Thanksgiving has suddenly become one of America's favorite days to shop online

Thanksgiving shopping

This Thanksgiving Day is set to smash online sales records from previous years.
Thanksgiving Day is predicted to reach a record $3.7 billion in online retail sales, up a whopping 29% from 2017, according to Adobe Analytics.
Customers are turning to their phones increasingly to shop online, especially on a traditionally busy day filled with familial obligations.
Sales started earlier this year, going live the night before Thanksgiving at popular destinations like Walmart.
Other stores, like Amazon, have been running sales for nearly a week.

Thanksgiving is fast becoming one of America's favorite days to shop online.

Already, US shoppers have spent $1.75 billion online on Thanksgiving (as of 5 p.m.), according to Adobe Analytics, and are predicted to spend a record $3.7 billion by midnight.

That's up a whopping 29% when compared to 2017. That's a far larger increase than the increases expected for Black Friday and Cyber Monday: 17.2% and 17.6% growth year over year, respectively.

Much of the growth has come from smartphones, which shoppers are using with increasing frequency, especially on Thanksgiving, according to Adobe. This year, smartphones have accounted for 36.7% of all sales, up substantially over the 29.1% share in 2017.

"Mobile stole the show Thanksgiving Day with smartphones representing more than 50% of traffic to retail sites, as well as record amount of revenue," Taylor Schreiner, director of Adobe Digital Insights, said in a prepared statement. "As consumers turn their focus to Black Friday, we expect them to take full advantage of the many discounts available, driving new records for online sales."

Many online sales started earlier this year, which may have contributed to the drastically larger numbers. Walmart started its Black Friday sales the night before Thanksgiving, while Amazon has been offering Black Friday sales the entire week leading up to the vaunted day.

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