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Merchants affected by Yahoo's system outage on Monday have more reasons to be upset, as US consumers parted with $733 million online for the day.

Cyber Monday Spending Hit $733 Million

Unhappy Yahoo merchants may be a little more bitter than they were earlier this week. ComScore reported a 21 percent increase in spending on the Monday after Thanksgiving, compared to the same day in 2006.

Non-travel retail spending reached $610 million for 2006's Cyber Monday. The 2007 edition blew past that without breaking a sweat, as people apparently returned to work or home after the holiday and set their browsers for "Spend Now!"

ComScore said 60 percent of the spending came from work computers for the day, with the remaining percentage spread between home and university connections. There was a significant change when comparing this year's Cyber Monday with last year's, according to the company:

The number of online buyers was up 38 percent compared to Cyber Monday 2006, while the average dollars spent per buyer was down 12 percent. The decline in dollars per buyer may be due to two factors -- deeper and broader price discounts offered by online merchants this year and the fact that “new Cyber Monday buyers” tended to spend less online than returning buyers.

Among the top ten online retail destinations, five saw traffic double their normal daily visitors, while MSN Shopping more than tripled its number. Yahoo Shopping saw an 85 percent increase in daily visitors, a gain that will certainly add to the frustration Yahoo merchants with out of service websites experienced.

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