traffic numbers. Previously the company had judged traffic on the behavior of a panel of 2 million persons scattered across the globe, but the new service, Media Metrix 360, combines that data with statistics taken directly from the Web servers that can tally visitor totals.
The hybrid approach is a big departure for ComScore, which for years has staunchly defended the panel approach. ComScore Chief Executive Magid Abraham expects the move will put to rest most complaints by publishers that ComScore's statistics dramatically underestimated real popularity.
"There is a big gap that we will rectify," Abraham said. "My personal belief and hope is it will address 90 percent-plus of the issues...Unless there is a widely different method for measurement that a publisher is using on their own, we should not really see differences anymore."
Traffic discrepancy
The hybrid approach still is fundamentally panel-based, but uses server data from participating publishers to inform the totals. ComScore expects it will estimate traffic better from computers that panels miss today: mobile phones, larger companies, cybercafes in Asia and Latin America, and public terminals at schools and libraries, Abraham said.
Measuring traffic is a long-running point of contention between publishers and ComScore; MySpace and Major League Baseball's MLB.com are among those who've objected in the past to panel-based numbers.
Torstar Digital, a division of the parent company that owns the Toronto Star, is one company that's had trouble reconciling its newspaper sites' numbers with ComScore when it came to tallying how many times visitors viewed pages, said President Tomer Strolight.
"We regularly saw discrepancies between ComScore page views and unique visitors of 3 to 1 or greater when compared with our server-based tools on those sites," Strolight said. ComScore's panel-based approach posed problems when it came to extrapolating statistics from people at work and older audiences, he said, but the new service helps.
"The discrepancy, and that ratio in particular, are not present in all sites by any means, but it does happen to affect my largest site and it is therefore very important to me that we resolve that issue," Strolight said. "ComScore's new methodology can do this."
MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman gives credit to ComScore for moving beyond just panels, but he's still skeptical, in part because of what panels miss from work users. Instead, he'd prefer to share his server log files after they'd been vetted by a neutral party.
"For our site, 70 percent of day traffic comes during working hours. Missing that is comparable to saying we built a beautiful boat--it just doesn't have a bottom yet...I reject completely that panels can ever work when it comes to what people do at work," Bowman said. "I don't know why for top-250 sites, such as MLB.com, our files just can't be audited, and (the auditors) say yup, here's the traffic."
So why does the number matter beyond bragging rights in a press release?
Money, of course. Advertisers want to know if they're showing an ad to the same person multiple times or to different people. And of course Web publishers want to know how many people really do use their site.
"A media market develops on the basis of trusted information for all the participants. The sellers and buyers have to agree the numbers are something they can live with," Abraham said.
Not as easy as 1-2-3
One might think it a simple matter to measure how much traffic a Web site gets. Just keep a log of the Internet addresses of visitors, or perhaps deliver the "cookie" text file to their browser for easier identification of repeat visitors, right?
Wrong. There's often a discrepancy between independent panel-based statistics from companies such as ComScore or competitor Nielsen Online on the one hand and server-based statistics from a Web publisher's internal logs or third-party services such Google Analytics or Omniture on the other. Here are some factors that can inflate Web site visitor statistics based on server logs:
• The same person might visit the same site from work, home, and increasingly, from a mobile phone. That's not a problem when counting total traffic to a site, but it is when trying to tally unique users.
• Sometimes people delete cookies either manually or automatically through antispyware software, meaning that a cookie might be delivered to a person who seems to be a new user but who in fact has visited a site before.
• Someone might visit the same site with multiple Web browsers or open a tab in a browser without actually making it active.
• Computer servers such as search engine indexers can visit Web sites.
These issues are diminished when users must log into a site, making it easier to track individual use, but the panel approach attempts to address the issue more broadly, consistently, and independently. Panel-based information also answers a question that an individual site cannot: how often is a particular person exposed to the same ad while browsing multiple sites on the Web?
"Ultimately, we need to report unique people, not unique machines, unique cookies, or unique browsers," Abraham said. "There is a lot of energy that goes on trying to reconcile the numbers and trying to explain to people the ins and outs and the subtleties of why this number is not that number."
Panel shortcomings
However, panel-based measurements have their own shortcomings, in part because they rely on software installed on users' machines. Thus the difficulties with mobile phones, businesses, cybercafes, libraries, and schools, Abraham said.
Cybercafes are widely used in Asia and Latin America, he said. Mobile usage for typical sites accounts for less than 1 percent of traffic today, but it's much larger--potentially more than 20 percent--for sites that appeal to mobile users such as those handling weather, stock quotes, breaking news, sports scores, local information, and social networking. And today, ComScore largely just estimates traffic from big-business users.
"It's really difficult to recruit users to participate in panels in large corporations," Abraham said. "Large businesses are in essence voted for by the medium-sized businesses, by proxy. Sometime that works, sometimes that doesn't. That's one area of improvement this (Media Metrix 360) will create."
The company has begun offering panel software to some mobile users but doesn't yet publish resulting data. "We do have that developed for a number of smartphone platforms such as Windows, Palm, and (BlackBerry maker) Research In Motion. We are working on solutions for iPhone and Android," but it's difficult to deal with the plethora of models in the market, he said.
ComScore recruits panel members by offering them free software such as games and screensavers and through incentives including sweepstakes and, more recently, an offer to plant trees in third-world countries. The panel size of 2 million people spans 170 countries, enough for global estimates and for specific measurements in 40 countries. The company also uses technology that can distinguish different users on the same machine by identifying signature patterns in mouse and keyboard use, an important factor for shared computers.
The switch to the hybrid methodology will be gradual. Publishers must add a transparent pixel to their Web sites that ComScore uses to track visitors, Abraham said, and participating sites undergo a 60-day "incubation period" to make sure data collection is working and nobody is gaming the system, he added.
"We think we'll get widespread support. There is widespread hunger for this," Abraham said. "From many people we've heard, 'What took you so long?' It's a fair question. The answer to that is it's not as easy as it first appears."
McDonald's restaurants and global Internet usage share something in common: more than 1 billion served within a month.
Global Internet usage reached more than 1 billion unique visitors in December, with 41.3 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, according to a report released Friday by ComScore.
The study looked at Internet users over the age of 15 who accessed the Net from their home or work computers. Europe grabbed the next largest slice of the global Internet audience, with 28 percent, followed by the United States, with an 18.4 percent slice.
But Latin America, while comprising just 7.4 percent of the global Internet audience, is the region to watch, noted Jamie Gavin, a ComScore senior analyst.
"The U.S. is slowing down in its growth and momentum, but Latin America, with social networking and the mobile Internet, is expected to gain momentum over the next few years," Gavin said.
He noted that while population plays a role in aiding certain regions to lay claim to a larger Internet audience, another equally important factor is the ability of the Internet to easily cross borders and take root.
A closer look at countries within the regions reveals that China accounted for the most Internet users worldwide, with a 17.8 share of unique visitors. The United States ranked second, with 16.2 percent, and Japan ranked a distant third, at 6 percent.
Across specific Internet properties, Google carried a sizable share of the global Internet market, visited by 77 percent of the worldwide audience, or nearly 776 million users.
Microsoft Web sites were used by 64.2 percent of users worldwide, and Yahoo sites 55.8 percent, according to ComScore. Sites run by Time Warner's AOL, meanwhile, were used by 27.1 percent of the worldwide Internet audience.
Here's a little statistical cheer for online retailers bracing themselves for what many have been predicting will be a dismal holiday sales season.
The latest online retail spending report released Tuesday by ComScore shows that consumers last weekend spent almost double what they spent on the corresponding weekend before Christmas last year. U.S. consumers online spent $677 million last weekend, December 20 and 21, compared to $341 million the weekend before Christmas in 2007, which was December 22 and 23.
It should be noted, however, that there are five fewer days this year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, making it harder to make perfect year-to-year comparisons. For example, the $677 million in sales last weekend--which was also the fourth weekend after Thanksgiving--is actually down 17 percent from last year's corresponding fourth weekend after Thanksgiving, December 15 and 16.
Whether you see the glass half full or half empty, the statistics suggest "that many consumers opted for the cozier confines of online shopping rather than having to brave the severe cold and snowstorms affecting much of the northern half of the country," ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a statement. He added that the compressed shopping season probably resulted in some consumers buying online later than they did last year.
Regardless, the report is further evidence that holiday sales aren't a total disaster and might even be holding their own, which is no small feat in the throes of a recession. U.S. online spending to date this holiday season (from November 1 to December 21) totals $24.71 billion, down 1 percent from the corresponding timeframe last year.
Considering we're in the throes of a recession, online holiday sales appear to be generally holding their own.
(Credit: ComScore)
Google's search share encroached on rivals, rising 0.4 percentage points to 63.5 percent from October to November.
(Credit: ComScore)Correction at 5:50 a.m. Monday: This story had an incorrect total for U.S. searches in November. The total was 12.3 billion.
Google grabbed a chunk of market share from rival search engines in the United States in November, new figures from ComScore show.
Google's share increased 0.4 percentage points to 63.5 percent from October to November, while Yahoo dropped 0.1 percentage points to 20.4 percent and Microsoft dropped 0.2 percentage points to 8.3 percent.
Further down the pecking order, Ask.com dropped 0.2 percentage points to 4.0 percent and AOL rose 0.1 percent to 3.8 percent, ComScore said.
The total searches performed dropped 3 percent to 12.3 billion, though, so even Google lost out in absolute terms even as it gained share. Each search holds the potential to show search ads, so the query total is financially significant.
Online video is really taking off, according to stats firm ComScore. Not that we should be particularly surprised by that assertion. But the leader in the space, Google's YouTube, during October pulled in 100 million viewers in the U.S. for a market share of almost 40 percent.
That market share is about the same as it was this spring. But lower in the ranks, there's some change afoot. Video content hub Hulu, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp., has edged its way into sixth place behind YouTube, Fox Interactive Media (which owns MySpace and its MySpaceTV platform), Yahoo, Microsoft, and Viacom. Rounding out the top 10 are AOL, Turner, Disney (which owns ABC), and CBS (which publishes CNET News).
In October, 77 percent of U.S. Internet users watched online video, and the average viewer watched a whopping 274 minutes of video on the Web. That's only four hours over the course of a month, but considering how short many online videos are, it's a lot.
What'll be interesting to see: Whether this changes with November's forthcoming stats, now that the presidential election is over. Keep in mind how many people were watching political Saturday Night Live skits, campaign speeches, and that disastrous Katie Couric-Sarah Palin interview.
It wasn't a blockbuster, but Black Friday wasn't a bust, either.
ComScore on Sunday reported that online, nontravel retail sales on the Friday after Thanksgiving, traditionally a big day for consumer spending, reached $534 million. That's up from the same day a year ago, but just barely--online retail sales rose just 1 percent, from $531 million.
On Saturday, comparison-shopping site PriceGrabber.com said that Web shopping traffic on Black Friday was up 11 percent. The Nintendo Wii was the most popular item, according to both PriceGrabber and eBay.
Sales on Thanksgiving Day itself rose 6 percent to $288 million, up from $272 million in 2007, ComSore said.
But for the four weeks of November through Friday the 28th, retail e-commerce dropped to $10.4 billion, down 4 percent from $10.8 billion for the same period in 2007, according to ComScore.
For the full holiday season, even Friday's slight gain may look good. ComScore predicted that for November and December, online sales will be flat compared with 2007, coming in again at $29.2 billion.
A somewhat cheerier report Sunday came from the National Retail Federation. The NRF's Black Friday Weekend survey--covering Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and predictions for Sunday--posits 172 million shoppers visiting Web sites and brick-and-mortar stores for the four days, up from 147 million last year.
Holiday sales will rise 2.2 percent this year to $470.4 billion, the NRF projects.
"Pent-up demand on electronics and clothing, plus unparalleled bargains on this season's hottest items helped drive shopping all weekend," NRF CEO Tracy Mullin said in a statement. "Holiday sales are not expected to continue at this brisk pace, but it is encouraging that Americans seem excited to go shopping again."
The NRF put total sales for the four-day period at $41 billion, with shoppers spending an average of $372.57, up 7 percent from $347.55 a year earlier.
The retail group said that 36 percent of shoppers purchased consumer electronics. Slightly over half of shoppers bought clothing and accessories, and 39 percent bought books, DVDs, CDs, and video games.
The next big test of how online commerce is faring in a deeply troubled economy will be almost immediate: Cyber Monday, the first Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend.
"It's probable that on Black Friday consumers responded positively to the very aggressive promotions and discounts being offered in retail stores," ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a statement, "so it will be important to see how they respond to similarly attractive deals being offered online on Cyber Monday, the traditional kick-off to the online holiday shopping season."
Purchases from the workplace account for approximately half of all e-commerce spending, ComScore said.
