← DTC Podcast
DTC Podcast
Ep 466: Are you ready for "Super Saturday?" Notes on Google's Holiday Trends Indicate BFCM Isn't Over! | AKNF
00:16:47
Loading summary
Transcript46 lines
- [00:00]
A
Google sent through a bit of a recap on Black Friday Cyber Monday and also Ford looking into what they're calling Super 5, the five days leading up to Christmas. So we've got some insights around E commerce performance overall through that Cyber five period. And as well, what are trends looking like this year compared to other years?
- [00:19]
B
How is performance Max as an ad tool this year? Did you use it more than you did last year or less?
- [00:24]
A
The top most gifted categories through Cyber5, which we expect to continue leading up to Christmas.
- [00:30]
B
What about competition this year? What were the vibes on the. The cost per clicks?
- [00:33]
A
Google is certainly trying to build some momentum behind Super Saturday as a holiday consumer event. They're hopping onto that because they've seen signals to do so. They're not kind of trying to create something out of thin air.
- [00:52]
B
It's all killer, no filler. I'm Eric and I'm here with Dougie from Pilot House's Google team to discuss some intel recently gleaned from the Big G. A really good broad picture of some of the most important trends and numbers around this year's Black Friday Cyber Monday period. Doug, welcome to the podcast. How you doing?
- [01:10]
A
Doing well. Thanks for having me, Eric, as always.
- [01:12]
B
So walk us through what this was, what Google sent and what you've gleaned from it.
- [01:16]
A
Yeah, so Google essentially sent through a bit of a recap on Black Friday Cyber Monday, and also Ford looking into what they're calling Super 5, the five days leading up to Christmas. So we've got some insights around. Okay, how was E commerce performance overall through that Cyber five period? And as well, what are trends looking like this year compared to other years and what to expect going into Christmas here?
- [01:40]
B
Very cool. So what were the top line trends of this year's Black Friday according to Google?
- [01:43]
A
Yeah, so overall E Comm was up about 8% on Black Friday Cyber Monday through that Cyber 5 period. I think the other point alongside that is retail was pretty stagnant. So it was about flat year over year. E Comm taking up that 8% growth, but the retail at 0% growth year over year. So the in store portion of Black Friday Cyber Monday was flat. There were actually fewer shoppers year on year, but they were spending more. So it actually made up for the fact that.
- [02:15]
B
Well, that's interesting. You don't see any of that hysteria anymore. That's totally like. That's a total forgotten memory of that idea of like door crashing to get your TV and people getting hurt.
- [02:23]
A
Yeah, everybody's fighting over the TVs in Walmart or whatever.
- [02:27]
B
Yeah, you have to make a parody ad where people are just like clicking frantically or something and trying to bring some of that magic back.
- [02:32]
A
Yeah, exactly. It's all run by bots for those heavy ticket items days.
- [02:36]
B
Well, good to hear E commerce continues to climb. What else did you learn?
- [02:40]
A
Yeah, I guess. Interesting to hear that 3 million fewer Cyber5 purchasers year over year, but yes, again they're spending more. Not sure if economical concerns are at play there, but generally still happy with growth overall. Pilot House as a company we were pretty happy with 80% of our Google managed clients, saw some sort of year over year growth, so pretty happy with with that overall as well. I think our investment in Google as a platform, as an agency is up 10% year over year, so tracking just a bit above that 8% number as well. So from our internal view, yeah, pretty strong results. Not any crazy boom, but a nice incremental bit of growth year on year. I think the main call out specifically in the Canadian market was the pressure around the Canadian Post shipping issues and strike going on there. So the maybe most interesting learning we had from the period wasn't in the American market. The American market kind of did what we thought it was going to do, but the Canadian market, we probably underestimated the pressures that the Canada Post strike had on the Canadian E commerce market. So a lot of people didn't care as much about the deal, they just cared about getting the product that they're looking at. Right. So we actually pivoted a lot of messaging away from deal focused, savings focused and to shipping focused and hey, we don't ship with Canada Post or hey, you're still going to get your item, that kind of thing. And that actually had stronger ad performance than our ads that were calling out percentages off and the like there. So something to keep in mind going forward as that strike continues in the Canadian market. Approaching Christmas there.
- [04:21]
B
How goes the great AI transfer? How was performance Max as an ad tool this year? Did you use it more than you did last year or less?
- [04:29]
A
Yeah, we used it a little bit more. I wouldn't say it was an exceptional amount more. It was about what we've been kind of building up to this point throughout the year on. Right. So it would be as we talked on the last pod, it would be a mistake if you launched your PMAX campaign in November. We've hopefully spent the year building a bit of a robust distribution between campaign types on Google. So for November and specifically Cyber5, we certainly invested more in PMAX not by a significant margin, but our increase was there year over year for sure.
- [05:05]
B
What about YouTube? I think YouTube is such an interesting topic. We talk a lot about it being we talk a lot on this podcast about new ways to really drive awareness and not just always focus at the bottom of the funnel. So I'm curious this year how much we were using Google to drive awareness for clients.
- [05:20]
A
Yeah, it's certainly as an agency, one of our top focuses within the Google department, utilizing Demand gen as well, which is a bit more akin to your typical meta campaigns.
- [05:34]
B
Demand capture, which is what Google's been so good at traditionally.
- [05:38]
A
Exactly. Like the search and the shopping side of things is obviously demand capture, whereas you want to be leveraging YouTube and demand gen for, as it's so aptly named, demand generation, brand consideration. And the trickiness is kind of feeding that data back and analyzing stuff for spend that doesn't have purchases rallied behind it. Right. Like everyone can point to a search campaign, say this drove me X amount of revenue. And that's great. YouTube is much more difficult to distill that data and typically the time horizon is much longer as well. So really we certainly leveraged a lot of retargeting on YouTube during the primary Black Friday Cyber Monday period. But it would have been the months before that that you would have had to invest into these awareness platforms to really see the fruits of labor come the Cyber5 period.
- [06:28]
B
What was the other big insight you mentioned from this Google report essentially about it's not over yet, just the extension, the continual extension of this holiday period.
- [06:37]
A
Yeah. So there's actually some pretty interesting insights going forward. Maybe another quick call out is the top most gifted categories through Cyber5, which we expect to continue leading up to Christmas apparel and accessories being number one, toys being number two, personal care being number three. Nothing kind of too surprising there, but worth noting. But Google did say that as of December 4, only half of Americans had finished their holiday shopping. So that means 50% are still out there looking for deals. And actually even of the people who have said they've completed their holiday shopping, 99% of them said that they'd still be open to making some kind of Christmas related or holiday related purchase going forward. So there is still that opportunity for impulse buyers, especially if you've got giftable product or something that is of a reasonable price point that could be considered an impulse buy. So certainly there's a lot of opportunity. The key period that Google is focusing on is what they're calling Super 5, which is the five days leading up to Christmas. So the 20th to the 24th and overall that five day Spanish spend, this is not just E commerce, but overall spend during that period vastly outweighs consumer spend during Cyber5. So a lot of people obviously buying those last minute gifts. And the interesting note this year is that because American Thanksgiving was a little bit later than it has been on previous years, that's usually a bit of a trigger for people to start doing their holiday shopping because it's later, people started their holiday shopping later and Google expects that to continue up until pretty much Christmas Eve. So the other thing to take from that is the Saturday prior to Christmas actually lands on the 21st this year compared to the 23rd in previous years. So having that be a little bit earlier as well. Google is projecting about 250% growth on that Super Saturday year on year because of the differences in where holidays have ended and consumer intent leading up to it. Pretty interesting stuff in the market there.
- [08:50]
B
As long as we have a name for it, Super Saturday, that's super important.
- [08:53]
A
We've got a name for everything.
- [08:54]
B
As long as there's a name for it, then we can monetize it. That's cool. What about competition this year? What were the vibes on the cost per clicks?
- [09:02]
A
Yeah, I mean they went up as we would have expected. What we are looking at now is with the lead up to Christmas here and the intense holiday shopping still going on, CPCS have already come down a little bit and they expect to come down as we get closer and closer to Christmas by about 25% is the projected number there. So yeah, CPCS during Black Friday Cyber 5 up as per usual. It's going to continue to be the case going forward for pretty much every year as demand continues to build. But yeah, CPC is coming down closer to Christmas as we would expect after Christmas as well. There's also that pretty new year push that we expect to have a little bit lower competition, some potential to pull on the angles of you didn't get what you want for Christmas, treat yourself kind of and kickstarting that health and wellness category for sure almost before New Year's even kicks off. But certainly the period leading up there's some opportunity to especially if you're a retailer that has not just an online presence but an in store presence. That's really where most brands are going to see the effect of this kind of later shopping. It's projected that 35 to 40% of all online orders for the final days leading up to Christmas are going to utilize in store pickup. So There's a lot of that omnichannel connection between in store and retail that if you are an E comm brand that also has an in store option, it's certainly worth making that connection. Attaching to Google business profile near me searches are at an all time high leading up to Christmas. Right. As people try and look for specific items but don't know where from. So certainly that retail aspect is a big focus for Google as well.
- [10:47]
B
So let's go back to Super Saturday for a second. We've got this aligning of the cost per clicks might be coming down. You've got this great opportunity for shopping. What will you do differently in our clients campaigns knowing that Super Saturday is so important?
- [11:01]
A
Yeah. So a lot of focus on shipping similar to what we have already done in the Canadian market due to the strike. Shipping convenience is super important for these last minute holiday shoppers. Right. It's less okay, here are the values of the product. It's more like they're looking for this kind of product. Let's make it really easy for them to purchase. Other potential increased areas of opportunity lie in things like gift cards. Right. You know that a family member is really into X store. We can be pushing as that retailer, we can be pushing those gift cards as an easy last minute purchase. Especially in Canada. Maybe you can't ship in time the item that they want, get them a gift card, they can get whatever they want and kind of really focusing in on that convenience angle and certainly the shipping angle as well where you can so less of a focus even if you are running deals on the deal themselves and the value prop for the product and more the convenience of purchasing the product, if that makes sense.
- [12:00]
B
And then overall for this period, how much emphasis do you put on the concept of gifting in your campaigns is like are you. Is it just sort of comes with the territory and it happens or are you really clearly segmenting out, trying to use gifting language for those buying gifts?
- [12:15]
A
Yeah, great question. So it certainly depends on the niche, right? Like some of those more giftable categories like toys for example, are one that you're certainly going to lean a bit more heavy on the messaging. But across the board for the most part we are permeating gifting messaging into our campaigns. For some niches it's not going to work quite as well, but it does permeate pretty much the entire account at this point for the majority of our clients who have some kind of attachment to holiday purchase intent.
- [12:46]
B
You also have a note here about actually calling out for consumers as well on the website, for instance, calling it Super Saturday on your website as a masthead.
- [12:55]
A
I'm not sure how much of that is Google trying to push the naming convention for this Super Saturday and trying to make it a bit more a thing and snowball consumer sentiment to build it up. But yes, Google is certainly trying to build some momentum behind Super Saturday as a holiday consumer event. It seems like they're hopping onto that because they've seen signals to do so. They're not kind of trying to create something out of thin air, which makes sense. I mean, go to any strip mall on Super Saturday and you're going to find a lot of people scrambling to try and find as many of their last minute gifts as they can.
- [13:33]
B
Or better yet, I'm going home this year for Christmas so I've just bought a bunch of stuff and had it shipped to my mom's house.
- [13:39]
A
There you go.
- [13:39]
B
So it's just like that's, I feel like ahead of the game this year. But there will be some last minute shopping for sure. Anything else to add from Google's recent Insight document?
- [13:48]
A
Maybe. The only other final interesting note is just to look at what other competitors retailers are doing in the space. Obviously Target and Walmart are huge players in the market overall and their focus very much is on offering same day pickup, same day delivery, last minute pickup all the way up TO I believe 6pm on Christmas Eve, trying to eke out as much of that potential for those last minute holiday shoppers as possible. So that shows that retail is certainly on board trying to get as many people in the door as possible leading up to Christmas. And any kind of way we can simulate that on E Commerce as well will beneficially impact your business. So if we can extend those shipping cutoffs, if we can really harp on the convenience, if we can offer a gift card push, those things are going to really help businesses leaning into this kind of Super 5 period and closing in on Christmas.
- [14:47]
B
Very cool. Now we love to finish up really technical podcasts with really abstract things. So have you heard Google has released a new quantum computer chip called Willow. Have you heard about this?
- [14:57]
A
I haven't tracked Willow yet, no. You'll have to fill me in.
- [15:01]
B
You'll have, you'll have to Google it. It's, it's able to do calculations that take our current supercomputers, you know, the length of the universe in order to do it. It can do it in four seconds or something. I've done a little digging into quantum computing. It's gonna. That along with AI will have us all kicking up on a beach somewhere, I think, at some point. But the really neat thing about it is it says in the that it has harnessed the power of other dimensions, which I feel like is a really neat thing. For tech companies, that's a pretty crazy statement. They're basically harnessing the energy from other dimensions through the quantum superpositioning of these, these qubits that they're computing. But we'll have to start our future test money to go from. From tactics, from, you know, buying tactics to. To that. But yeah, it's interesting one to watch because it's apparently going to be quite disruptive, this computing power that Google's unlocking.
- [15:54]
A
Yeah, it sounds like I need to brush up on my quantum mechanics over here because I'm certainly rusty.
- [16:00]
B
Yeah. Well, we can talk about the double slit experiment next time. I think I finally understand it, but cool. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast today. This is going to come out. I think this is going to be one of our last episodes of the year. This is going to be like, right on. Like New Year's Day. So happy New Year, Merry Christmas, and we'll look forward to catching up with you in the New year.
- [16:15]
A
Right on. Thanks for having me, Eric.
- [16:22]
B
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're not getting the D2C newsletter, you can subscribe for free at directtoconsumer.co. and if you want to learn more about Pilothouse's All Killer, no filler services, Takeoff to Pilothouse co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.