Alibaba smashed its Singles' Day shopping record on Friday by clocking growth of more than 32 percent, the Chinese e-commerce giant said on Friday.

Retailers on Alibaba's platforms had recorded $17.8 billion worth of gross merchandise volume (GMV). In 2015, the 24-hour e-commerce sales event racked up $14.3 billion GMV in total.

"Back in 2013, $5.14 billion was our one-day GMV. Now we can achieve it in one hour," Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang told the company's live blog earlier in the day, adding that in the first hour of Singles' Day, orders were coming in 175,000 per second.

Media reports had forecast GMV from Alibaba's 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, as Singles' Day is officially called, to come at $20 billion in 2016, easily eclipsing the $2.74 billion and $3.07 billion respectively generated online during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales in the U.S. this year.

Singles' Day was first celebrated in the 1990s by young, single Chinese as an anti-Valentine's Day. In 2009, Alibaba began using the made-up "holiday" to promote discounts at retailers on its e-commerce platforms, as a means of boosting revenue in the traditionally quiet sales period before the Lunar New Year season.

Increasingly, international brands have jumped on Alibaba's Singles' Day bandwagon, with more than 14,000 taking part in the 2016 sale, accounting for about 30 percent of total GMV half-way into the event, according to Alibaba stats. Orders, meanwhile, came from 207 countries and regions.

Alibaba reported that deals offered by Apple (AAPL), Nike (NKE) and Siemens (National Stock Exchange of India: SIEMENS-IN) were among the top-sellers with Chinese consumers in the early hours of the day. Local Chinese brands that made a strong showing were appliance manufacturers Haier (Hong Kong Stock Exchange: 1169-HK) and Midea, and smartphone maker Meizu.

Alibaba has worked to make Singles' Day increasingly international, with its star-studded "countdown gala" this year featuring appearances from retired NBA star Kobe Bryant, footballer David Beckham and his fashion designer wife Victoria, and U.S. pop band OneRepublic. Jack Ma , founder of the Alibaba Group, showed up to perform a magic trick, and the new Alibaba Pictures' film production was also promoted during the gala.

Duncan Clark, chairman and MD of the business advisory BDA China, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Friday that the gala was a clever merging of Alibaba's focuses on entertainment and shopping.

"In China, shopping is entertainment," Clark said. "A lot of people [in inland cities] are tuning in to live broadcasts for products. Hundreds of thousands of people follow internet celebrities who use these platforms to sell."