Here's the The Lowdown
from DN Journal,
updated daily
to
fill you in on the latest buzz going around the domain name industry.
The Lowdown is
compiled by DN Journal Editor & Publisher Ron
Jackson.
Biggest
Online Shopping Day Ever
I
hope everyone had a great Christmas Day Friday
and that "Santa" brought you all of the
things you were hoping for. Though overall Christmas
retail sales were sluggish again this year, online sales
remained a bright spot. In fact, comScorereported
that Tuesday, December 15th set a new one day
record for online retail sales, hitting $913
million, easily surpassing the second biggest day on
record set November 30, 2009 (Cyber Monday)
when sales hits $887 million.
MediaPost.com
quoted comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni as saying
that each day December 15th through December 17th (the
last day that many online retailers would guarantee free
shipping in time for Christmas), "saw at least
$800 million in spending as savvy consumers may have
been waiting for last-minute deals."
Overall,
online holiday retail sales from Nov. 1 to Dec. 18 are up
3.7% to $24.757 billion after reaching $23.873
billion in the same period last year according to
comScore. MediaPost said that a different source, MasterCard
Worldwide,
reported even stronger online growth, estimating
e-commerce sales increased 13% for the period Nov.
1 - Dec. 12, and 14.4% since the Friday after Thanksgiving.
MasterCard's
SpendingPulse report characterized e-commerce
as "one of the stars of the season."
Results
from the final week before Christmas are not out yet but
none of the days after December 17 was expected to rank
among the highest because, as the calendar got closer to
Christmas, people were afraid their online purchases could
not be delivered in time for the holiday.
Further
evidence of the growth of ecommerce can be found
in the latest
list of companies that have signed up
to run expensive ads in the February 7th Super
Bowl telecast. In addition to online giants
like Godaddy, Monster.com, CareerBuilder,
Cars.com and E-trade, first time
Super
Bowl advertiser Home Away joins the
big-spending crowd. Home Away is an Austin,
Texas based company that provides online
vacation-rental listings services.
With
the Super Bowl still more than five weeks away,
more advertisers will be signing up and with the
continuing growth of ecommerce, odds are good that
the web will have additional representatives on
the telecast of the big game.
We need your help to keep giving domainers The
Lowdown, so please email [email protected]with any interesting information you might have. If possible,
include the source of your information so we can check it out (for
example a URL if you read it in a forum or on a site
elsewhere).
