Peak U.S. Web sales move closer to Christmas

Web retailers also flood inboxes across the country with promotional e-mails on Cyber Monday, said Nielsen/Net Ratings' Dougherty.

Although toy e-retailers start to promote the hottest new toys before Cyber Monday, many cross-channel retailers make sure their promotions mirror those in malls during the Thanksgiving weekend, said Forrester's Mulpuru.

ComScore's Fulgoni said that multichannel retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and J.C. Penney Co. Inc. are becoming increasingly more aggressive online as shoppers are barraged with Web choices.

"I think they realize in a world where you have search and comparison shopping engines, they have got to be players online, otherwise they are really risking some lost business."

Last year, eBay Inc. was the Cyber Monday winner in terms of site visitors, according to the research firm. EBay saw 11.7 million unique visitors, compared with Amazon.com at less than a half that and Wal-Mart's Web site at about a fourth of eBay's traffic.

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