Nashville, Tenn. — The hefty discounts and incentives offered by car manufacturers helped lure shoppers away from malls and on to automotive Websites over the Thanksgiving weekend, reports Dataium, an aggregator of online automotive shopping activity. 

Visitor traffic on auto Websites was down less than 6 percent on Black Friday vs. a typical Friday. During last year’s biggest shopping day, site traffic on automotive sites was down more than 200 percent. Additionally, the overall number of visitors searching and submitting leads on dealership Websites remained stable.

As compared to an average Friday, luxury manufacturers BMW and Cadillac realized gains of 9 and 6 percent, respectively, on Black Friday, while Toyota and Mazda experienced slight losses of nearly 13 percent.

Aided by deep discounts, the Lincoln MKZ and Buick Enclave were the big winners on Black Friday, boosting leads by 1,475 and 531 percent, respectively. Close behind was the Volkswagen Tiguan, which received a boost from attractive financing and leasing deals. It was one of the few models to enjoy higher searches and leads than an average Friday.

"Overall, this was a good Thanksgiving weekend for most auto dealers," stated Eric Brown, CEO of Dataium. "The online interest generated over the weekend should translate into improved sales over the remaining holiday season and through the New Year."

Through proprietary data collection and analytics, Dataium aggregates and measures billions of auto shopper behavioral events from more than 40 million active auto shoppers across a network of diverse automotive websites. For more information, visit http://www.dataium.com/contact.