Black Friday Essential Briefing
As we enter the Black Friday period, Kinase predicts the key trends and highlights ecommerce opportunities no one should miss.
Online and bigger than ever
The Black Friday five day period - from Thurs 26th to Mon 30th Nov - will be dominated by online sales, becoming truly ‘cyber five’. In 2019, the growth of Black Friday and of ecommerce in the UK accelerated. Lockdown escalated this to run at +30% in June, and +28% in Oct 2020 - as tracked by the Office for National Statistics. With the Black Friday weekend falling within a second lock down in the UK, we can expect demand to be up at least 35% to 40% year on year for retail online. For the US, eMarketer predict +35%.
Much of this will come straight from the closed high street. What is uncertain is whether consumers will spend more in 2020 than in 2019 overall - with surveys in the US and UK picking up conflicting signals. Aggregating these together, it seems that the total spend via any channel will be at least as much as last year, if not slightly more (Deloitte predict 1% to 1.5% growth for holiday period spend overall YoY).
Combined with consumer concerns around getting good deals, increased research time online, and a wider adoption of ecommerce in the year so far, the stage is set for Black Friday weekend to be dramatic online - predicted to see 43% of all Christmas period revenue.
The implications of the above is that budgets are set to follow this at an estimated +30% YoY for the Black Friday period. Clearly, traffic will fluctuate day by day - the most crucial element is the phasing of budget across the five day period, with as much flexibility as planning and targets allow. If you have an ROI target, using this to react to spend by hour and by day will maximise your share of sales.
Amazon unstoppable
Ad spend on Amazon has already skyrocketed in 2020 - up 50% YoY, reaching $5.4 billion in Q3. Current estimates are that Amazon will sweep up 65% of UK Black Friday sales online.
COVID-19 has compounded Amazon’s place as a go-to ecommerce site. This trend is here to stay for Black Friday and the holiday peak - so digital campaign planning needs to amplify and build an Amazon paid presence, starting with sponsored products, brands and display.
Amazon’s new play to advertisers this year is Amazon Attribution - a beta which allows conversion tracking on the platform from sources outside Amazon. This opens up a huge new area for experiment and optimisation - landing pages, conversion types (product detail views, add to carts, purchases), messaging and product imagery.
Amazon tracking in Kenshoo now means that Kinase can seamlessly work with data across social, search and Amazon and optimise budgets to fully integrated KPIs.
Shopping apps are key
In the 2019 holiday season overall, 38% of consumers used a retail app (Google/Ipsos study), so app extensions, reminders, exclusive promotions and paid campaigns remain a key part of the digital marketing plan for the season this year as lockdown has accelerated app downloads and mushroomed time spent in apps.
This is another place where Amazon excels. Successful ecommerce retailers need to work hard to create a shopping app people return to, rather than download for a one-off purchase and eventually delete after never re-opening, and Black Friday is the high pressure test for a retailer’s app development through the year. The pay-off is that customers who purchase in-app spend more (+37%), are more loyal, and are more likely to buy again than non-app customers.
Building audiences through video and social
Video streaming has surged during lockdowns, with YouTube in particular registering huge increases in hours watched. YouTube advertiser spend is up over 17% YoY - and not just through mobile and desktop. Connected TV in the US is occupied by 36% YouTube. Paid Social provides a further opportunity to deepen consumer engagement during Black Friday sales - with promotions and countdowns amplified by branding and subtler messages.
Audiences built from paid social and video during Black Friday will also provide a base for further conversions through the holiday period - with gift messaging and then new year sale teasers keeping people interested and engaged.
Global and export
Black Friday, of course, isn’t a universal event across territories. It fits into an end of the year sequence including Chinese singles day, Christmas gifts, and New Year sales. Outside the US and UK, understanding the impact of Black Friday demand across Europe is crucial. Most notably, the French government has regulated to move the event back by a week in order to promote smaller shops.
"Lockdowns across the EU mean that ecommerce is going to see a Black Friday swing online comparable to the UK and US, despite some push back against the concept in France and other countries," comments James Monaghan, who heads up Kinase's consultancy on international. "For export, the usual rule applies - you need to follow market signals and not assume that all territories will see the same pattern."
Kenshoo's new tools
Our partners at Kenshoo have released a set of new tools and insights for the Black Friday period which we’re utilising. An optimisation benchmark shows snapshot trends by hour of cost and CPC metrics aggregated across Kenshoo’s portfolio so we can track trends and compare each account’s progress against a wider backdrop. At the core of Kenshoo is of course their optimisation tools which we combine with Google's smart bidding to drive machine learning which is crucial for getting the most out of unpredictable high volume peak periods.
Kenshoo’s Holiday Hub 2020 also provides updated insights by category, channel and location which anyone can access.
And finally, is Black Friday growing into Black November?
Yes, although the fact that Black Friday sales keep ‘starting earlier’ every year is true every year and very predictable. Notably, Google trends shows that ‘when is black friday’ searches were up 30 to 40% throughout November, as consumers orientated themselves and their purchase cycles to the sale period.
