Black Friday Ads Get Advance Look Online

Several websites have cropped up over time, featuring scans of advertisements big retailers like Wal-Mart and Target plan to put out for the day-after Thanksgiving. Those retailers, and one in particular, are not especially thrilled with this.

Hitwise research director LeeAnn Prescott said, "Consumers have clearly caught on to the idea of planning their Black Friday shopping by using the Black Friday websites to find the best deals for holiday gifts." As evidence, Hitwise noted visits to the top five Black Friday ad websites jumped 167 percent for the week ended November 11th, when compared to the same period in 2005. Visits to those sites led to plenty of downstream traffic to retailers whose ads were posted online: Rank Name Domain Market Share Percent of Downstream Traffic to Shopping & Classifieds Websites 1 Black Friday Advertisements www.bfads.net 37.65% 50.88% 2 Black Friday @ GottaDeal blackfriday.gottadeal.com 27.90% 65.61% 3 BlackFriday.info www.blackfriday.info 17.74% 78.94% 4 BlackFridayAds.com www.blackfridayads.com 9.75% 64.07% 5 Black Friday Ads www.theblackfriday.com 6.96% 54.31% Note: Data based on market share of visits for the week ending 11/11/06 from a sample of 10 million US Internet users Source: Hitwise Big box electronic retailer Best Buy does not appreciate having its ads placed on display ahead of time. Boing Boing blogger Cory Doctorow cached version of the Best Buy sales on Boing Boing. Doctorow also linked the Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Bookmark Murdok: David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.