Cyber Monday sales

Cyber Monday sales, For the past three years, the Monday after Thanksgiving has been the biggest online shopping day of the year, and this year will be no exception. Cyber Monday, as online retailers have been calling it since 2005, is expected to see some $2.6 billion in revenues, according to marketing and creative services firm Adobe, as shoppers use their employer’s computers and, increasingly, their own phones to shop for deals.

But this may be the swan song for Cyber Monday, whose very name is showing its age as a rallying cry for online retailers. Next year, says Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst for Adobe’s Digital Index, Black Friday could surpass Cyber Monday in online sales for the first time.

This year, unless shoppers exited the Thanksgiving weekend more sated than expected, it’s likely that Monday’s online retail revenues will come out just ahead of Black Friday’s $2.4 billion. The only surprise is why mobile shopping, coupled with pretty much universal broadband connections to the home, haven’t already done in Cyber Monday.

The reason for its endurance despite its initial few years as a marketing myth: inertia, with a sprinkle of desperation, on the part of online retailers. They’ve been holding the Cyber Monday party so long that it has taken on a life of its own and they see no reason to send the guests home early. But you already know that from your email box, clogged as it is with pitches beginning with a word that went out of style around 2007.