As they say – ’tis the season.
We are seeing much earlier click activity in the Network, as holiday shoppers are trying to research and get the best deals possible this holiday season. As you can see from the graph below, the increase in click activity is coming a full week earlier than in 2008. Many retailers are offering special discounts earlier this year in an attempt to entice shoppers to buy before the big sales days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Here’s a look at top merchant categories (click growth year-over-year):
Looking at traffic to categorized merchants, we can witness a few notable trends -
- Strong growth from the Sporting Goods/Outdoors merchants as the winter season begins
- Traffic growth to “necessities sites” such as Children’s Stores and Beauty & Personal Care.
- Gift merchants are beginning to gain traction with the 2009 holiday crowd.
- Apparel & Shoes stores are seeing increased traffic due to the cold weather and the approaching holidays.
- Big ticket items, while showing strong growth, continue to lag other categories in traffic growth (Computers & Technology, High-End/Luxury Stores and Jewelry stores all with similar growth).
- Toy & Game merchants have not shown significant traffic growth yet early in the season, possibly due to the cost cutting measures taken by several large department stores.
Our Holiday Offers 2009 page in the Help Center makes it easy for Publishers to find the right offers to target their traffic this holiday season!
* Data does not include Department Store Merchants
* Data QTD to Nov 9 2009
Alex Czurylo, Director of Analytics
