This holiday season is shaping up to be a decent one for online retail, but looks like the big players may have been the real beneficiaries.

ComScore just came out with a new batch of numbers, which shows online spending from November 1 through Christmas Eve increased 5 percent from the same period a year ago, to $27 billion. That's a big improvement over last holiday season, when online spending was down 3 percent. But this season's sales uptick may have not have been evenly distributed.

ComScore chairman Glen Fulgoni writes:

This was also a year when retailers substantially boosted their use of social network marketing and the larger retailers significantly outperformed their smaller brethren. In these tough economic times, the retailers with sufficient financial resources and a willingness to invest in aggressive marketing and free shipping offers were clear winners.

Consumer electronics sales grew more than 20 percent, and jewelry and watches also had a "strong performance" this holiday season, according to comScore. But the amount spent per buyer online showed a "slight decline" over the same period a year ago, the firm noted.

The heavy discounting, free shipping and other incentives offered by the big sites are getting a thumbs up from shoppers.

Customer satisfaction with the 40 largest online retailers jumped 7 percent to 79 on a 100-point scale, according to a new report from ForeSee Results. Amazon.com led the pack again with 87 out of a 100 points, up nearly 4 percent over last year.

Next in customer satisfaction were Netflix, QVC, Apple and Cabela's.

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