Yesterday's Newsflash included a story, "Online Holiday Sales Are Up Over a Year Ago," - a topic worth further examination.

The report released by Jupiter Media Metrix cited traffic figures, specifically, the number of average daily unique visitors. Jupiter did not report SALES, but rather, shopping behavior. However, JMM did make this forecast: "Jupiter analysts predict that 2001 holiday online retail and travel sales will reach approximately $11.9 billion-an 11 percent increase over last year's $10.8 billion. Although growth this season will be slower than last, Jupiter analysts expect to see more people shopping online and consumers allocating a greater percentage of their holiday budget to online shopping."

It takes time for retailers to tally and report actual sales figures - reports should be available by mid-January. eBay is tight-fisted with their disclosures, but they do release Gross Merchandise Sales (GMS) figures quarterly. Traditionally, eBay does not break GMS out by country (international expansion prohibits us from comparing apples to apples), and getting them to release comprehensive figures by category is virtually impossible. So, for auction sellers, we may never really know how the holiday shopping season was on eBay compared to last year.

This is a topic worth further attention. AuctionBytes will continue to report on holiday sales. If you want to weigh in, please drop a post in the forums, where there is already a discussion about yesterday's story. http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic= 119&forum=3&2 119&forum=3&2

PS: Don't forget to read the last paragraph in yesterday's story - TIAS DID experience a 44% increase in sales for the first week in November compared to the same week last year.