The Thanksgiving Day on Thursday generated 33.6 billion U.S. dollars in sales online globally, an increase of 6 percent from a year ago, Salesforce said Friday, adding the U.S. market alone went up 8 percent to 8.1 billion dollars, and Europe was also a standout with a growth of 10 percent.

Thanksgiving weekend has long been seen as the traditional start of the most important sales period for retailers. This indicates a strong holiday season for e-commerce, the San Francisco-based leading customer relationship management platform said.

Salesforce said its 2024 figures are based on shopping data from 1.5 billion consumers captured across its customers and other data feeds in its Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud.

Last year saw a sluggish Thanksgiving when it came to online shopping. Salesforce said the full day raked in online sales of 31.7 billion dollars, with the U.S. seeing sales of 7.5 billion dollars in 2023. Each was up only 1 percent from a year earlier. Adobe's figures last year showed growth of 5.5 percent.

Salesforce said 72 percent of all orders made on Thursday were on mobile devices, up 3 percent on 2023. Mobile accounted 80 percent of all online traffic, roughly the same as last year.

The company counted Tuesday of this week as the start of Cyber Week, and it said that sales were up 7 percent and 14 percent globally and in the United States, respectively.