Holiday Breakdown: Consumers Intend to Spend This Summer

Consumer behavior fluctuates over the summer—some people head out on vacations or into the great outdoors, while others take the time to get things done around their home or garden. The good news for advertisers is that brands can benefit from advertising before and during summertime. Here’s a look into consumer purchase intentions for summer 2023.

Consumers Plan To Spend

Despite the ever-shifting state of the economy, people intend to spend on summer-related products and experiences. Optimove’s 2023 Consumer Shopping Survey reported that 64% of U.S. consumers will budget the same amount or more than they did for summer 2022.

Clothing, Swimwear, and Homegoods Are Most Popular

Of the products consumers might purchase, clothing, swimwear, and home goods claimed the top three spots. Here’s how the list rounded out:

Travel Spend Is Still Flying High

Since pandemic lockdowns abated, travel spend has continuously increased, with more people making up for lost time by planning international travel despite inflated prices. And, similarly to what was predicted for the spring season, people will be traveling en masse throughout summer.

Recent data from the US Travel Association supports this point—55% of US consumers plan to spend on leisure travel this year.

Summer Season Drives Performance for Connected TV Advertisers

Knowing that consumers plan to spend on an assortment of summer-related products and experiences in 2023, we wanted to learn more about Connected TV (CTV) advertiser performance during this season. We turned to first-party data pulled from MNTN’s Performance TV platform, which uses an AI-driven optimization engine to determine bids and inventory decisions using performance goals (like return on ad spend, cost per acquisition, etc.). Analysis was limited to advertisers with active campaigns reporting performance data for over 90% of the total days in May, June, July, and August, 2021 and 2022.

Here’s what we discovered:

CTV Produces Strong Year-over-Year Growth

The winter holidays tend to get all the attention when it comes to driving business, but MNTN’s data shows that brands who advertised on CTV from May through August saw notable year-over-year (YoY) growth. Not only did conversions see a 70% increase, other key performance metrics went up as well.

We also took a look at network data to see which channels drove the best consumer engagement. For this analysis, we focused on MNTN customers that had an obvious tie-in to summer and could benefit from running campaigns leading up to and during the season. We examined relevant brands in specific industries, including: Arts and Entertainment, Beauty and Fitness, Fashion and Apparel, Food and Drink, Hobbies and Interests, Home and Garden, Recreation, Sports, and Travel.

Important Findings:

• A variety of networks drove top performance | Disney Channel, Pursuit Channel, and SEC Network, three wildly different content offerings, drove strong return on ad spend (ROAS) and conversion rates. Additionally, these channels produced low cost per acquisition (CPA). This indicates that engaged consumers can be found on a variety of networks. So, it’s in brands’ best interests to diversify their ad spend, as opposed to allocating entire budgets to one type of channel or another.
• Impressions aren’t everything | Tracking the number of people who see an ad is important, but it isn’t an end all be all. As we saw in this set of data, some of the networks who drove the top results in regards to ROAS, conversion rates, and CPA fell well below the average in terms of number of impressions. Performance-focused advertisers understand that targeting audiences that are likely to take action after viewing their ad is important—even more than delivering a higher (but less-engaged) number of impressions.      
• Sports channels do well across the board | As you’ll see below, the SEC Network, CBS Sports, and ESPN3 produced strong results for multiple key metrics. And these weren’t the only sports channels that drove performance. Networks like ESPNU, Golf Channel, SportsNet New York, and Fox Sports generated notable engagement with consumers as well.

Top Performing CTV Networks in Regards to Key Metrics

Conclusion

This summer is likely to be a hot season for advertisers. While the economy is still in flux, consumers have indicated that they will spend on summer-related products and experiences, and brands need to be ready. Connected TV viewership is not only continuously growing, but it has also proven itself to be a productive performance marketing channel. For advertisers looking to target engaged audiences who are likely to take action, CTV could be a great channel to incorporate in their marketing mix.