As I’m writing this, Laurie Strode is giving her brother hell in the latest installment of Halloween, however, in my head, Clarence is getting his wings from Zuzu ringing her bell in It’s a Wonderful Life. Such confliction – I know! However, I’m not alone. A report by the National Retail Federation finds that “each year, about 40% of consumers begin their holiday shopping before Halloween.” So what does that mean for you? It means if you’re not planting seeds in your target audience’s mind now for the holidays, you’re behind. But fear not! If you’re looking for some tips to get you off the ground we have some for you.
To start, don’t get me wrong…we’re not talking about going full Santa Claus and reindeer months prior, we’re talking about laying the foundation early via brand, product, or service line specific messages to start working on getting top of mind and better understanding your audience. The advantage you have by starting to plant the seed early is that it allows you to optimize your campaigns before the end of November when Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Green Monday, Super Saturday, and Boxing Day (catches breath) hit which continue to expand the boundaries of what “the holiday advertising push” for marketers really means.
Here are some great holiday targeting tactics to help you reach those eager holiday shoppers through. connected TV, geofencing, geoframing, broadcast and cable television.
Geofencing & Geoframing
Need a quick refresher on geofencing and geoframing?
Use geoframing to reach people that frequent malls throughout the entire year, as they are more likely to return during the holiday season. According to a report from GPShopper, which analyzed the factors influencing holiday shopping preferences, 61 percent of shoppers valued the ability to leave with their gifts the same day they’re purchased. Those shopping behaviors begin way before the holiday season.
Loyal. Shoppers. Are. Gold.
Target your highest-valued store visitors by enabling geoframing to drive repeat purchases during the holiday season. Better yet, create a unique message for your ads to cross-sell or drive up-sell opportunities.
Conquest competitors
One way to take it to the next level is by conquesting your competitors’ customers. You can use geofencing to target and convert frequent visitors to competitive locations in real-time. Consider the value of reaching your competitors’ lapsed customers and driving them to your store.
Black Friday Shoppers:
Black Friday is when consumers and marketers push full throttle. According to a survey by Nanigans, marketers plan to devote 25 percent of their annual budgets—amounting to nearly $6 billion—to digital advertising and traditional media during the four-day shopping period from Black Friday to Cyber Monday.
Reach consumers that participated in Black Friday shopping last year at shopping centers, malls, and major retailers with geoframing targeting turned on in your campaign.
Looking for a jumping-off point? Our geoframing platform has 475 place categories and over 270 branded chains audiences that are ready-to-use within any digital advertising campaign.
Place categories
Cards and Stationery
Jewelry and Watches
Shopping Centers Gift and Novelty
Toys
Brand shoppers
Apple Store
Barnes & Noble
Adidas
GameStop
Kay Jewelers
Connected TV
Not all people get into the holiday spirit by shopping. Some of us look to classic holiday movies or, even, the Christmas flicks that run on the Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel to get into the holiday spirit. My wife and I may start re-watching last year’s Hallmark movies in October in-between Halloween movies or the latest season of American Horror Story but that’s beside the point. Again, I know… confusing, right! Further proof that not every adult between 25-54 is the same. People are complex. To reach those holiday elves, leverage Connected TV advertising.
Powered by private marketplace deals through our DSP, Connected TV advertising brings the benefits of programmatic to TV advertising to reach highly-engaged audiences through the selection of specific deals to reach your ideal audience.
We’ve rounded up a few of our favorite connected TV network deals best suited for the holiday shopper that range from a $28-$70 CPM. Contact us and we’d be happy to share them with you!
Football Means Holiday Traditions
The start of the official holiday season kicks off for many families with turkey and football. How consumers watch football is quickly changing. Viewership of NFL games on digital platforms has jumped 65 percent from 2017 through the 2018 season, the league said in a report. The average minute audience was 326,000 viewers per game window across different platforms. The number of audiences streaming on phones has increased 147 percent compared to 2017 and streaming via connected TV devices has grown 54 percent, according to statistics cited in the NFL report.
More and more football viewers are switching to connected TV devices which is why you should make this platform part of your digital advertising strategy. We see CPMs range between $50-$70 for NFL and NCAA College Football on connected TV, which depending on the market and audience you are targeting puts CTV in line with the CPM for broadcast and cable NFL games.
Spreading Holiday Cheer Over The Air
Throughout the holiday season, local broadcast stations and cable networks will be showing everything from Halloween specials to Christmas classics. Local stations no doubt will be creating their own specially crafted holiday content – and as an advertiser, you can place messages alongside feel-good content on trusted stations.
From Toys for Tots and Coats for Kids, there are partnerships that present unique opportunities for sponsors to make a difference in their community. The media company Tegna reports 87% of consumers will purchase a product from a company that advocates for an issue they care about. Whether it’s the holiday season or not, aligning your brand with content that helps serve the local community is a win for the brand, a win for the consumer, and most importantly a win for the community.
Weather is a Sport
If you’re in areas like the Northeast then you know, Winter is viewed as a sport and with the holidays upon us people will be tuning into their local news stations to help plan or keep track of their day or holiday travels. By aligning yourself with weather-specific content, you get noticed, and cut through the clutter.
Bonus: Nightmare before Christmas
So as we have discussed, the holiday shopping season is starting earlier. I can almost hear the groans from the people reading this now… but yes, you as a consumer contribute to this. So, since Halloween is on our doorstep, why not share some targeting options for our ghoulish marketers out there too. Not that it should be a surprise, but there are actually 422 ghost tours and 415 haunted house venues across the US.
With geoframing, think about how you can reach people who have visited haunted houses, escape rooms, and ghost tours in the past year. You could even reach people that went to a haunted house last Halloween. Remember, the holidays provide an opportunity not just to tap into the wallets of your consumers but something much more powerful – a mindset.
All these targeting options for Connected TV, broadcast and cable television, geofencing, and geoframing – and much more like cinema, broadcast radio and others – are solutions which can be enabled with the help of a member on our team. On that note – Happy Holidays… oh, I mean Happy Halloween!
