U.S. online shoppers spent 4.2 billion U.S. dollars on Thanksgiving, up by 14.5 percent from last year and reaching a record high, according to the web analytics tool Adobe Analytics.
The top three online selling products on Thanksgiving were Frozen 2 toys, L.O.L Surprise dolls and Amazon's Fire TV. Nintendo Switch game consoles, Beats headphones and Hot Wheels toys had been online shoppers' favorite choices last year.
Adobe Analytics tracks 80 percent of online transactions at 100 of the largest retailers in the United States.
From November 1 to Thanksgiving, online sales totaled 57.1 billion dollars. Smartphones made up 34.5 percent of all e-commerce sales, while some 60 percent of the revenue came from desktop computers, and five percent from tablets.
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It is predicted that online sales for Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, will hit 7.5 billion dollars. As of 10 a.m. EST (1500GMT), online sales already reached 767 million dollars, up by 19.2 percent from last year.
Cyber Monday, which falls on the first Monday after Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, is considered the biggest online shopping day of the year.
This year, Adobe Analytics expects online sales on Cyber Monday to reach 9.4 billion dollars, up by 18.9 percent from 2018.
Holiday season shopping started early this year, as retailers began offering discounts earlier than usual, in the hope of making up for a shorter holiday season which is six days less between Thanksgiving and Christmas than last year.
Some 56 percent of consumers interviewed during the first week of November had already begun their holiday shopping, according to an annual survey released last week by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Prosper Insights & Analytics.
"Consumers don't wait for Thanksgiving or Black Friday anymore and neither do retailers," said Phil Rist, Prosper's executive vice president of strategy. "Retailers responded this year by offering promotions earlier than ever, with some rolling out holiday deals even before Halloween."
During the full holiday season, which Adobe defines as the period between November 1 and December 31, shoppers are expected to spend 143.8 billion dollars online, up by 14.1 percent from last year.
Sales for the full holiday season will total between 727.9 billion and 730.7 billion dollars, according to NRF forecasts. Consumers are expected to spend an average of 1,047.83 dollars, an increase of four percent over last year, according to NRF's annual survey released last month.