How effective are Christmas ads?

With Christmas fast approaching, online advertisers and brands compete for attention on our screens.

In fact, competition is more intense than at any other time of the year, and online brands need to know the best ways to stand out from their competitors.

It's no surprise that many companies leverage Christmas-themed ads in December to help them reach their target audience.

But how effective are Christmas-based ads?

Is it even worth it for companies to incorporate "Christmas" into their ads during December?

Let's dive into some of our data and find out!

Include “Christmas” in ads during December

Based on our data collection, the term "Christmas" is worth mentioning in your content during the holidays.

As we can see, simply mentioning is correlated with making significant gains in your purchase rate, increasing overall ad performance by as much as 53%.

Performance is in this case how likely people are to buy from the ad: The number of purchases divided by the number of impressions

It is no surprise that content mentioning “Christmas” outperforms regular content in December. After all, Christmas is associated with good feelings, happy wishes, and a whole lot of online shopping.

And along with all this comes the urgency of people needing to get their online shopping before Christmas morning, which encourages the average online user to act quicker, making more impulsive online purchases.

Regardless of why, we’ve also found that ads mentioning “Christmas” are more effective throughout virtually all of December when compared to regular ads that do not mention “Christmas” at all.

However, there is one critical period where Christmas content shines - the start of December.

Content that mentions Christmas is the most effective at the start of December

So now we know that Christmas-themed content can boost a brand’s online performance.

But when’s the best time to start paid advertisements for Christmas content during the holidays?

Here, we can see that ads that mention "Christmas" are most effective at the start of the month when feeds are the least saturated with Christmas-related ads.

Plus, around December 1st, average purchase rates are up by about 0.5%. That's roughly 66% higher than the average purchase rates of all other ad content that isn't using Christmas as a keyword.

As we get closer to Christmas, however, Christmas content does tend to lose its influence.

This is likely because most online users have already finished shopping and are starting to become desensitized to Christmas promotions.

Our key finding here?

Getting in early and starting your ads towards the beginning of December can give them an edge over your competitors.

It also helps your ad stand out from those who wait until later in the month when everyone has jumped on board!

Content wishing "Merry Christmas " actually performs bad

While incorporating "Christmas" into your content can be highly beneficial during this period, you should be careful about how you do it.

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas, but according to our data, wishing "Merry Christmas" in your ads can cause them to perform poorly.

So stick to mentioning Christmas topics and related products or services instead - it works much better!

When we review our results, we can see that ads wishing users a "Merry Christmas" performed as much as 26% worse than content that mentions Christmas.

In other words, you should create content that uses keywords like "Christmas," but if we go based on our findings, wishing ad viewers a merry Christmas might be a bit overdone.

The Effectiveness Of Christmas Ads - Performance Data And More!

No matter how you break it down, Christmas-themed ads have the power to evoke emotions from customers that regular content from throughout the rest of the year cannot match—nostalgia, goodwill, love, care, and urgency, to name just a few.

But remember that Christmas content is most effective at the start of December than later due to lower competition in user feeds.

Finally, businesses should avoid using phrases like "Merry Christmas!" as these don't seem to perform well–instead, they should focus on addressing specific aspects of the holiday season or how their product or service can make someone's holiday season better.

By following these tips and leveraging the power of emotion during this festive period, companies can maximize their visibility while increasing sales opportunities throughout December and beyond!

Dataset

The dataset from this article is based on 500m+ impressions and 8300+ pieces of individual content on Meta (Facebook) platforms. It takes into account data from all industries in all countries, with the campaign objectives of conversions only. The period is from 01.12.2021 - 24.12.2021. Numbers are looking at correlation only, not causation. Remember to check your own data: numbers for different brands, industries, and contexts will vary. If you were intrigued about a specific insight, you can go in-depth into the various dimensions and how data can be segmented in Confect, here.