With a global pandemic well underway, gone are the “normal” holiday media tactics that retailers rely on during the most profitable time of the year. However, there are a few things to keep in mind. First- Don’t panic. We got you. The beauty of programmatic is that it’s the perfect medium for assessing and adjusting; which is a must since we’re entering uncharted territory.
While it may seem like we’re collectively working with a lot of strikes against us this shopping season: reduced teams, budgets, and did we mention the impact of COVID-19, the good news is that we’re forced to cut through the fluff and focus on what works. In other words, make sure your plan is all killer and no filler. The key to this year: efficiency, relevant data, and breakthrough/attention formats. Oh and make sure you have your viewability and fraud filters in check. There’s no room in the budget for wasted media spend. We’ve broken down 3 ways that you can make your programmatic campaigns be the MVP of the holiday season.
Holiday Campaign Goals
1. Get your holiday offer seen and breakthrough competitive noise.
We predict that this holiday season will be filled with a larger flurry of ads vying for consumer attention. Since major retailers have said goodbye to in-store shopping on Thanksgiving and Black Friday this year, you can believe that retailers are getting an early jump on the holiday season. Make sure you have:
- Viewable ads with high engagement
- Quality scale that’s vetted for fraud
- Efficient performance without paying for invalid viewability and fraud
2. Find and uncover holiday audiences
Even holiday shopping wish lists will look a lot different this year. Take a quick peek on your social feeds and you’ll most likely see friends and family showing off their new skills or sanity savers (baking, gaming, etc). Audience segments created from fresh and relevant signals will be vital to uncovering shoppers.
- Creatively extend reach to consumers embracing new hobbies, be resourceful when looking at your audience segments
- Holiday bonus: apply one of our 900 prebuilt audience segments to your deal at no extra cost. Whether your targeting fashionistas, fitness enthusiasts, or gamers we have a segment for you.
3. Creatively Identify shoppers without using cookies
Holiday cookies take on a new meaning as the industry and government regulators have enabled some major new restrictions. Fear not – contextual categorization is making a comeback and is definitely something that you should consider when creating your deal IDs
- Uncover new audiences from relevant content of unsuspecting sites. Example: find fashionistas in the style section of a news site
- Target your campaign against contextually relevant content dynamically pulled from over 20,000 publishers and hone in on categories specific to your campaign
For some campaigns, it may make sense to create all 3 Deal Types to increase scale and test to see which tactic is optimal.
We’re not saying scrap everything you did last Q4; you just that you need to take into account new factors that could make or break your performance.
Download our guide to navigating programmatic holiday campaigns during COVID-19 for more insight on how your programmatic campaigns can be the MVP of the holiday season. Still need help? Contact sales[at]33across.com to learn how 33Across can help you figure out the perfect deal ID strategy for your campaign.
