You might expect that viewers would have been less engaged with TV ads from traditionally brick-and-mortar retailers over the course of the pandemic with COVID-19 keeping consumers home more than normal for much of this year. However, EDO’s data shows that some of these major retailers not only captured consumer interest while shoppers were at home tuned into their TVs, but were even more effective at doing so during much of the pandemic than before.
Consumer engagement with retail TV advertising actually increased over much of the pandemic and retail national TV ads have performed better than advertising across other industries at driving consumer Search Engagement, EDO’s measure of the increase in online search activity for a brand directly following a TV ad airing.
While some retail brands did see a decrease in Search Engagement over the months that more stringent lockdown restrictions were in place through much of the country, others offering necessary items for consumers at home (like Walmart and The Home Depot) saw consumers continue to engage fairly consistently.
In particular, viewers were highly engaged with ads from The Home Depot, Target, and Walmart early on in the pandemic, with Walmart ads continuing to outperform most of the other featured retailers through the pandemic.
Kohl’s saw a big spike in Search Engagement in April as it aired an ad promoting discounts for its Home Sale, featuring empathetic and timely messaging about helping viewers find everything they need to make memories at home. However, the brand then stopped airing on national TV for two months before returning in July.
On the other hand, despite in-store shopping closing across parts of the country, Macy’s continued its national TV campaign and was more effective at driving Search Engagement during most of the pandemic than with its pre-pandemic advertising.
And most of these major retailers, Macy’s included, saw their ad performance improve from August through October, reflecting increasing consumer engagement during the period that many states began to re-open from COVID restrictions.
So given that, overall, the pandemic hasn’t driven down consumer engagement with brick-and-mortar retailers’ TV advertising as may have been expected, what can we predict for Black Friday 2020?
Looking back to 2019, Black Friday national TV ads made an impact for Kohl’s, Macy’s, Target, and Walmart. For all four retailers, their Black Friday ads were more effective at driving Search Engagement than their non-Black Friday ads, while Black Friday ads performed on-par with non-Black Friday ads for The Home Depot.
And through the first half of November this year, Target and Walmart were already seeing their Black Friday ads perform better than other ads, while 2020 Black Friday ads from The Home Depot were outperforming the brand’s 2019 Black Friday ads by about 58%.
Given previous and current Black Friday ad performance for these brands, as well as the overall increased effectiveness of their TV advertising since the start of the pandemic, we expect consumers will continue to engage with these Black Friday ads heading into the big day this year. The economic hardship of 2020 also means large deals and discounts will be particularly welcome in the lead-up to the holiday season, so Black Friday ads offering great promotions and options for online shopping, contactless pickup, or delivery may be especially successful as shoppers search for deals from home with COVID-19 cases continuing to rise.
Whether the shopping takes place at home or in stores this year, consumers still seem to be excited for the day of deals, setting these retailers up for a strong Black Friday.