Offer Seekers Rise in Cost While Groceries and Travel Drop
Boston, MA – ChoiceStream, a leader in programmatic advertising, today released its monthly Audience Cost Calendar infographic. The company’s optimization system monitors the cost index of thousands of third-party data segments, which are consolidated into 315 super segments and then ranked from lowest to highest cost.
Data pulled from November shows that Automotive and Holiday & Events now dominate the top ten consumer segments in cost index. With the recent passing of Thanksgiving, this comes as no surprise. The increase in holiday ads drove prices up for advertisers competing to reach consumers with their offers.
As the industry reflects back on online advertisements for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it is interesting to note that the Value Shoppers and Couponing segments remain low in cost index, as they have since May, while the Offer Seekers segment has increased in cost index 38 percent.
“Advertisers can take advantage of the lower costs of the Value Shoppers and Couponing segments,” says Bill Guild, VP of Marketing at ChoiceStream. “While brands advertising online shopping deals for the holidays often target Offer Seekers, they can reach these same consumers at a lower cost through alternative segments.”
Also notable is the Retail segment’s drop in rank from October through November. This 165-place drop in rank aligns closely with the Groceries shopping segment, which dropped 217 places in November. In fact, the two segments have experienced similar trends each month for over a year now. Observations like this are ingested into ChoiceStream’s machine-learning system and used to optimize the placement and cost of programmatic media-buys.
Additionally, automotive segments comprise the ten segments that experienced the largest increase in rank month-over-month, aligning closely with increases in online advertising spend for the auto industry. Recent data has revealed that auto ad budgets are up 17 percent this year over last year, with online media accounting for 95 percent of the increase.
Car buyers are educating themselves with the necessary details about a car before they even walk into the dealership, underscoring the value of online shopping and display ads. Today’s auto brands are competing not just to persuade a consumer to come into a store, but also to sway actual purchasing decisions online. Auto dealers are expected to spend $21.2 billion on advertisements for new and used vehicles this year, which is reinforced though continuous increases in cost index across many automotive segments.
ChoiceStream’s infographic illustrates these trends and more, and can be found here.
Methodology
ChoiceStream reports on 315 consumer super-segments. Reported segments are rollups of similar segments from multiple data providers including ChoiceStream’s Pollshare. Each segment receives a calculated index with the monthly average price set at 100. An index of 110 indicates that the segment traded 10 percent higher than the overall average that month. ChoiceStream calculates the audience rankings by reporting the cheapest segment (also referred to as the lowest in price index) as number one in rank, to the most expensive (315).
About ChoiceStream
ChoiceStream delivers top-of-plan results in digital advertising for branding and direct response campaigns by combining real-time bidding with the most accurate and effective real-time optimization. Concierge-level, full services include creative development, audience discovery, campaign optimization, complete transparency, and custom insights. With an extensive first and third party data network enhanced by proprietary data, ChoiceStream can target and convert the most valuable consumers in real-time. For more information on ChoiceStream, please visit www.ChoiceStream.com.
