New research: Marketers focused on Stories, mobile, and Amazon ads for 2018 holiday push
Research report on digital marketing spend for the 2018 holiday season. Brands put more advertising dollars toward social media Stories, mobile, and Amazon.
Today we’re releasing a new research report with Kenshoo: Digital Advertising Trends for the 2018 Holiday Season.
In this report, we look at how digital marketers at US brands are expanding budget and reach for the 2018 holiday season, comparing this year’s spend to last year’s.
In 2018, brands are putting more advertising dollars toward social media Stories, mobile, and Amazon ads — all while maintaining or increasing budgets allocated toward traditional holiday ads such as Google Search and Facebook.
Among the key findings from the report:
- 73% of brands believe mobile will be “more important” or “much more important” than desktop for sales this year, while just 10% believe desktop will be the primary device for sales.
- Advertisers are gravitating toward Facebook Stories (38% will invest in this format) and Instagram Stories (37%).
- Brands who plan to run Amazon ads will dedicate 21% of overall budget to this channel (second only to Google Search at 33%) with 82% of creating Christmas-specific campaigns and 67% running dedicated campaigns for Black Friday.
- Amazon ads are growing in importance especially for retailers: 56% of retail or ecommerce brands plan to maintain or increase their Amazon advertising budget this year.
From Facebook Stories to Messenger ads, Amazon ads to Universal App Campaigns, this research report details how advertisers use and prioritize specific channels in order to reach consumers for the holiday season, and how that spend and prioritization has changed from year to year.
“As we get into a holiday season that will almost certainly be the biggest yet in terms of digital ad spending, we thought it best to ask marketers what they’re doing differently this year, rather than speculate on trends after reading the tea leaves,” said Chris Costello, senior director of marketing research at Kenshoo. “There is change, for sure, but the center of gravity remains with the channels and publishers—namely Google, Facebook and, to an increasing extent, Amazon—that have been historically successful.”
Significant opportunity awaits advertisers who think critically about which platforms to use to reach consumers during the 2018 holiday season.
The research debuted during a webinar today, November 14.
It is available for download from ClickZ here.
