The big winner this Black Friday: Online

For years advertisers have focused their Black Friday advertising efforts on in-store sales and promotions.

Next year that may change to include more cyber Black Friday deals.

Online spending is starting to play a much bigger role in Black Friday, as evidenced by this year’s spending numbers.

While the bulk of sales still come at brick and mortar stores, it’s clear that the web is starting to cut into those numbers, which could lead to a change in marketing strategy for 2013.

Online spending rose 26 percent this year on Black Friday compared with 2011, according to comScore Networks, topping $1 billion in sales for the first time and becoming the biggest single cyber spending day of the year.

By comparison, in-store sales were off 1.8 percent compared to last year, according to ShopperTrak, to $11.2 billion.

It wasn’t from a lack of foot traffic. In fact, in-store visits were up 3.5 percent on Black Friday compared to 2011, ShopperTrak found.

Analysts say that the decline in in-store sales was from a combination of two things, one being the increasing influence of the web.

People are using the internet to check out deals ahead of time, and sometimes they go to stores just to see the item in person, then order it online if the web offers a better price or the store does not have the exact version they want.

Too, people are using their smartphones to comparison shop, finding an item in the store, checking prices online, and then ordering it via their mobile from the seller that has the lowest price.

As stores catch up with this new method of shopping, there will be more and more emphasis on advertising online as well as advertising online deals via traditional media.

Of course, there was also a second reason for the decline in in-store sales on Black Friday, and that was the increase in sales on Thanksgiving Day.

For the second straight year, a number of stores opened at 8 or 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving rather than waiting until early on Black Friday, meaning that shoppers were in and out before Black Friday had even dawned, shifting some of the money that would have been spent on Friday to Thursday.
 

Tags: advertising, black friday, black friday advertising, black friday sales, comscore, deals, decline, online, online black friday sales, online sales, online shopping, online spending, people, time, web