Whether shoppers were on their tablets or smartphones, mobile emerged as one of the highest growth channels this past weekend. IBM reported that on average 16% of Black Friday online sales in the US came from mobile — a number up 65% from the 10% the channel contributed to online sales in 2011.
Retail giant eBay saw a 153% increase in mobile volume transacted on Black Friday, with PayPal seeing a nearly 3-fold increase in mobile payments that same day. Our client Fab.com, the fast-growing and popular design-inspired online retailer, shared that mobile contributed to 30% of their orders and 35% of their $2.5M in revenues over Thanksgiving weekend.
In looking at Facebook mobile advertising campaigns managed through our Facebook advertising software this past weekend, we saw similar trends. Clickthrough rates (CTRs) on Facebook mobile ad campaigns increased 360% Thanksgiving day through Cyber Monday as compared to the same period during the prior week:
The Saturday following Thanksgiving saw the highest clickthrough rates. And as you can see in the breakdown below, Cyber Monday saw the greatest jump in CTRs of 733% as compared to the prior Monday, November 21st:
Retailers taking advantage of these mobile ads certainly made the most of the 600 million person audience on Facebook mobile and the wealth of rich targeting data to reach them this past Thanksgiving weekend. To learn how retailers are leveraging Facebook ads this holiday shopping season beyond mobile, refer to our recent breakdown of “5 New Facebook Ad Products for Retailers this Holiday Season“.
