New York, NY, 1/10/2006 - Performics, the performance-based marketing division of DoubleClick Digital Advertising Solutions, today issued a recap of its initial holiday e-commerce study. The study illustrates a strong season overall for holiday e-commerce, the dominance of Mondays as e-commerce peaks for each week during the holiday season and the late 2005 holiday season surge, caused by Christmas falling on a Sunday which ensured plenty of time for standard shipping of most orders placed on “Cyber Monday 4.”

The concept of Cyber Monday was coined by shop.org during the 2005 holiday season. It refers to the Monday following Thanksgiving, which is thought to be the major kickoff for the e-commerce holiday shopping season. Upon analysis of its e-commerce sales data from 2005 and years past, Performics discovered that each of the Mondays between Thanksgiving and Christmas generated major e-commerce sales peaks. Advertisers can benefit from understanding the intricacies of these Monday peaks, and to enable discussion and planning, these days are referred to as Cyber Mondays 1, 2, 3 and 4.

“Consumers are growing more comfortable with online shopping each year, and the efforts of advertisers are constantly being refined for greater effectiveness,” said Chris Henger, vice president of marketing and product development at Performics. “Despite the consistent growth of e-commerce sales over the last several years, most advertisers are excited about what lies ahead in e-commerce, because refined strategies and new opportunities will continue boosting sales for advertisers that can capitalize.”

Performics has completed data extraction and analysis for the 2005 holiday shopping season, beginning with Thanksgiving and ending with Christmas. Among some of the most interesting findings of the data analysis is the clear emergence of Mondays as the consistent weekly sales peak throughout the holiday shopping season (see Figure 1 below). This fact has proven itself true not only throughout the 2005 holiday season, but also over the last several years.

Unlike some past years, Cyber Monday 4 produced the largest year-over-year sales growth of all Mondays falling between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2005. This finding has major planning implications for advertisers since Christmas fell on a Sunday, providing more time than usual to guarantee Christmas delivery for orders placed on Cyber Monday 4. Advertisers should anticipate and plan for a similar dynamic in 2006, when Christmas falls on a Monday and online shoppers will have even more time to secure guaranteed shipping for orders placed on Cyber Monday 4, December 18.

Other notable findings include:

• Cyber Monday 2, December 5, was indeed the biggest day for e-commerce sales; in the previous study, Performics projected either Cyber Monday 2 or 3 to be the biggest day

• For the first time in four years, sales on Cyber Monday 4 outpaced those of Cyber Monday 1; this was also predicted due to the ample time between Cyber Monday 4 and Christmas, allowing for guaranteed shipping for purchases made on that day.

“The Cyber Monday phenomenon gained a lot of attention and media coverage over the last couple months, but advertisers should understand that a lot of truth and helpful information lies behind the hype,” added Henger. “E-commerce sales do actually spike on Mondays throughout the season. This is a very real concept with major planning and budgeting implications for advertisers that are serious about capitalizing on the online channel.”

Methodology:

This trending analysis is based on Performics’ year-over-year e-commerce sales data for online retailers. Performics tracks e-commerce sales volume in conjunction with the management of affiliate and/or search engine marketing programs for more than 300 advertisers. The data have been normalized to mimic the offline metric of same store sales and to account for growth in Performics’ client base to ensure the data better reflect overall trends in e-commerce and organic industry growth.

About DoubleClick Digital Advertising Solutions

Performics is the performance-based marketing division of DoubleClick Digital Advertising Solutions and is a leading provider of Affiliate, Search and Data Feed Marketing Solutions.

DoubleClick Digital Advertising Solutions, an operating unit of DoubleClick, provides technology and services that empower marketers, agencies and Web publishers to work together successfully. Its focus on innovation, reliability and insight enables clients to improve productivity and results.

Since 1996, DoubleClick has empowered the original thinkers and leaders in the digital advertising industry to deliver on the promise of the rich possibilities of our medium. Today, the company’s DART and Performics divisions power the digital advertising marketplace. Tomorrow, it will continue to enable clients to profit from opportunities across all digital advertising channels as consumers worldwide embrace them. DoubleClick has global headquarters in New York City and maintains 21 offices around the world to serve its more than 1500 clients.

Source: DoubleClick

Source: Wired News