EDO Holiday Report: Black Friday NFL Game Primed for Ad Success, Some Retailers Drive Performance Outside Traditional Shopping Period

EDO’s Holiday TV Outcomes Report highlights ad performance across key categories such as Retail, Travel, and Food & Beverage, as well as continued strength in Live Sports on Thanksgiving and Christmas

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--EDO, the TV outcomes company, released today the inaugural Holiday TV Outcomes Report, highlighting ad volume and engagement trends in Q4 2022 across key categories influenced by holiday shopping, as well as ad performance across live sports and TV network specials.

As marketers gear up for another frenzied holiday season, they face a volatile TV market that’s still adjusting to the impact of talent strikes, shifting schedules, and new streaming options. A weak Upfronts, a result of the uncertain fall TV season, pushed more inventory than ever into the scatter markets, where ad inventory is purchased a la carte at prices that are typically higher than the deals that brands and networks reach during the Upfronts.

Now, advertisers have more flexibility to adjust where they spend their media budgets this holiday season, with a greater incentive to apply data-driven decision-making to optimize their creative messaging and media buys.

"Brands that are planning their holiday TV advertising now have already fallen behind," said Kevin Krim, President & CEO, EDO. "Consumers don't wait until Black Friday to decide what gifts they want to give to their family, and advertisers similarly need to continuously measure and analyze campaigns to understand their audience's behaviors — especially in a busier-than-usual scatter market. Given strong engagement for several categories in October last year, likely tied to early shopping and children’s lists for Santa, advertisers can capitalize on an early start to the season to get ahead of the holiday rush.”

Key trends from the EDO’s Holiday TV Outcomes Report include:

• Retailers find strong performance in unexpected places. Brands in a number of categories were most effective when advertising outside the traditional holiday season. For example, Department Stores and D2C Clothing brands all saw strong peaks of engagement in mid-late October and the week after Christmas.

• Amazon’s Black Friday NFL broadcast is primed for success. Live sporting events on Black Friday 2022 outperformed the rest of the day’s programming by 12% — and retailers that advertised during Thanksgiving Week NFL games enjoyed a 314% spike in total TV-driven engagement from the week prior, which bodes well for the NFL and Amazon’s first-ever Black Friday NFL game.

• Brands can find strength in holiday TV movie marathons — if they know where to look. Ad engagement during TV broadcasts of holiday movies decreased by 9% from 2021 to 2022, but ad effectiveness for Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas and Lifetime’s It’s a Wonderful Lifetime outperformed each network’s ‘22 programming by an average of 6%.

• Winter Sales Events work for Luxury Auto TV advertisers. Luxury automakers saw greater success: Winter Sales Event ads for these brands were 11% more likely to engage consumers as compared to non-Winter Sales Event ads. However, Winter Sales Event ads for non-luxury automakers underperformed the average Non-Lux airing in 2022 by 8%.

Automakers in particular are up against a tough end-of-year market, with many still wrestling with supply chain issues and related price hikes faced in 2022, in conjunction with recent UAW strikes for major non-luxury auto brands. However, luxury automotive provides a bright spot.

“Only six luxury automakers opted to invest in Winter Sales Event campaigns in 2022 – and it paid off,” said Laura Grover, SVP, Head of Client Solutions, EDO. “Luxury auto ads featuring Winter Sales Event messaging were 11% more likely to generate engagement than all other luxury campaigns last year. Acura experienced a notable 55% lift in engagement thanks to its winter sales campaign, in comparison to the brand’s other ads, driven by innovative creatives that tapped into Acura’s anime racing series Type S: Chiaki’s Journey.”

Visit edo.com/holidays to download EDO’s Holiday TV Outcomes Report. To know what’s working for your brand this holiday season, reach out to [e-mail].

About EDO, Inc.

EDO, Inc. is the TV outcomes company — a leading platform measuring predictive behaviors driven by Convergent TV advertising. By combining real-time engagement signals with world-class decision science, EDO data maximizes creative and media performance. We work with modern marketers at leading brands, TV networks, entertainment studios and ad agencies. EDO's investment-grade data aligns advertising investments to business results - with detailed competitive, category, historical and predictive intelligence. For industry intel, success stories and top ads, visit EDO.com.