Millennial Media and MediaMath recently held the webinar “Automating Mobile Success for the 2014 Holiday Season.” In it, Millennial Media referred to its infographic on Mobile Trends of Holidays Past, which analyzes data from Millennial Media’s ad platform to reveal trends throughout the crucial period of the Thanksgiving shopping week during 2013 and 2012. For the sake of this piece, we defined Thanksgiving shopping week as the Monday before Thanksgiving through the following ‘Cyber’ Monday.
Here are some key discoveries from Millennial Media’s infographic:
• Click-through rates (CTR) increased 48% from 2012 to 2013. That spike has two main causes. Consumers tend to be more interested in making purchases in advance of the holiday season, and advertisers often up their game with more creative, engaging ads.
• Retail advertisers invested more heavily as November progressed, with ad spend rising more than 15% around Thanksgiving and climbing even higher on Black Friday.
• Retail isn’t the only vertical to get a holiday lift. Automotive and telecom saw 102% and 157% more views during Thanksgiving shopping week versus the whole quarter.
As ever, Q4 is a critical period for all brands and advertisers, and it’s important to use mobile as a tool to reach consumers. Here are four tips to make sure those ads are engaging and properly targeted, and reap the rewards of a well-planned holiday campaign.
1. Programmatic campaigns generate billions of data points every day. Mine your own campaigns from last year to determine buying patterns and insights. Develop segmented, targetable audiences using this data.
2. As part of this review, identify top performing apps and sites from prior campaigns. Consider purchasing an inventory bundle of these properties in a private marketplace to increase your efficiency.
3. Consider rich media for greater consumer engagement. Breakthrough the clutter to create a more memorable, immersive consumer experience. Bonus if you can purchase this programmatically.
4. Continue the conversation across screens, and increase engagement through successful retargeting campaigns based on prior behavior or purchase history. Target these segments, including your online audiences, in mobile. The holidays are among the busiest times of the year and people are constantly on the move. Make sure your ads move with them.
Millennial Media is proud to work with MediaMath and support their clients as they plan campaigns for this holiday season and beyond. Start now. The 2014 holiday season will be here before you know it!
To access a recording of the webinar, click here.
The infographic Mobile Trends of Holidays Past is below:
