It's time to put measurement on your holiday list

We’re smack dab in the middle of summer, but advertisers and consumers are already planning for the holidays. In fact, 42% of consumers had already started planning for Christmas as of January 2022.^¹ But this year, gifting has changed. The combination of record inflation, concerns about items being out of stock, and a reprioritization of friends and family have 45% of us focused on buying fewer but better gifts.^²

Advertisers, like consumers, will be thinking about meaningful connections this holiday. And with macroeconomic factors at play, if it’s quality vs. quantity, quality always wins. That’s where Yahoo DSP can make your holiday wishes come true. We help marketers build meaningful connections across every touchpoint, from mobile devices to connected TVs. We make validating the quality of these connections as easy as wrapping a holiday gift. Our measurement solutions suite offers upper-funnel solutions like brand lift and likability studies, lower-funnel solutions like sales lift and store visit studies, and everything in between. These magical insights help you make smarter decisions that drive efficiency and ROAS.

Here are two measurement solutions you should put on your holiday list.

1. See the entire path to purchase

The average U.S. consumer has thirteen devices and connections, meaning they have multiple touchpoints with your brand.³From listening to their morning podcast to checking the sports scores online to seeing commercials while streaming their favorite show, consumers connect with your messages multiple times before converting, which makes last-touch models flawed.

What’s needed is insight into these omnichannel touchpoints and how they work together to drive results. Yahoo Path to Conversion is the gift that keeps on giving all year. It’s a report that shows the sequence of ad exposures that lead to a conversion and which sequences are most effective based on converters and reach. This flexible report offers actionable insights across campaigns down to the line level. We connect these dots across many channels thanks to our deterministic identity graph built on Yahoo ConnectID, enabling us to string together devices to provide accurate path-to-conversion reporting.

Here’s how an insurance advertiser used Path to Conversion to understand how effective video and display ads were at driving audiences to start an insurance quote form and to compare how a combination of upper- and lower-funnel strategies performed against each individual strategy. Audiences exposed to both display and video ads were more likely to convert than those only exposed to display or video.

Notably, audiences who saw the video ad first were three times more likely to convert than those who saw the display ad followed by a video ad. This showcases the importance of using both upper- and lower-funnel tactics in conjunction with each other since upper-funnel tactics prime audiences to act later.

2. Optimize in-flight based on sales

Although online shopping and e-commerce are predicted to increase 14% this holiday season,^⁴ the majority of sales (87%) still happen in-store.^⁵ For many marketers, campaign insights happen weeks or months after a campaign ends, translating to less effective and efficient media. Yahoo In-Flight Sales Analysis ties in-store sales data to our campaigns in near real-time. This enables marketers to be agile, find the best audience, adjust creative, and change supply targeting across mobile, display, video, CTV, audio, and even DOOH. This is especially valuable to advertisers who sell products offline and in stores, such as CPG, retail, QSR, and auto clients.

A time for joy, family, friends and performance
The holidays will be here sooner than you think. Start planning now to make sure they’re the best ones yet for your brand. The Path to Conversion Report and In-Flight Sales Analysis are intelligent ways to gift yourself data and insights to make the holidays and the rest of the year a success.

To learn more ways to make more meaningful connections with people, let's connect today. Happy early holidays.

^¹ Numerator, 11 February, 2022. “2022 Holiday Preview,” Numerator.com.

^² Danziger, Pamela N., 17 June 2020. “Shoppers Will Look For Gifts With More Meaning After The Coronavirus Pandemic.” Forbes.com.

^³ Cisco, 9 March, 2020. “Cisco Annual Internet Report,” (2018–2023) White paper.” Cisco.com.

^⁴ eMarketer, February 2022.

^⁵ U.S. Department of Commerce, February 2022.