According to the Deloitte Holiday Survey, “The bulk of holiday shopping continues to take place in December with 44 percent of shoppers planning to wait until December or later to shop, up 5 percentage points from five years ago”.
According to NRF the difference in shopping patterns for men and women is evident with men planning most of their holiday shopping in December.
Most consumers plan to spend splurging on themselves, and socializing away from home. Gifts form the top spend category followed by Socializing away from home, ahead of Entertaining at home.
Home made Gifts and Craft items are some of the new categories that are preferred by Shoppers for this holiday season, though Gift Cards came out on top of the Gifts that consumers would like to receive.
Gourmet Food and Coffee are among the top subscription gifts that consumers plan to buy.
AdGooroo examined U.S. Google Desktop/Tablet activity on three separate keyword groups from November 27-30: 2500 Top Retail Product Keywords 161 Black Friday-Related Keywords 103 Cyber Monday-Related Keywords.
Here are some charts for leading Search advertisers for Text Ad Click Share and PLA ClickShare for Black Friday through Cyber Monday.
Amazon led the Top Retail Product keyword group in Text Ad clicks with a 6.45 percent click share over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend, followed by Walmart 4 percent, JCPenney 3.77 percent, Kohl’s 3.45 percent and Macy’s 3.11 percent.
Eight leading retailers accounted for 37 percent of PLA clicks on the keyword group over the weekend.
Here are the most popular times to post on Facebook as shared by Buzzsumo..
Social Media posts that are focused on the insight of splurging and self-indulgence are likely to resonate better.
This announcement is just the beginning. Coldplay front man Chris Martin is designing a show that will echo elements of the NFL’s On the Fifty campaign – honoring the past, recognizing the present and looking ahead to the next 50 years, including other special artists.
For the first-time ever, Pepsi will give fans behind-the-scenes access to how this monumental show will come together at Pepsi.com.
Fans can visit Pepsi.com now for the first exclusive behind the scenes look at how Coldplay is beginning their journey to the Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show.
Digital Buzz
Beginning Jan. 11, a digital mini-series, “Pepsi Presents: The Super Bowl Halftime Show Show” will launch on Pepsi.com offering fans an exclusive, all-access view of what it takes to create the biggest music event of the year in the middle of the biggest sports event of the year, Super Bowl 50.
Coldplay joins an esteemed list of recent halftime acts including Katy Perry, Bruno Mars, Beyoncé, Madonna, The Who, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Prince, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, U2 and more.
Super Bowl 50 marks Pepsi’s fourth year as title sponsor of the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and 14th year as an NFL partner. Pepsi and the NFL have teamed again to provide fans with a halftime experience worthy of pop-culture’s biggest stage.
The Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show is the most-watched musical event of the year. More than 118.5 million viewers in the U.S. watched last year’s show, marking the most-watched Halftime Show ever. The Super Bowl and Halftime Show will be broadcast worldwide from Levi’s Stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area.
With marketers focusing on Holiday season shopper engagement to bring in loyal customers post the seasonal sales, here is a checklist for advertisers that can help them get the best Return on Ad Spend from their campaigns in the month of December.
Online Search
According to Bing Ads Insights at least 80 percent of Shoppers plan on buying at least one Gift Card and 62 percent plan on buying their last gift in the week of Christmas.
Bing recommends planning your search campaigns with the following tips to maximize the campaign performance:
Highlight incentives and discounts in ad copy with
phrases like “20% off holiday sale” and “free shipping.”
Update ad copy to create a sense of urgency, “Order now for delivery by Christmas” and “3 days left for free shipping.
Offer “Free gift wrapping” as an incentive for
last-minute shoppers.
Keep campaigns fully funded through December to catch
post-Christmas shoppers redeeming gift cards.
Google has shared a Holiday Survival checklist that will help advertisers focusing on Best Sellers.
Manage seasonal or strategic products with a separate
campaign at a higher campaign priority.
Uncap budgets to match search growth for your products leading up to Prime Seasonal Days.
Add new click share columns to find product groups that have the biggest headroom for more clicks.
View overlap rate and outranking share from the auction insights report to compare performance with competitors on high value products.
Bid for categories that will help you boost conversions. Use eCPC to increase Click-share for products that are your best sellers.
Gift Cards Promotion Strategy
Gift Cards are the number one gift that people wanted to receive and the Top Three Gift card categories are Department Stores (38 percent), Restaurant (34 percent) and Coffee Shop (21 percent). The phenomenon of self-gifting is bigger than earlier with users choosing to gift themselves over others. Nearly 60 percent of consumers plan to splurge on themselves.
Plan your Gift card Strategy by engaging audiences when they are most likely to be shopping for last-minute gift ideas. Plan an email marketing and in-app messaging campaign to remind your audiences about the offers on your gift cards. For advertisers on Google, there are restrictions on using Google Shopping for Gift cards.
Twitter has shared tips that will engage the last-minute shoppers by reaching audiences by being in the conversation for holiday shopping. Brands looking at being on Twitter Holiday season shopping chat can join the conversation with ‘Tis The Season.
Twitter recommends planning a Mobile App Promotion and targeting new audiences for mobile app downloads with a surge in sales of Mobile devices in Q4.
Messaging Apps Campaign
If your core target audience is younger audiences, text messaging and messaging apps can help you reach audiences within Christmas context with 14 percent using messaging apps every day . Engaging your audience on Messaging Apps can help you reach the target audience within a context that helps you build a conversation. Developing your target audience profile based on unique app ids can help you engage audiences with UGC content or contest and promote offers across apps on social media networks and entertainment apps for Holiday Season campaign. Facebook is the most downloaded app and Targeting audiences with Facebook Custom Audience, based on Unique app ids for your retail app and messaging app, with common conversation thread for Holidays, as seen for Starbucks and Match can create buzz and encourage sign ups for your seasonal offers and campaign.
According to App Annie’s report on retail, Intelligent Product Suggestions can boost engagement with the mobile-first consumer. If Your app has the ability to recommend products based on consumers shopping behavior, now is the time to up sell and cross-sell.
Segment Your Audiences and Optimize Campaigns Based on Shopping Behavior
Optimize your campaign for different target segments based on Digital Shopping Insights shared by Prosper Insight and IAB;
18-34 year olds are more likely to read a product review on their smartphones (44 percent vs. 32 percent general population) and less likely to do so on tablets (32 percent). They’re also inclined to check prices on a smartphone (42 percent vs. 33 percent general population) and are less likely to do so on a tablet (32 percent).
Those who are 35-54 are more prone to use tablets to read product reviews, locate stores, check store hours, and check product pricing (40 percent vs. 35 percent general population).
Adults ages 55-64 are more than twice as likely to make a purchase on a tablet (34 percent) than on a smartphone (15 percent).
Consumers 65+ are more than twice as likely to make a purchase on a tablet (26 percent) than on a smartphone (11 percent). They are also nearly twice as likely to read a product review on a tablet (31 percent) than on a smartphone (17 percent).
Google Shopping Campaigns bring in higher conversions and here is a video shared by Google on “How To Optimize Shopping Campaigns” for boosting conversion rates from your campaign.
Set up a new email promotion workflow specifically for new offers and campaigns post Cyber Monday based on what holiday products, promotions, or categories a user you would like to promote in the weeks leading to Christmas. Include video in email where possible.
According to Adobe Digital Index, Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday drove a total of USD 11 billion in online sales, a 15 percent increase year-over-year (YoY) and 30 percent of all online sales in November (USD 39.5 billion). Brick-and-click retailers saw the strongest growth in sales YoY at 18 percent. The first 18 days in December are all expected to be USD 1 billion sales days*. The other findings from Adobe, Large retailers (average sales revenue of USD 25 million) saw 12 percent growth on Cyber Monday. Online sales for small retailers (average sales revenue of USD 100,000) increased by 6 percent YoY.
As reported by Marketing Land, Online sales topped USD 3 billion on Cyber Monday based on an Adobe report. The company says 200 million visits to 4,500 retail websites generated USD 3.07 billion, an increase of 16 percent from a year ago. That makes it the biggest day of online sales in US history, says Adobe.
The findings reported by Adobe, are similar to those reported by Custora, where the increase ine-commerce revenue was at 16.2 percent over Cyber Monday 2014, and orders (transactions) were up 14.7 percent.
Smartphones share of traffic increased to 36.8 percent in 2015 from 28.5 percent in 2014.
Smartphones percentage of sales increased to 15.2 percent from 9.1 percent.
Apple devices contributed to 33 percent of traffic and 21 percent of sales.
Mobile devices contributed to 28 percent of online sales up 26 percent over 2014.
Key Takeaways
Cross-Device Optimization
Smartphones continue to increase as a source of Online Traffic, Online retail focusing on increasing online sales, can look at conversion rates for different devices to optimize campaigns for the first two weeks of December.
Maximize Sales with Best Performing Ad Creative
Optimize your search campaign for best performing ad creative in the first two weeks as the conversion rates decline after the first two weeks, to gain best rate of sales. To maximize sales volume, optimize your best sellers and best performing ad creative.
Allocate Higher Budgets Initially For Campaign ROI
As Online sales volume sustains after Cyber Monday, and conversion rates plateau after the first fifteen days, Marketers allocating search budgets for the first few weeks of December are likely to gain a better ROI for search and remarketing campaigns.
Mobile App Promotion
Use Mobile App Promotion with seasonal deals to convert your shoppers into loyal customers with Mobile App promotion.
Store Locators
Store Location is one of the most searched with as high as 60 percent customers searching store location. Adding location site extensions to your search advertising can bring in better results.
Content Marketing
With 21 percent of online transactions starting from search results, optimizing for Search engines and creating seasonal content and social media posts can get your offers discovered and bring in better results from your campaigns.
*Adobe’s report is based on the analysis of aggregated and anonymous data of more than 125 million visits to 4,500 retail websites on Cyber Monday and uses its proven predictive model to forecast the remaining hours of the day. Adobe measures 80 percent of all online transactions from the top 100 U.S. retailers, more than any other technology company.
According to the Deloitte Holiday Survey, “The bulk of holiday shopping continues to take place in December with 44 percent of shoppers planning to wait until December or later to shop, up 5 percentage points from five years ago”.
