Who’s Your Audience? – Holiday Edition

3 Min Read

Now that we’re halfway through Q4, what better way to lend a helping hand this season than through a special holiday rendition of ‘Who’s Your Audience?’ (If you missed the first installment of our content series, you can get up to speed here). If you’ve been following industry trends, it’s clear that this holiday sales are set to eclipse last year’s. KPMG predicts that this year’s holiday sales for U.S. retailers will grow almost double the retail industry’s historical annual growth rate, with retail executives anticipating 2021 sales to represent an average of 35% of their company’s total annual sales.

If you’ve been using the same targeting strategy every holiday, it’s time to switch things up. Bryan Sharp, Professor of Marketing Science and Director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute – the world’s largest center for research into marketing, explained that a solid audience strategy boils down to looking for “differences that matter.”  In other words, constructing audiences through a series of interrelated parameters related to the following:

• Identity (demographics)
• Needs (for example: excitement, safety, freedom)
• Context (location-based, time or day or day of week)

Ultimately, the key to nailing audience targeting – whether it’s during the pivotal holiday season or beyond – is “developing a nuanced understanding of audiences combining spending power, attitudes towards thrift or need for gratification, and perceptions of your product category as a luxury or an essential.” With this in mind, give your holiday campaign an edge with these unconventional audience segments that you might have overlooked when planning your campaigns. 

Audience Name: Thanksgiving and Christmas Holiday Season Travelers

Audience Provider: PlaceIQ

Why they’re valuable: Borders are finally opening – and that means one thing: travel. Reach these travelers wherever they might be – and trust us that they have plenty of disposable cash to splash, since wanderlust is at an all time high.

Audience Name: Early Bird Holiday Shoppers

Audience Provider: Oracle

Why they’re valuable: Supply chain issues are making headlines this year, but don’t tell us we told you so. There’s still time to get in front of those early bird shoppers who are ticking off their holiday checklists earlier than usual.

Audience Name: OTT & CTV In-Market Retail Shoppers

Audience Provider: Ameribase Digital

Why they’ve valuable: Want to get really pinpointed with your audience targeting these holidays? Then this segment is for you. Tap into retail shoppers who are also active OTT and CTV viewers.

Audience Name: Online Retailers With Online Shopping Carts

Audience Provider: Media Source

Why they’re valuable: This might look like your run-of-the-mill holiday audience but it’s not. This umbrella segment enables you to access shoppers who are active on some of the nation’s biggest retailers like CVS, Best Buy, Amazon and more.

If you’d like us to feature a specific area, send us your suggestions at audiences@mountain.com and we might feature them in an upcoming edition.

• Related: Learn more about CTV advertising.

Sign Up for the Connected TV Report

Subscribe to the report Apple, Amazon, NBC and more use to get their CTV news.