As we all look forward to the August heatwave, Ozone is looking further. As festive content consumption is already starting to build, we look forward to the high tidings and rich pickings of the Christmas season. This year, Christmas comes a lot earlier than December!
The last few days of torrential rain have not been the most welcome break. But Ozone has some news to change that: Christmas has come early in 2021 - in the middle of summer!
Across our publishers, we’ve already seen a spike in Christmas-related stories and media. Last month, for example, Pret kicked off a sandwich revolution by releasing its Christmas-themed sarnie an entire five months early. We have seen the number of Christmas-related stories climb in a number of Ozone publications, such as The Sun, The Telegraph and The Independent. For advertisers and publishers alike, there is a massive opportunity to capitalise on the ‘early-starter’ mentality of many festive fans.
Get in earlier
This is true for 2021 more than any year to date. Customers are bullish after having Christmas so rudely taken away from them last year. One in three say they are confident all will be back to normal by Christmas, up from one in ten this time last year. Not only is confidence up, but the will to spend is as well. Our audiences want to splurge. Whereas last Christmas, customers said they would reduce festive spending by an average of £200 on the previous year, now 25% say they will be spending their lockdown savings on Christmas shopping and celebrations.
And now is the time to get involved. Christmas-related audiences usually begin to pick up much earlier in Q4, even before Black Friday. Last year the week of Black Friday saw a boost in traffic, with +108% page views and +82% unique user growth compared to the first week of November. A number of sectors experience truly massive growth, including TV and entertainment, and fashion. The main winner, however, was video games. As new orders rolled in for Playstation 5s and people clamoured for Nintendo Switches, page views for video game topics rose by +382%. A new highscore, so to speak!
Audiences generally remained consistently high across the Christmas holidays in 2020. On average, 25m weekly unique users consistently read Christmas-related content across the Ozone platform throughout December.
Stay in longer
These are not week-long fads - audiences remain engaged and active in their Christmas-related browsing well after the Christmas cards are thrown in the bin and the tree is chucked out.
When we look at page views, last year engagement climbed after Christmas week, reaching a peak on the week beginning 25 January. That week, our publications amassed a total of 113m page views on winter sales categories, up from 80% in Christmas week itself.
Quality of engagement during Christmas 2020 was very encouraging. For example, the Discovery Channel capitalised on people’s entertainment needs, and their campaign saw active page dwell times rise by 48% above the industry benchmark. Fortnum & Mason, meanwhile, garnered a 20% higher video view-through rate vs. the industry benchmark on online platforms.
Christmas gifts
Ozone has a raft of gifts to give to its advertisers and agencies this Christmas. Our recently launched Ozone Attention Index and Ozone Outcomes projects are guaranteed to provide advertisers with that extra campaign insight and ammunition they need to reach their goals.
Then there are these key insights: get in earlier, to take advantage of the long climb in engagement as Christmas approaches; and stay in longer, for example by extending the always-on campaigns until the end of January, when the highest levels of engagement actually taper off.
At Ozone, Christmas can’t come soon enough - after a year without it, why wait?
