By Marla Newman, EVP Sales, Raptive
Forecasting the hottest gifts and trending recipes for the holiday season used to be straightforward: just check magazines or TV shows, where content was created months in advance.
Today holiday gift ideas and recipes emerge online in real time. If a creator unboxes a stylish sneaker on December 15 or shares a white chocolate mousse recipe on December 20, audiences notice and adjust their shopping decisions instantly.
This shift has driven digital advertising spending to its annual peak during the holiday shopping season. In Q4 2023, internet advertising revenue soared to $64.5 billion—nearly $8 billion more than in Q3. This spending is typically divided between pre-planned endemic placements and programmatic ads based on real-time data. Yet neither strategy fully captures the dynamic audience behavior that characterizes today’s holiday shopping landscape.
Our research reveals that consumers find real value when advertiser content is seamlessly integrated into the creator content experience. Moreover, there are untapped opportunities for brands to collaborate with creators in the lead-up to the holidays—especially in November and December—to better align with the way consumers shop today.
The Gap In the Media Plan
Despite the instant gratification and impulse shopping that defines the internet, many advertisers are stuck in a planning cycle dictated by decades-old media calendars.
Traditional content publishers start working on holiday articles and gift guides in the spring, when most people haven’t even begun to think about the holiday season. Any advertiser that wants to be featured would need to collaborate with the publisher four or six months in advance.
Advertorials and sponsored content have long followed a similar calendar, requiring advertisers to budget for these richer placements well ahead of time. And while endemic placements are hugely influential, their long lead times make it hard for advertisers to optimize, expand or adjust them during the actual holiday shopping season. Instead, advertisers have largely had to rely on their programmatic media budgets to make adjustments to their holiday advertising strategy.
With premium spend locked up months in advance, programmatic media buying has been the lever advertisers pull to drive last minute gains. It can more easily be dialed up and down or shifted to placements showing higher performance. And while this audience-targeted digital media is a critical part of any plan, highly contextual, content driven placements can drive even stronger performance.
For years, digital advertisers have had to balance these two very different holiday advertising budgets, less than ideal for optimizing for authentic engagement with consumers during the most important shopping time of the year.
Real Time Holiday Connections
The integrated content experience on a creator’s website is one of the most important inputs in a customer’s shopping journey, especially during the holidays. Three of every four people have made a purchase because a creator or influencer recommended it. Creators deliver a huge variety of shopper-friendly content on their websites, including gift guides, unboxing and shopping haul videos, holiday decorating and recipes. And our research shows that they are creating this content throughout November and even December. More than half of creators we surveyed — 59% — noted that they don’t finish planning their holiday gifting content until November, which means they’re still in creation mode well into December. This gives advertisers plenty of opportunity for Q4 collaboration and content-based advertising, providing an alternative to the typical programmatic placements.
Our research also indicates that readers would react positively to advertisers who make the shift. Readers want advertisers to deliver more than a well targeted discount code (although they want that, too!) In fact, 61% want advertisers to collaborate with creators on authentic product reviews and 59% want sponsored ingredients in recipes. Not only that, the top desired holiday content audiences want from creators are gift guides, providing advertisers with a great opportunity to create them and make an authentic connection with readers.
Advertisers will need to flex some new muscles to change their entrenched holiday advertising approach. Earmarking budget for collaborations and sponsorships that don’t even get started until November can feel unnatural when more traditional publisher planning sessions took place back in June. But, with more advertisers focused on social media and influencers, there is a shift starting to happen towards shorter turnaround times for content-based advertising. What’s more, many advertisers have noticed their own shopping habits change, creating a lightbulb moment. Being at the right place at the right time today means being ready when that time and place presents itself, even if that time is December 15.
