Over the last few years, online spending has steadily increased over the course of the Thanksgiving holiday season (Thanksgiving-Cyber Tuesday) as consumers take advantage of lower price points. Per comScore’s report, 2017’s desktop online spending share for Thanksgiving-Cyber Tuesday arrived at 17.7% – a steady increase from 16.2% in 2015.
More Time to Shop After Thanksgiving
For 2018, marketers will have more leeway to run their campaigns during the holiday season after Thanksgiving. The crucial Green Monday (Dec. 10th)-Christmas window will afford 15 days to lure last-minute shoppers before the clock winds down. Holiday desktop spending share for this time period has increased to 18.4% in 2017 (14 days of shopping) vs 15.1% in 2015 (11 days). But more recently, consumers have signaled that their online research activity begins to heat up in early November.
Search Continues to Be Middle Man to Online Retailers
According to Adobe’s 2017 Holiday Recap report, consumers continue to leverage paid and organic search as the most influential channel (44.8%) in driving visits to retail sites. With this in mind, Quantum Stat analyzed Google search trends during November-December of the 2017 vs. 2016 holiday seasons. We wanted to understand if consumers’ search trends regarding holiday shopping promotions/sales have increased prior to Thanksgiving. The results reveal several spikes of search activity for the first half of November in 2017 vs. the previous year showing how consumers are becoming more strategic when looking for deals prior to pulling the trigger during Thanksgiving and Cyber Week. But this early warning signal is not limited to research as consumers are also making more purchases. comScore reveals that desktop spending with retail sites in the first 20 days of November has increased 27% since 2015.
