Bidtellect’s Top 10 Holiday Campaign Tips for for Brands & Advertisers

Bidtellect’s Top 10 Holiday Campaign Tips for for Brands & Advertisers

This is our no frills, top 10 list for holiday advertising success.

$1.3 trillion

eMarketer predicts 2022 holiday retail sales to increase 3.3% to $1.262 trillion (eMarketer). 

 

4%

Only 4% of U.S. holiday shoppers did not use digital channels for their shopping in 2021 (Think With Google)

61%

61% of consumers joined a loyalty program to receive discounts during the 2021 holiday season (Deloitte)

1. Holiday spend is going to be big. Now is the time to scale.

Bidtellect’s platform is integrated with 25+ of the industry’s leading SSPs and exchanges, giving buyers access to 98%+ of the internet-connected US, and 100s of thousands of publishers and global supply.

2. Don’t skimp on brand safety. 

Filter towards quality to ensure viewability, brand safety, supply path optimization, and to combat fraud.

3. Make use of all Bidtellect’s ad formats & devices

We’re talkin’ Responsive Native, High Impact, Banner Display, Video and Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile – all to drive brand and promotional awareness. Bonus: we now offer CTV/OTT. Talk to your contact to see if you can incorporate it now.

4. Reach consumers already engaging with holiday content,

holiday shopping content, or any topic of your choosing with context-driven targeting and optimization.

5. Utilize Bidtellect’s proprietary audiences,

which use natural language processing technology and the context of the page to build custom audiences that show an explicit interest in the category of your choosing.

6. Save where it counts.

Our optimization technology – especially our automatic bid factoring tool, AARDvark – will ensure you’re paying for the true value of an ad placement, maximizing ROI.

7. Loyalty programs matter to holiday shoppers

for early deals and access – the data shows it. Show off loyalty programs and exciting savings promotions in your holiday creative assets. Ads with promotions are consistently top performing, according to [b]+studio.

8. Rely on real-time optimization

 to identify the creatives and content that deliver the best results across devices and sites.

9. Analyze campaign performance

with Bidtellect’s robust analytics, customized reporting, third-party measurement solutions and proprietary insights for the most in-depth assessment of your holiday campaigns.

10. Teamwork makes the holiday dream come true

Our creative experts [b]+studio will create custom, eye-catching, and high performing holiday creative assets for your brand. Our performance analysts make recommendations based on performance and goals.

 

Brands and advertisers, we hope these top 10 tips for holiday campaigns are helpful. Reach out to your Bidtellect rep to learn more.

For more holiday advertising tips, check out These Are The Top 3 Trends Predicted for the 2022 Holiday Shopping Season

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Holiday Creative Assets: 6 Mandatory Tips for Engagement from [b]+studio

Holiday Creative Assets: 6 Mandatory Tips for Engagement from [b]+studio

Hello, holiday advertisers! We asked Santa aka Bidtellect’s in-house creative agency their mandatory tips for engaging holiday creative assets. Don’t you want your brand on on the high-engagement “nice list?”

Remember, no matter how great your platform’s placement and optimization capabilities, bad creative assets (we’re talking images, videos, and copy) will kill engagement faster than you can say, “Is this coal?!”

So here’s what you need to know.

1. It’s the Happiest Time of Year – Keep Your Holiday Creative Assets & Messaging Positive!

 

Simple as that! Use positive adjectives in headlines coupled with happy images to increase CTR. Cold, monotone creatives do not bring joy. Bonus: add puns or rhymes to make it even more…puntastic.

2. Keep the Holidays Front of Mind in All Creative Assets

 

‘Tis the season: remember to include at least one holiday reference in the image or copy in all holiday creative assets, or you’ll risk seeming out of the loop (as well as suffering poor engagement).

Use the concept of “gift guides.” Offer helpful, valuable tips and create content that’s great to drive to. Think: find the perfect gift for “X” which doubles as calling out the targeted demographic, but in a fun, holiday way. Be a holiday thought leader – and help your shoppers out!

3. Refresh Your Holiday Creatives For Engagement & Re-Engagement

 

Switch up your holiday creative assets! Better yet: rotate based on the event, as you count down to Black Friday, that big holiday sale, or new holiday release. Bidtellect’s advanced platform optimizes to best-performing creatives (read more on Dynamic Creative Optimization) and our team will manually rotate creatives to find your best performance.

Plus, you’ll want to re-engage with users thanks to our sequential messaging tech and other re-engagement tactics – so you’ll need fresh content!

4. High Impact Units Are Your Best Gift

 

Take your holiday creative assets up a notch with high impact creative units: cinemagraphs, scroller units, and carousel units are major engagement givers. These are highly effective at telling a short story and conveying a specific setting or emotion. They also drive maximum in-unit engagement. One advertising agency found that cinemagraph content tends to have more virality, with 71% higher organic reach than still photographs. Don’t believe us? Check out this case study or this one.

5. Incorporate Video into Your Holiday Creative Assets

 

9/10 people report wanting to see more videos from brands, according to Hubspot. So go ahead, give consumers the gift of video ads in your holiday creative assets this season – and you’ll give your brand the gift of higher engagement. Keep them short, sweet, and positive – and be sure your message can be conveyed with and without sound.

Bidtellect’s context-driven solutions ensure your video ads will be relevant to the content surrounding it – a good thing since 74% of consumers are likely to remember an ad if its message relates to the content around it.

6. Make Sure You Offer Deals and Promotions in Your Headlines

Santa with Sale Sign

 

Everybody loves a sale – especially during the holidays! So include deals, discounts, incentives, and reward programs in the copy of your holiday creative assets. Bidtellect’s [b]+studio consistently sees highest performance for headlines including a discount.

Examples: promo codes, flash sales, bundle deals, free shipping, etc. Combine promotions (discounts or a special offer) with the shipping deadlines to incentivize your customers to start shopping. Most predict consumers will start shopping even earlier this year.

Brands and advertisers, we hope these tips for engaging holiday creative assets are helpful!  The holiday 2022 shopping season is going to be a great year!

For more holiday advertising tips, check out These Are The Top 3 Trends Predicted for the 2022 Holiday Shopping Season

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These Are The Top 3 Trends Predicted for the 2022 Holiday Shopping Season

These Are The Top 3 Trends Predicted for the 2022 Holiday Shopping Season

Holiday shopping is just around the corner and the data shows that consumers will be spending and shopping even earlier this year! Here’s what brands and advertisers need to know when it comes to their holiday advertising and digital marketing campaigns for 2022.

$1.3 trillion

eMarketer predicts 2022 holiday retail sales to increase 3.3% to $1.262 trillion (eMarketer).

4%

Only 4% of U.S. holiday shoppers did not use digital channels for their shopping in 2021 (Think With Google)

61%

61% of consumers joined a loyalty program to receive discounts during the 2021 holiday season (Deloitte)

1. More Spending & Growth Predicted this Holiday Season

Call it post-pandemic energy, excitement, or relief – whatever it is, consumers spent big last year and that trend is predicted to continue. Brands can take advantage of this trend and market their products properly in order to increase their sales. In such scenarios, direct marketing can prove to be beneficial. This is why leaflet distribution services are still important as companies tend to take their help in distributing marketing information such as offers and discounts through leaflets or direct mail. For instance, a travel agency might want to distribute promotional offers to people through leaflets that might also have a coupon code for a discount. Honestly, if the weather is fine and the diseases do not spread, then there are higher chances of people taking vacations. For instance, this year, the weather seems to be in favor of people taking a break from their mundane schedules, and so are viruses and bacteria. Hence, individuals would look forward to visiting Leavenworth vacation homes by Meredith Lodging (and the like) to spend quality time with their loved ones. As a result, more and more people will shop in large quantities. They would of course need travel gear while being on the move, wouldn’t they?

That said, total retail spending grew 16.1% in 2021 – the fastest growth rate in more than 20 years, according to eMarketer; Deloitte reported a similar statistic citing that 2021 total holiday retail sales increased 8.5%, the largest annual increase in 17 years. eMarketer predicts consumer holiday spending will grow 3.3% in 2022 to $1.262 trillion.

Retail and Holiday Spending & Prediction Data:

  • US retail sales grew by 16.1% to $1.221 trillion in the 2021 holiday season, the fastest growth rate in more than 20 years (eMarketer, February 2022)
  • Total holiday retail sales in 2021 increased 8.5%, the largest annual increase in 17 years (Deloitte, 2022)
  • eMarketer predicts 2022 holiday retail sales to increase 3.3% to $1.262 trillion (eMarketer, February 2022).
  • Apparel and accessories ecommerce sales surged 22.5% to $45.35 billion to make it the No. 1 category in terms of both growth and dollar figure (eMarketer, February 2022)

Advertisers: Holiday spend is going to be big. Now is the time to scale.

Budget higher spend and scale across the web, ad formats (Responsive Native, High Impact, Banner Display, and Video) and devices (desktop, tablet and mobile) to reach more interested consumers. Bidtellect’s platform is integrated with 25+ of the industry’s leading SSPs and exchanges, giving buyers access to 98%+ of the internet-connected US, and 100s of thousands of publishers and global supply. Better yet, all inventory available through Bidtellect’s platform can be filtered towards quality to ensure viewability, brand safety, supply path optimization, and to combat fraud.

santa holding a credit card for holiday shopping online christmas shopping advertising

2. eCommerce Continues to Dominate Holiday Shopping & Sales

Great news digital advertisers: ecommerce shopping growth has been holding steady post-pandemic. Nearly all shoppers will buy something online this holiday season – Google reported that only 4% of U.S. holiday shoppers did not use digital channels for their shopping in 2021, and eMarketer predicts nearly 16% growth in ecommerce sales this year, compared to 0.9% growth in brick and mortar sales. Additionally, e-commerce companies prefer to take the help of post-purchase customer experience platforms like Wismo, which can help them increase their rate of sales. These platforms tend to bridge the gap of communication between the seller and customers about their order, its status, and the ETA of delivery. Personalized messages to the customer regarding their order can make them feel special and motivate them to to come back again to the e-commerce website for their shopping needs.

Following the pandemic, businesses seem to be allocating more money to advertising and promoting their various categories of products due to the phenomenal growth of eCommerce. Therefore, they usually work with their financial advisers to formulate effective holiday plans, use software (like the ones provided by Finlyte) to optimize their profits, and devise interactive promotional campaigns focusing on their best-selling products in order to maximize sales during the holiday season.

We recommend shifting focus to Cyber Monday, which was the heaviest online spending day in 2021 (no surprise) and is predicted to be the No. 1 spending day of the season this year, too, rising 12.0% to $12.22 billion according to eMarketer. That said, Black Friday will be the second biggest, rising 9.8% to $9.91 billion.

eCommerce Holiday Spending Data:

  • Holiday eCommerce sales will climb 15.5% to $235.86 billion in 2022 (eMarketer)
  • Only 4% of U.S. holiday shoppers did not use digital channels for their shopping in 2021 (Think With Google)
  • 2021 ecommerce sales increased 11% compared with 2020 and 64.1% compared with 2019 (Deloitte)
  • Cyber Monday will be the No. 1 spending day of the season -rising 12.0% to $12.22 billion (eMarketer)
  • Black Friday will be the second biggest online spending day, rising 9.8% to $9.91 billion (eMarketer)
  • Thanksgiving will again grow the fastest at 14.1% to reach $5.90 billion (eMarketer)

Advertisers: Use context to reach more relevant audiences and industry decision-makers where they are consuming holiday content.

Contextual targeting seamlessly integrates your ads into relevant content users are already consuming – like holiday gift inspiration, holiday deals to take advantage of, or holiday shopping sites – and provides higher engagement and greater cost efficiencies, especially in combination with Bidtellect’s context-driven optimization engine.

Utilize Bidtellect’s proprietary audiences, which use natural language processing technology and the context of the page to build custom audiences that show an explicit interest in the category of your choosing.

elves shopping holiday shopping advertising

3. Holiday Shoppers Will Start Early Thanks to Loyalty Programs & Stock Concerns

In 2021, holiday shoppers started shopping sooner – and this was thanks to brand loyalty programs combined with fears of missing out on a key wish list item. Not only that, 50% wished they had started shopping earlier, according to Google. Loyalty programs trigger earlier shopping thanks to exclusive discounts and gift inspiration – Deloitte reported that as many as 81% shopped specific brands because they were a member and 61% joined a program just for a discount.

Loyalty Program Holiday Data:

  • 81% of consumers shopped specific brands during the 2021 holiday season because they were a member (Deloitte)
  • 61% of consumers joined a loyalty program to receive discounts during the 2021 holiday season (Deloitte)

Early Shopping Holiday Data:

  • As of June 2021, 31% of U.S. shoppers had already started their holiday shopping and 37% of shoppers who shopped last holiday season wished they had started earlier (Think With Google, March 2022)
  • In June 2021, stock issues were top of mind for holiday shoppers. Over 50% of U.S. shoppers surveyed saying they would start holiday shopping earlier to avoid an item being out of stock (Think With Google, March 2022)

Advertisers: Call out loyalty programs and discounts in your creative assets

Holiday shoppers are eager to maximize their loyalty program membership and join if it offers exclusive discounts. Bidtellect’s in-house creative agency, [b]+studio, consistently sees the highest engagement with creative assets that offer a discount or loyalty program in the headline. Creative expertise combined with optimization technology will ensure maximum engagement to best-performing creative assets in real time.

We hope these holiday 2022 advertising trend predictions and campaign tips set you up for success.

Want to Learn More?

Reach out to learn how we can implement a cookieless, context-driven strategy for your brand today.

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Cookieless? We Got This.

Cookieless? We Got This.

The cookieless future may be (almost) present, but with the right alternative targeting and optimization technologies, brands and advertisers will have nothing to worry about. Reaching target audiences, decision-makers, and protecting brand safety is a breeze thanks to context solutions combined with audience and ID alternatives. Read more here.

The Background: Privacy and the Cookieless Movement

The Cookie Phase Out:

  • When GDPR (and subsequently CCPA) became enforceable, the number of third-party cookies used per webpage drastically declined, and the trend has continued.
  • Apple’s Safari internet browser blocks all third-party cookies. It’s used by an estimated 1 billion users worldwide.
  • By comparison, an estimated 3.4 billion internet users use Google Chrome as their main browser worldwide. Google Chrome is scheduled to phase out third-party cookies in late 2024.

Technology & Advertisers Are Still Behind:

  • 8 in 10 US marketers and publishers were still relying primarily on third-party cookies to determine the identity of their audiences as of 2021, according to eMarketer.
  • While many have shifted their strategies over the last year or so, multiple ad tech execs told eMarketer that “advertisers will be transacting on cookies until the day they can’t anymore.” 

The Power of Context: Performance for Native & Beyond

Get ahead of the cookie curve. Reach more relevant audiences and industry decision-makers where they are consuming content thanks to context. Contextual targeting seamlessly integrates your ads into relevant content users are already consuming, and provides higher engagement and greater cost efficiencies, especially in combination with Bidtellect’s context-driven optimization engine.

 

With Bidtellect, brands can discover, align with, and optimize against the content on any webpage thanks to smarter contextual tools that drive performance with unrivaled accuracy and scale.

  • Bidtellect began as a native specialist demand-side platform. With native ads, we needed to evaluate the contextual information on the page to create an ad that blended seamlessly into its environment.
  • Bidtellect then began maximizing context-first technology for its performance abilities.
  • Bidtellect has gone on to build the most sophisticated contextual solutions of any DSP while extending these successes to other channels and formats beyond native

Contextual Targeting

Bidtellect has consistently pushed our technology forward, and now utilizes a combined contextual approach within our platform: the industry’s best third-party contextual integrations plus our unique proprietary contextual targeting solutions and our context-driven optimization engine.

Benefits of Contextual Targeting:

  • Seamless integration into content users are already consuming
  • Higher engagement 
  • Greater cost efficiencies, especially combined with Bidtellect’s context-driven optimization engine
  • Scales across formats: Responsive Native, Display, Video Units, and High Impact Units

Bidtellect’s Contextual Targeting Tools:

  • First-to-market context demographics targeting
  • Category targeting 
  • Keyword targeting
  • Interest targeting
  • Inventory quality targeting
  • B2B targeting: Bidtellect + Bombora Partnership

Context-Driven Optimization

Bidtellect’s optimization engine maximizes performance, spend, and ROI for advertisers completely using context-driven technology. Contextual optimization is the foundation of Bidtellect’s bidding technology.

What the heck is AARDvark? Bidtellect’s Automatic Algorithmic Rate Determination tool utilizes multiple contextual signals (placement, type of ad, device, surrounding context, channel, viewability) and non-PII identifiers to identify where certain subsets of audiences frequent. Our algorithms then make intelligent decisions as to the value of those placements. This is layered with a refined approach utilizing natural language processing technology at the page URL level. 

ID Solutions: LiveRamp RampID

Bidtellect partnered with one of the largest companies in the space, LiveRamp to utilize their Universal IDs, RampID. Additionally, The Trade Desk’s TDID 2.0 is on our product roadmap for future adoption.  These not only prepare us for the cookieless future, but allow us to almost completely negate match rate when there is participation from DMP and SSP partners, as well as grow and expand our attribution and audience-targeting capability beyond Bidtellect’s own universe.

Recap: Bidtellect’s Contextual Tools Set You Up for Success in the Cookieless Future

Bidtellect’s contextual targeting and optimization capabilities plus ID solutions drive performance for advertisers without relying on traditional cookie-based advertising approaches.

  • Privacy-First
  • Native Context Expertise
  • Contextual Targeting
  • Context-Driven Optimization Tools
  • Not Cookie Dependent
  • Post-Cookie Identity Solutions

Read More: Back to Basics: Contextual Targeting vs. Optimization And Why It Matters Now

Want to Learn More?

Reach out to learn how we can implement a cookieless, context-driven strategy for your brand today. 

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Why You Should Factor Diversity Into Your Strategy This Black History Month

How and why you should make diversity your advertising priority.

Behind the Platform: Using Peer39 For Brand Safety & Keyword Targeting

Bidtellect VP of Product Arthur Hainline demonstrates the three key uses for the Peer39 integration in Bidtellect’s DSP, while offering helpful tips for traders and advertisers to get the most out of Bidtellect’s product.

Behind the Platform: Tracking Emissions With Bidtellect Scope3 Integration, Plus What to Know About Supply Path Emissions

Bidtellect VP of Product Arthur Hainline demonstrates the new Scope3 integration in Bidtellect’s platform, how you can take actionable steps to reduce carbon waste, and the current state of the industry’s wasteful supply path emissions.