Marketers to spend most of holiday budgets in November: report

The holiday season is right around the corner. Consider this a reminder that it’s time to start buying gifts—or advertising them.

Many people have likely started shopping already, but the biggest spending season for marketers is coming up, according to research conducted by Comscore’s programmatic division Proximic and ad-tech platform Nexxen.

The companies’ Holiday Checklist, which analyzed surveys, data, and trends, found that more than half of marketers plan to spend the bulk of their holiday budgets next month, primarily on digital channels and through direct buys.

Locked in: Almost 75% of holiday budgets are finalized by September, and 97% by October, according to a Comscore industry survey of marketers who manage programmatic holiday ad budgets. (Shoutout to the procrastinators: 3% of respondents said they aren’t locking in their budgets until November or later.)

• November is when that spend really starts to play out, though, with 53% of respondents saying that’s when they’ll exhaust most of their holiday budget.
• About one-third (34%) said they’ll spend the most in December.
• Concerns about a recession or inflation seem to be fading among the marketers surveyed, with 86% saying they plan to spend at least as much on holiday ads this year as they did last.

Change the channel: Marketers appear to be leaning most into desktop and mobile ads this holiday season compared to other channels, according to the report.

• About four in five (79%) of marketers said they plan to run website or browser ads on desktop and mobile devices, excluding social media platforms.
• A slightly smaller share said they plan to air CTV or OTT ads (74%).
• Linear trails, with 51% of marketers planning to leverage that channel for the holidays.
• About one-quarter (27%) said they’d run audio ads.

Close call: Though Comscore surveyed marketers who oversee programmatic budgets, they’re spending slightly more on direct buys. The report projects that just over half (about 51%) of holiday budgets will be spent via direct buys, while about 49% will be spent programmatically.

• The largest share of holiday ad budgets are going toward brand awareness campaigns (about 37%), followed by spending on customer acquisition (33%) and customer retention (roughly 31%).

Data dump: Santa loves cookies, but marketers are looking at cookie alternatives this holiday season, Comscore and Nexxen found.

• The largest share (69%) of marketers said they play to use first-party data to target their holiday campaigns, closely followed by 68% who said they play to use contextual data.
• More than half (58%), however, do plan to use third-party data for targeting.
• The smallest share (18%) said they’ll use alternative identifiers like The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0.