Teads Tracks: How AI will dominate the Holiday Season

The Interesting Role AI Will Play For Technology Advertisers This Holiday Season

AI is taking the tech world by storm, with 69% of retailers leveraging the technology to create personalised shopping journeys, enhance frictionless shopping and checkout experiences, and uncover and leverage customer insights. Market demand is driving a vested interest among consumers, who are finding themselves increasingly fascinated in understanding how AI can help them in their everyday lives (i.e Samsung’s Live Translate or Microsoft’s Copilot Assist feature).

The most fascinating component, in my opinion? How brands are using AI to create a step-change in brand differentiation. AI features and integrations are creating a new battleground for businesses to showcase how they can leverage the new technology within their brand proposition. Via enhancing productivity, fuelling creativity, or humanising technology, AI is driving connections — and brand advertisers must take advantage of its benefits this holiday shopping season.

This holiday shopping season signals a pivotal moment, and opportunity, for advertisers. It will mark the first season in which consumers can leverage their AI-supported smartphones to help drive purchasing decisions. 

Time your moments well, and form connections early.

I personally have spent the past few weeks watching my nephew prepare for university. He has been refreshing his kit and “Back to School” has been the a key moment for Technology brands to promote their latest devices to a powerful group of technophiles. As students find their way back into their working rhythm at schools and universities across the globe, they are being ably assisted by a variety of AI functions across their personal technology, and brands will be keen to win their market share of this next generation of students.

We’re seeing these trends get earlier and earlier. Back-to-school shopping starts in June, Halloween decorations are on shelves in July, and so on. The lesson here is that advertisers marketing early, and tapping into that longer purchasing window, may notice a bigger ROI come year-end. Latest research from GWI says that 32% of Gen Z will look for a smartphone during Black Friday, rising to 34% of Millennials. And 20% of Gen Z and Millennials are looking to buy a PC too.

When we look at readership across the world’s best publishers – there are crucial times that brands can align with to provide maximum impact. While the Black Friday weekend is seen as a critical time for shoppers, those consumers are researching the best deals starting much earlier. For example, if we look at the graphs below we can see that Black Friday readership starts to ramp up at the beginning of November.

Christmas content consumption increases x4 from the beginning of October to Black Friday, but then it takes another 25% increase over that weekend. Sequencing your brand and performance messaging in time with those moments, along with product-specific ones, is becoming increasingly accurate and actionable.

 

 

Change the channel

The festive period is a critical time for sales, and so it can seem sensible to rely on tried and tested media channels. Test and learn is for quieter times of the year, right? The problem here is if everyone uses the same inventory then it creates demand pressures, which in turn can drive up media prices making it harder to maximise ROI.

For those willing to look beyond, this same challenge opens the door to new inventory sources that have robust measurement capabilities, and synergies with existing media, to help drive effectiveness. CTV has increasingly become the obvious answer here but now allows for new and exciting creative and targeting opportunities that linear is unable to match.

Another example is CTV Native, the first screen a household sees when they turn on their smart TV. For advertisers, this is not only a great branding opportunity with 3D or unique messaging sequencing capabilities but it also allows commerce opportunities.

The latest AI tools are conversational and interactive – it’s creating an unprecedented level of human interaction. Showcasing these new ideas to its fullest is no doubt done best using video and interactive display units, across multiple screens, to deliver maximum attention and sequenced messaging.

The benefit is not just with regards to pricing and messaging, but also from an ad-efficiency perspective. A 2023 Mediascience study showed that when CTV exposure is combined with mobile devices, the ad recall rate increases by an incredible 67%.

Adapt, creatively speaking

It’s not only new channels that need creative adaptation. Whether you’re looking to showcase the prowess of your latest AI tools as a product feature or to improve your brand’s standing in the market, effective use of all channels is paramount. Combining the above data and media strategies creates huge opportunities for creative teams to drive maximum effectiveness.

Leveraging solutions across the funnel, from the big screen attention impact of CTV Video and Native, through to video and display features can guide consumers through their journey. In a campaign for a tech brand in the UK, Teads Studio has found that optimising a creative drove a 24% uplift in Brand Attribution and 9% increase in Brand Recall vs non-optimised assets. In high-involvement categories such as tech during a critical time of year, that’s a huge difference.

I can’t wait to see how the AI race continues to deliver benefits for consumers. How it can help accelerate the way we do things now, and create new spaces for humans to create. This year, and into 2025, there’s a fantastic opportunity for marketers to express themselves and leverage the right media to drive a whole new area of growth.

Learn more about owning the moment during this holiday season.

Authored by James Aylott, SVP, Client Partnerships