Trends for holiday season planning have shifted over the years, and different brands define “the holidays” in different ways.

Retailers are keen to get as much out of holidays as possible. But the holidays come with challenges, with consumers becoming more selective with their spending and spending less in some categories.

Back in in 2008, I worked on a campaign called “100 days of Holidays” for “Better Homes & Gardens.” It started the month before Halloween and ran until New Year’s Day.

These days, you can already see Halloween costumes, candy, and decorations in stores weeks before Labor Day. So, the ship has sailed when it comes to planning for that upcoming holiday.

The extension of holidays, blurring them together, and inventing new opportunities for sales have shaped consumer behavior and how brands approach a long, hectic holiday season. The season is shorter this year, building pressure for brands to perform.

Digital marketers must now navigate new shifts in consumer behavior in preparation for the holidays this year. These seven trends will have a significant impact:

1. Compared to last year, Thanksgiving is particularly late this November, resulting in five fewer shopping days between Cyber 5, the five-day shopping period that takes place from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, and the end of the year, which includes Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s Eve.
2. Despite some retailers anticipating that consumers will continue to limit their spending in the latter half of the year, EMARKETER predicts that total holiday retail sales will increase by 4.8{2a459e50a38d57a6213157bf22a26c03e606252a8c7270d4eaee00012c804122} this year, up from the 3.9{2a459e50a38d57a6213157bf22a26c03e606252a8c7270d4eaee00012c804122} growth rate seen in 2023.
3. Digital shoppers will allocate the most money to fashion (including clothing, footwear, and accessories) this holiday season, but computer and consumer electronics will continue to lag for another year, as consumers feel less urgency to replace these items following the surge during the pandemic, according to EMARKETER.
4. In 2024, US consumers are expected to spend an average of two hours and 15 minutes daily watching connected TV (CTV), according to EMARKETER research. And shoppable CTV ads are simplifying the process for holiday shoppers to make purchases directly from the media they watch.
5. This holiday season, CTV advertisers could also reach 206.3 million second-screen users who discover brands and products on TV and then use their phones to learn more or make purchases, according to EMARKETER.
6. Consumers are being more selective with their holiday spending this year. Over 60{2a459e50a38d57a6213157bf22a26c03e606252a8c7270d4eaee00012c804122} of Americans say they can’t afford to make the wrong purchase, which may explain why a third of consumers have already begun shopping for the holidays, a significant increase compared to last year, according to a Google/Ipsos study.
7. 60{2a459e50a38d57a6213157bf22a26c03e606252a8c7270d4eaee00012c804122} of U.S. consumers have completely walked away from a purchase when overwhelmed by too many choices or excessive information, according to another Google/Ipsos study.

How CTV Fits Into Digital Marketing During Holiday Season Interview With Matt Voda

To get a good read on how CTV fits into the digital marketing mix during the upcoming holiday season, I asked Matt Voda, CEO of OptiMine, for his thoughts.

He is a marketing expert who advises some of the world’s largest brands like Amazon, Ring, Best Buy, Domino’s, JCPenney, TheRealReal, and other brands on cross-channel marketing impact, measuring both digital and traditional marketing channels down to individual ads and campaigns.

Here are my questions and Voda’s answers:

Greg Jarboe: How do you plan to navigate the shorter holiday shopping season?

Matt Voda: OptiMine’s clients use our scenario planning capabilities to run simulations using the shorter holiday season and look for the best ways to maximize sales. That can mean getting campaigns started earlier, or shifting to higher intensity levels faster, or even to run more last-minute campaigns for shoppers who wait until the last minute.

Jarboe: Do you expect holiday retain sales to go up, down, or sideways this year?

Voda: Retail sales have shown some strength recently despite predictions showing the opposite, so this is especially difficult to predict this year. That said, retailers with more agile marketing measurement can get faster reads on performance and adjust investments and mix more quickly in a more dynamic consumer environment, and these retailers will perform better as a result.

Jarboe: What do you expect to be retail’s most resilient categories in 2024?

Voda: There will be winning and losing categories, but the best retailers will be combining advanced customer intelligence with marketing measurement that informs which marketing approaches work best with key consumer segments to ensure they can overcome these challenges.

Jarboe: How does CTV fit into your digital marketing mix this holiday season?

Voda: Brands use CTV when they need better targeting options than what linear TV can offer, and CTV ends up functioning like digital video in this regard. The lines between TV and digital video are blurring quickly.

Jarboe: Will any of your holiday campaigns tap into second-screen users?

Voda: Successful retailers understand the interplay of media across their funnel and have the right measurement in place to guide to the most optimal investment mix across all channels. This is now table stakes.

Jarboe: Can social video change the hearts, minds, and actions of more selective shoppers?

Voda: Yes, absolutely. OptiMine’s Index, which is a performance benchmark across many of the top brands in the world, shows that video over social can be an extremely effective investment area, especially for new customer acquisition.

Jarboe: How to you provide consumers with the information they need without overwhelming them?

Voda: Creative is one of the most important aspects for successful campaigns and even with advances in AI, human creative talent is absolutely worth the investment and can make the difference.

Adjust To Consumer Trends Creatively

Digital marketers need to be creative and nimble to navigate the significant shifts in seven trends during the upcoming holiday season.

Connected TV can play a critical role in reaching consumers. By offering a streamlined user experience, CTV can facilitate better interactions between brands and consumers and help increase sales.

Paying attention to your media mix will be important. Track how your different channels interact with one another as well as how they individually perform.

Invest in human creative talent to create the right messages for the right channels to reach new and already engaged consumers. Optimizing for new experiences, such as allowing users to make purchases directly in ads placed on CTV or social media, could be key to boosting ecommerce sales this holiday season.

Yes, this is hard. But as Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) tells Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis) in A League of Their Own (1992),

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard … is what makes it great.”

All stats above are taken from an EMARKETER report unless otherwise noted.

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