Nielsen is sharing some interesting data today regarding online retail web traffic during the holiday season. This data shows that both Black Friday and Cyber Monday traffic were up by 10% each when compared to last year.

While the economy boded poorly for brick-and-mortar stores over the holiday weekend leading up to Cyber Monday, Hitwise says business was pretty much booming for online-only retailers.

With the economy in an official recession and the continuing talk of doom and gloom, comScore has released some positive numbers about online holiday spending so far this year.

Consumers are more engaged this holiday season partly due to online promotions over Thanksgiving week, which offered discounts from 30 to 70 percent off products along with free shipping.

What’s different is how early the season started, and the level of promotional activity driven by social marketing.

Truth be told, advertisers never met a bandwagon they didn’t like. Enter the first Mobile Tuesday, an extension, of course, of Black Friday and recently created Cyber Monday. If you’re one of 18,000 who signed up via Black Friday leak sites, you should be receiving promotional offers from McDonald’s, Finish Line, and RedTag.

And Cyber Monday edges closer still. We’re at about five days now. Of course, we’ve still got Black Friday to deal with and last year shoppers spent around $531 Million online just on that day. Follow Amazon’s example and get ready for that.

Amazon.com has announced it is now offering Black Friday deals beginning today that will run through Cyber Monday.

The online retailer is also offering customers a chance to win a $10,000 Amazon.com Shopping Spree in the Black Friday Sweepstakes. The Black Friday sweepstakes closes at 11:59 p.m. PST, November 30.

More than 8 out of 10 shoppers will be looking for discounts on Cyber Monday and 69 percent will be searching for free online shipping according to a survey by Shopzilla.

With the official holiday shopping season beginning next week, U.S. retailers expect "Black Friday" (November 28 this year) sales will grow 1.2 percent.

For "Cyber Monday" the first Monday after Thanksgiving, retailers expect to see growth of 2.4 percent, according to a study from BDO Seidman.

Online sales are projected to grow 8 percent and gift card sales are expected to grow 5.1 percent.

Early indications reveal that retailers had a small 2.4 percent sales growth this holiday season according to MasterCard SpendingPulse.

In contrast SpendingPulse figures showed that online sales had a 22 percent gain over the 2006 holiday shopping season.  Backing that up comScore reported that online retail sales increased 19 percent over a year ago, reaching a record $26.2 billion from November 1 through December 21.

U. S. traffic on Cyber Monday increased 26 percent compared to 2006, according to Hitwise. This is the third consecutive year there has been an increase on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

 It was like pulling the plug while the stereo was still going – that droopy drop-off of sound and fury – two years ago when the first so-called "Cyber Monday" was conveniently labeled, leaked, and then debunked as hooey on Tuesday. And again this year, it just ain’t so.

Though Wal-Mart dominates the global brick and mortar retail scene, even it had to watch Amazon surpass it in online traffic.

Cyber Monday shoppers were more satisfied with their online experience in 2007 than they were in 2006, according to a new study from ForeSee Results.

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.

Compared to most retailers, Wal-Mart is really, really big.  So it only makes sense that the company is doing away with Cyber Monday, and is instead focusing on an entire “Cyber Week.”

A whopping 72 million people will be shopping online today, the recently-appointed day for it, and the vast majority will be logging in from work.

Shoppers rang in the traditional start of the holiday gift-buying season with unprecedented traffic on MSN Shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend.

ComScore reports that online retail spending on Cyber Monday shows a 25% increase from 2005. In total, it is estimated that consumers spent nearly $608 million in retail purchases for the year’s most celebrated online shopping holiday.

After all is clicked and bought, Thanksgiving weekend numbers are in with clear retail sector winners. While Best Buy, eBay, Wal-Mart, and Amazon (the four horsemen?) are directing all the Web traffic, it is still unclear which day, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, or Cyber Monday, pulls in the most shoppers.

Now that we’re over last year’s holiday marketing trickeryCyber Monday my big toe!it’s time to accept what the marketing gods have lain before us, and make the most of it. Google is leading the charge this year, aggressively pushing its new Google Checkout product with Cyber Monday special promotions.