The Grinch Bot is Stealing Christmas!

“Cloudflare detected nearly 1.5 trillion bot requests on Black Friday.
43.8% of Internet traffic comes from these bots.
During the year, Cloudflare observed over 300 billion bots try to “add to cart.”
71% of login traffic comes from bots”

Cyber Monday hits sales high for 2021, with one in three shoppers buying online

“People looking to scoop up Cyber Monday deals spent 1.4% less this year than last, according to the Adobe Digital Economy Index, with online sales in the US on Monday totaling $10.7 billion. Salesforce had a different result for Cyber Monday, saying sales rose 3% from 2020 to $12.3 billion this year.
Salesforce said spending was up 4% from last year for the full week leading up to Cyber Monday, hitting $61 billion.
Amazon, the country’s largest online retailer, didn’t provide any sales figures, but said it was the company’s ‘biggest kickoff to the holiday shopping season ever.’”

“Eighty-five percent of retailers expect online sales to increase during the 2021 holiday shopping season, continuing an upward trend from the pandemic lockdowns of 2020, according to the 2021 eCommerce Outlook Report from Anodot and Researchscape.
To help them stay competitive, retailers are turning to artificial intelligence, with 81% of the merchants in the survey saying they planned to increase their AI budgets this year.”

Read the full report by Anodot and Researchscape.

“In recent years, seasonal shopping has started earlier and earlier, with around 40% of consumers beginning to cross items off their holiday lists before Halloween.
When it comes to marketing, digital is likely going to be your most important channel for the holiday shopping season. But don’t create your messaging in a vacuum.
‘Customers want cross-channel shopping experiences that are seamless across online, offline, and partner interactions—which rely on the essential integration of associated network systems among all three environments,’
There is an abundance of data you can use to calibrate your operations during the holiday season. With the help of AI, you can draw useful, actionable insights from that data much quicker than you’d be able to with traditional business intelligence techniques.”

“Adobe, which is following online sales in real-time at 80 of the top 100 retailers in the U.S., covering some 100 million SKUs, said US consumers spent $9 billion online on Black Friday, up 21.6% on a year ago. Adobe had originally forecast sales of between $8.9 billion and $9.6 billion.
Smartphones continued to account for an increasing proportion of online sales, with this year’s $3.6 billion up 25.3%, while alternative deliveries — a sign of the e-commerce space maturing — also continued to grow, with in-store and curbside pickup up 52% on 2019.
The average cart size for US shoppers was $95.60
In either case, smartphones continue to be a major driver of how sales get made. Adobe said 40% of all sales were on handsets, lower than the day before but 7% higher than in 2019.
Cyber Monday is likely to continue to be the biggest of them all, expected to bring in between $11.2 billion and $13 billion in e-commerce transactions, up 19%-38% year-on-year.”