• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 29, 2016

Consumers spent 12.1% more online this year, compared with last, bringing Cyber Monday revenue to an all-time high of $3.45 billion. It marks the most lucrative online sales day in history, and 2.6% above original prediction from Adobe Digital Insights.

ADI analysts forecast consumers will spend $91.6 billion online during the holiday season, Nov. 1 - Dec. 31, 2016.

Search ads continued to drive consumers to retail sites on Cyber Monday, contributing 38.5% to sales. Direct to Web sites followed with 25.3%. Referral sites like RetailMeNot drove 16% of sales and email drove 18.1% of sales.

Purchases through smartphones and tablets started strong early in the day, but slowed in the evening. Revenue from mobile rose 34% year over year (YoY) to $1.07 billion, but at the end of the day came in $130 million less than Black Friday.

Mobile drove 47% of visits to retail Web sites, about 38% came from smartphones and 9% from tablets. Smartphones also drove purchases with 22% share, compared with 9% from tablets.

Conversions were well above holiday averages, with smartphones at 2.8%, tablets at 5.1% and desktops at 6.3%, compared to holiday averages of 1.3%, 2.9% and 3.2%, respectively, according to ADI. The average order value (AOV) on iOS smartphones came in at $141, which remained slightly higher compared with Android smartphones at $128.

Since Nov. 1, 2016, which ADI marks as the start of the holiday season, consumers have spent $39.97 billion online, up 7.6% from 2015. The findings are based on aggregated and anonymous data from 23 billion visits to retail Web sites.

Consumers looking for great deals found them in televisions, tablets, toys, pet care and computers. The highest price drops were seen for televisions with an average discount of 21.4%. Tablets followed with 21.1%; toys, 14.6 %; pet care, 11.8 %; and computers, 11.1%.