Our Cyber Monday Prediction Was Right, Could Comscore Be Wrong?

Our data is finally in and we re pleased to report that our prediction was true. Monday, December 17, 2007 was the highest sales day for our ecommerce clients. Drawing on our findings from the 2006 holiday shopping season, we forecasted that the Monday two weeks before Christmas would have the highest sales due to it being the last day for guaranteed shipping.

We collected data from PPC management campaigns carried out for clients in various retail categories: designer apparel and accessories, cigars and personalized products for school-aged children. Details were collected regarding impressions, clicks, ad spend, return on investment and, of course, overall sales. This information was then compared to the same data from the 2006 holiday shopping season.

Our findings were somewhat contradictory to those reported by comScore. The Internet research company stated that the highest day was December 10th oddly dubbed Green Monday with $881 million in sales. While not a particularly environment-friendly day and having nothing to do with cash since nearly all payments are made using credit cards, Green Monday is a bit of a mystery to us for both its nomenclature and its highest-sales status. Green Monday beat the official Cyber Monday November 26th, the first Monday after Thanksgiving by $148 million. Cyber Monday was found way down in the number eight spot for highest sales with only $733 million.

Oddly enough, our highest sales day did not even make comScore s Top 10 list. In fact, our data severely contradicted that published by comScore. The real Cyber Monday was our second highest sales day for most clients followed closely by Green Monday. The only metric in agreement between our data and comScore s was the increase in overall sales from 2006. Our clients saw an average increase of 19.59% from last year s entire holiday shopping season (November 1-December 31). Similar findings were reported by comScore sales increased 19% to $29.2 billion.

We can only speculate as to why our data differed so significantly from comScore s; however, we do not believe it to be a fluke considering this is the second year that the Monday two weeks before Christmas proved to be the highest sales day. Perhaps we are pursuing online shoppers more aggressively and speaking to their immediate needs, including messages in ad copy that tout fast, guaranteed delivery. Or maybe our clients target markets are just natural dawdlers, preferring to make hasty purchases at the absolute last minute regardless of increased shipping rates.

Whatever the case, we believe the Monday two weeks before Christmas what we cleverly refer to as the Monday two weeks before Christmas will again be the highest sales day during the 2008 holiday shopping season. Honestly, I doubt many online retailers care which day it is and what it is called as long as sales continue to increase each year, they are sure to be jolly.

By: Angie Pascale

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Angie Pascale is a copywriter at SearchAdNetwork (www.searchadnetwork.com), an award-winning search engine marketing company with years of experience in PPC management and SEO. SearchAdNetwork is a subsidiary of Location3 Media (www.location3.com), a technology-driven direct marketing company. Other divisions include Local Search Traffic (www.localsearchtraffic.com), providing management of online business listings, and Hispanic Targeting, a full-service Hispanic search marketing company.