Online retailers like Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) are among the stocks to watch in the final days of 2011 and into next year, as US holiday spending on the web reaches new highs, according to recent data from comScore (NASDAQ:SCOR).

The digital metrics and analytics firm reported retail e-commerce spending for the first 48 days of the November-December 2011 holiday season totaled nearly $32 billion - up 15 percent over the same time frame last year.

For the most recent week ending December 18, led by four individual days surpassing $1 billion in sales, online retail spending reached an all-time record of $6.3 billion, up 14 percent from the corresponding week last year.

The final shopping weekend before Christmas reached $1.04 billion to rank as the second heaviest weekend of online spending on record.

"In total, we will see another $5 or $6 billion in e-commerce spending over the remainder of December to finish off what has clearly been an outstanding season for online retailers," said comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni in a statement.

For the 2011 holiday season-to-date, ten individual days surpassed $1 billion in online retail sales.

Cyber Monday currently ranked as the heaviest online spending day of the season and in history – at $1.251 billion - said comScore. Monday, December 5 ranked second at $1.178 billion, followed by Green Monday, December 12, in third with $1.133 billion.

In a press release from last Thursday, December 22, Amazon.com said that historically, Christmas day is the largest day of digital sales on its site, followed by December 26.

Last year, from Christmas Eve through December 30, Amazon customers purchased over three times more digital content, including Kindle books, magazines, movies, TV shows, music, and digital games as compared to the weekly average for the year, the company said.

This year, online retailers were pulling out all the stops by offering deals and free shipping designed to entice shoppers into Web purchases of everything from digital cameras to flat-screen TVs. This year's hottest seller could well be tablets, with Amazon's own Kindle Fire going head-to-head against Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad 2.

Amazon said it sold four times as many Kindle products on Black Friday as it did last year, and that Kindle Fire, which features a color touchscreen, topped all Kindle sales.

Amazon's hottest holiday gifts included the $79 Kindle, the $99 Kindle Touch, the $149 Kindle Touch 3G and the $199 Kindle Fire.

By: DocMemory
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