Black Friday Boasts $648 Million in U.S. Online Holiday Spending, Up 9 Percent vs. Year Ago
Thanksgiving Day Surges 28 Percent to $407 Million as Consumers Increasingly Use Day for Online Shopping — comScore (NASDAQ : SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world …
Context & Ripple Effects
comScore's measurement of the holiday season opener has become an annual benchmark: back in November 2007 it logged $531 million in Black Friday online retail spending, then growing 22 percent a year. The 2010 reading of $648 million keeps the dollar streak alive but shows the growth rate cooling sharply to 9 percent — a maturing channel three years into a consumer downturn.
The sharper signal is on Thanksgiving Day itself, which comScore says surged 28 percent to $407 million as consumers increasingly treat what was traditionally a store-shopping eve as its own online shopping day. That reframes Black Friday less as a single spike and more as the crest of a multi-day online promotional wave.
First-order effects
- Retailers now have measured evidence that the online shopping window opens before Friday: Thanksgiving's 28 percent jump means promotion calendars that hold fire until Black Friday are leaving a full day of demand uncaptured.
Second-order effects
- With Black Friday growth slowing to 9 percent while Thursday accelerates at 28 percent, competing retailers face pressure to push discounts earlier into the week, shifting ad spend and site traffic toward Thanksgiving evening rather than fighting for the same Friday dollars.
Third-order effects
- If Thanksgiving keeps outgrowing Black Friday, the traditional store-centric holiday kickoff dissolves into a four-day online event — and the measurement firms like comScore that name these days increasingly shape how retailers plan their seasonal calendars.
The trend: U.S. holiday e-commerce is expanding backward through the Thanksgiving week, with the fastest growth migrating from Black Friday itself to the days ahead of it.