Cyber Monday making less of a splash

By Karen Jacobs

ATLANTA (Reuters) - "Cyber Monday," the online holiday shopping version of Black Friday, may be losing its retailing importance at broadband speed.

Though retail watchers expect online sales to rise on the Monday after Thanksgiving, some say Cyber Monday as an annual phenomenon is waning as retailers look to draw shoppers online with deals earlier in the holiday season.

The term, coined by retailer network Shop.org, refers to the day when many people log on at work to look for gifts they didn't manage to buy over the long Thanksgiving weekend. It has been seen as the start of the online holiday shopping season.

"Cyber Monday used to be if not the biggest online shopping day, certainly among the top few," said Ken Cassar, an analyst with Nielsen Online.

But ever-faster Internet connections in people's homes have made the day less crucial over the past decade, Cassar said.

"Because the vast majority of online users have access from home via broadband, it's less necessary that they wait to get to work to begin their holiday shopping," Cassar said.

He and others noted that while online sales tend to show a pick-up on Cyber Monday, it is not even the biggest online shopping day of the season.

Other experts put that down to increased marketing of big online deals even earlier in the holiday shopping season.