On the eve of "Cy­ber Mon­day," on­line re­tail­ers re­port­ed an even stronger start to the hol­i­day shop­ping sea­son than brick-and-mor­tar stores. Re­search firm com­Score re­port­ed on Sun­day that e-com­merce spend­ing jumped 26 per cent on Black Fri­day, the day af­ter Thanks­giv­ing, com­pared with the same day a year ago. Com­Score re­port­ed US$816 mil­lion in on­line sales for the day, up from US$648 mil­lion. The 26 per cent growth rate for on­line sales com­pares with a 7 per cent re­tail sales in­crease re­port­ed for Black Fri­day by Shop­per­Trak, which gath­ers da­ta from in­di­vid­ual stores and shop­ping malls. At US$11.4 bil­lion, the brick-and-mor­tar sales to­tal still dwarfs the on­line to­tal.

Gi­an Ful­go­ni, com­Score chair­man, said in a state­ment that e-com­merce en­joyed a ban­ner day, de­spite some an­a­lysts' pre­dic­tions that ear­ly store open­ings on Black Fri­day could hurt on­line sales. "With brick-and-mor­tar re­tail al­so re­port­ing strong gains on Black Fri­day, it's clear that the heavy pro­mo­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ty had a pos­i­tive im­pact on both chan­nels," Ful­go­ni said. Thanks­giv­ing is al­so a big day for on­line sales, and com­Score re­port­ed an 18 per cent in­crease this year com­pared with a year ago, with US$479 mil­lion in sales. On­line sales al­so have been strong through­out No­vem­ber. On­line sales through Sat­ur­day rose 15 per cent com­pared with the same pe­ri­od a year ago.