New Digital Channels To Set Your Holiday Campaigns Apart

It’s officially the season to start prepping your holiday campaigns. The 2024 holiday sales forecast is looking solid, with EMARKETER projecting that holiday season retail sales will grow by 4.8% YoY. Following the trends of the last few years, it’s expected that the shopping season will last longer and be driven by e-commerce.

This holiday season, brand awareness campaigns will be key to keeping your brand top-of-mind. Luckily, digital advertising channels can be used for holiday marketing to do just that. With programmatic audio, connected TV (CTV), digital out-of-home (DOOH) and new, rich-media display formats, you can stand out to shoppers in a competitive digital environment.

4 Digital Advertising Channels for Your Holiday Marketing Campaigns

Here are four digital advertising channels to leverage for successful holiday marketing campaigns. 

1. Programmatic Audio

An audio ad quite literally speaks to the audience, which makes it a great channel for building brand awareness and conveying personality. Use digital audio during the holidays to reach new consumers in moments when they’re more open to brand discovery.

Digital audio also commands the listener’s full attention. Listeners feel emotionally connected to the content they hear, allowing for a better connection between a listener and a brand. When an ad appears in the middle of a podcast or playlist, a listener is more receptive to the product and its purpose, creating an opportunity to drive engagement and even conversions. 

Audio listeners also have buying power. Edison Research reports that the average monthly podcast listener has an annual household income of over $75K USD. If implemented across the correct shows and categories, users will view ads as authentic and unintrusive, which in turn creates a positive customer experience. In a survey, Sprout Social found that 76% of consumers are more willing to buy from a brand they feel more connected to, rather than a competitor. 

Because of programmatic audio’s engaging nature, it’s the perfect channel for discovery. Listeners will be receptive to hearing about products or services they haven’t encountered or purchased before. Research from Dentsu and Spotify also found that the personal nature of audio results in ads having a lasting and memorable effect, which means a higher rate of ad recall. 

Targeting on programmatic audio is very similar to channels you’re likely already familiar with. It uses the same audience targeting parameters from your native, display, video, and CTV campaigns, but with the option to fine-tune your targeting even further. You can use data from audio partners to target specific genres, niches, and demographics, which allows you to match your ads to a mood, genre or topic, allowing you to hone-in on your target audience. 

2. Connected TV

CTV is a valuable channel for holiday marketing because it allows you to reach your audience in moments when they’re highly engaged, such as watching a festive movie with family over the holidays. 

When watching streamed content on a CTV device, a viewer has made the active choice to watch the programming, and in most cases, they don’t have the option to fast-forward or skip the ads. Similar to audio, CTV also captures the full attention of your audience, making it the perfect channel for discovery during the holiday season. 

CTV is a valuable addition to your holiday campaigns because it provides access to the open internet and has advanced targeting, allowing advertisers to reach both highly-specific audiences and hard-to-reach consumers. They provide a way to reach cord-cutters, which are quickly becoming a growing market. According to EMARKETER, the number of households that watch CTV in the US will hit 115.1 million in 2024—more than doubling traditional linear TV households. With the adoption of CTV accelerating, now is the perfect time to experiment with CTV for your holiday brand awareness campaigns. 

3. Digital Out-of-Home

DOOH advertising is one of the fastest-growing channels in advertising, with global out-of-home ad spend projected to reach nearly $68 billion USD by 2029 and DOOH accounting for $29.8 billion USD of it. 

DOOH ads are any digital ads that can be found outside the home. The classic example of a DOOH ad is an ad run on a billboard in Times Square. But the reality is that you can run DOOH campaigns on a variety of formats and sizes and in various public environments. 

During the holiday season, DOOH is a powerful channel for reaching shoppers who are in a receptive state of mind. Consumers are actively looking to purchase gifts, particularly when they are in shopping environments, such as a mall.

You can leverage DOOH to reach drivers as they sit in traffic or to spark the interest of holiday shoppers as they wait in the checkout line at a store. You even can place a DOOH ad on a mall directory sign to inspire that last-minute (or early) holiday shopper. 

4. Creative Formats 

The holiday season is a great time to use creative ad formats that encourage the consumer to interact with your ad. Interactive display ads capture the attention of the consumer and build a stronger sense of awareness with your brand. That’s because, when consumers encounter something novel or exciting, dopamine levels in their brain are known to increase, creating a sense of anticipation or pleasure.  

An interactive ad invites the user to perform an action in order to have something revealed within the ad itself or to navigate towards a specific landing page. This interactive element adds a level of engagement that isn’t typically achieved through static display ads. This interactive viewer experience is a unique way to complement your digital strategy during the holiday season. 

Here are some interactive ad formats that can boost your campaign performance:

• Discovery ads: Pose a question to the user to determine their interests or opinions based on a topic you’ve chosen. All clicks can be tracked to create retargeting pools, and products featured in the carousels can click out to unique product pages to reduce the path to conversion. As data privacy becomes more mainstream, brands are going to look for information volunteered from shoppers to make educated decisions and improve the customer experience.
• Shoppable videos: This ad format showcases products in use while allowing the user to browse right in the banner. Shoppable video ads reduce the steps that a user must take between awareness and conversion. Products can click out directly to their pages for a frictionless shopping experience. 
• Dynamic countdown ads: The holiday season is busy with many important dates. With countdown ads, you can make sure your audience is aware of your sales, helping create a sense of urgency. Consider adding an “Add to Calendar” button, which allows users to save an important date directly from an ad to Google, iCal, Yahoo or Windows Live.

Interactive ads not only aid in brand awareness and discovery but in other ways, too.  They provide much-needed convenience for consumers. As product discovery moves online, creatives can be leveraged to guide shoppers closer to a purchase while providing insights on the customer journey. 

Interactive ads can help you find out exactly who your prospects are and what they’re looking for. This can help increase your scale and allow you to discover your target market in a more specific and individualized way. 

‘Tis the Season to be Discovered

During the holidays, people are more open to exploring new products and services. Whether they shop for family, friends or themselves, shoppers are more willing to discover new brands and give them a try. 

These channels and formats are ideal for helping you reach shoppers who are in a receptive frame of mind. Once you’ve run your campaigns across audio, CTV, DOOH, and are using interactive ads, you can leverage a retargeting strategy to move your target audience through the marketing journey. 

For instance, you can retarget users by serving ads that feature an item they just viewed, increasing brand recall. With custom messaging, this retargeting strategy reminds the user of the product they showed interest in throughout their online journey and brings them back to that connection with the ad. 

Check out our Resources to learn more about the trends that are top-of-mind for advertisers this holiday season and what to consider when planning a successful holiday campaign. Request a demo today.