Cyber Monday Spending Up 15 Percent

Visitors to e-commerce sites spent $846 million on Monday, an increase of 15 percent over the same day a year ago, according to ComScore.

Monday, referred to as Cyber Monday by online retailers, capped off a successful Thanksgiving holiday weekend for the industry, which overall saw spending jump 13 percent.

It's a welcome relief for an industry that was mostly bracing for the worst.

"Consumers are clearly responding positively to retailers' aggressive online discounts," ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a statement. "With Cyber Monday promotions beginning in earnest over the Thanksgiving weekend, consumers have finally begun to open their wallets, setting off a streak of four consecutive days of extremely strong growth..."

ComScore ranks the $846 million spent Monday as the second-biggest day of online shopping ever. That should be encouraging to retailers, since typically Cyber Monday isn't the biggest spike in online sales for the holiday season, just the first, according to retail analysts.

It also comes on the heels of a better-than-expected Black Friday shopping day, so the retail picture this holiday may not be quite as dreary as expected. What remains to be seen, however, is whether retailers were able to draw any sort of profit after the aggressive promotions that clearly attracted shoppers.

By Erica Ogg