What’s on Your Holiday (Ad Creative) Wish List?

We wanted to ring in the last (and biggest) quarter of the year with an homage to all things holiday. As brands battle it out for your attention and dollars in Q4, ever wondered what makes a shopper go from checked out to hitting the checkout button on your website? We asked you to put both your marketer and shopper hats on for this month’s MNTN Research Peeks Poll. Here’s what you had to say. 

Relevancy Beats Discounts

What happens when shoppers have a choice between relevancy and discounts — who wins?  Relevancy reigned, with 41% of you preferring ad creative that highlights a brand or service that resonates with you. However, discounts weren’t far behind at 31%. This underscores the importance of serving your ad to in-market audiences — something that Connected TV ad platforms like MNTN are built for. Any discount or offer becomes moot if you haven’t covered these foundations.  

When in Doubt, Add a % Off

This being a marketer poll, we also asked you for your professional insight into which CTAs hit the mark with your audience over the holidays. Almost half of voters (45%) said percentage-off deals resonated best, followed by limited-time offers, and an *almost* tie between tiered discounts and buy-one-get-one-free (BOGO). Similar to the first question we had asked, it seems that no one can resist a good discount over the holidays. But this doesn’t mean you should slap “X% Off” all over your ad creative and call it a day. Instead, think of the ways you can experiment with different variants of this message – how does voiceover-only compare with an on-screen message? What happens if you switch up the color palette on your ad creative? Or switch around the order of your messaging? Connected TV advertising platforms are a perfect testing ground for these ad creative permutations and narrow it down until you find the one that works for you (and for your audience).  

Which Industry Favored BOGOs?

As we broke down the poll results even further, we saw that one vertical in particular — arts and entertainment — found BOGO to be more popular among their audience than percentage discounts. This is why you should always set aside some budget to A/B test different types of messaging and offers over the holidays, rather than settling for one type of promotion. Shoppers are a fickle bunch, as we know, so what may resonate with an arts and entertainment shopper might be completely different from what a beauty shopper is looking for. 

So a round of applause for promotional discounts, the heavy Q4 hitter that’s a surefire way to engage and convert shoppers these holidays. However, never forget the step before the creative, and that is approaching the quarter (and in principle, always) with an audience-first mindset. We recommend using some of the discounts and offers in our poll above that you can test and learn to determine your own winning creative formula these holidays. May the best ad creative win.