The day after Thanksgiving was the official start to this year's holiday shopping season and it certainly didn't disappoint. For both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, millions of American consumers flocked to retail stores and websites to stock up on items and gifts. The two days also brought in billions for merchants throughout the country.

According to a recently released report by comScore, Cyber Monday brought in a total of $1.46 billion in online purchases, making it the highest internet spending day in history. This year's Cyber Monday amount is a 17 percent jump from the same time last year.

"Despite some news reports suggesting that Cyber Monday might be declining in importance, the day has once again set an online spending record at nearly $1.5 billion," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. "Now, we shall see the extent to which continuing and attractive retailer promotions are able to boost sales for the remainder of the week."

For Black Friday weekend, both brick-and-mortar locations and websites saw a significant amount of traffic. The Journal Sentinel reports that 247 million consumers hit retail stores, while 89 million went online to shop over three days. This resulted in more than $60 billion in sales from both stores and sites.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Thursday, November 29th, 2012 at 4:08 am .