With fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, analysts have speculated retailers would push promotions earlier this season to offset the truncated period. Things are shaping up that way. Consumers have taken advantage of sneak peek deals, spending $19.7 billion online through Nov. 11 this holiday season, up 17.5% year over year, according to data from research firm Adobe Analytics.

Ecommerce sales for the early holiday period were bolstered by a strong performance on Veterans Day weekend. Monday holiday sales hit $2.70 billion, a robust 38.0% increase from the Monday of Veterans Day weekend in 2018 and higher than the projected $2.40 billion, Adobe says. The Sunday before Veterans Day is the only other day this holiday period that has surpassed the $2-billion mark, which Adobe says was a surprise.

The research firm’s data is based on an analysis of more than 1 trillion visits to more than 4,500 retail sites and measures transactions from 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers ranked in the 2019 Internet Retailer Top 1000. Adobe’s data captures 55 million SKUs, and product analysis is based on more than six million orders a day on average.  Adobe defines the holiday period as Nov. 1 through Dec. 31.

According to Adobe, six fewer days of peak holiday shopping in the season than last year could translate into $1 billion of lost revenue for retailers, and merchants are trying to combat the compressed calendar by launching offers even earlier in November. Shoppers have flocked to retailers’ websites to grab early deals, such as promotions on TVs—a merchandise category in which pricing is down almost 15.0% from last month, the firm says.

“All signs point to strong sales growth this year, with consumers buying almost 50% more than last year just through their phones,” says Taylor Schreiner, principal analyst at Adobe Digital Insights. “And this may be one of the best years for consumers to date as promotional price discounts are much deeper than they were at this time last year.”

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