With over one billion shoppers eagerly preparing to shop for gifts, decorations, and seasonal essentials, now is the perfect time to refine your marketing tactics and connect with these shoppers. With holiday retail sales set to reach $1.37 trillion, it’s time to unwrap holiday spending insights to ensure that your holiday advertising campaigns light up the festive season. The holiday shopping frenzy offers marketers and retailers a chance to capture attention, drive sales, and build lasting customer relationships.
In this blog post, we’ll reveal holiday shopping audiences, including 19 new audiences, designed for you to reach the most relevant shoppers for your campaigns. These audiences are available for activation on-the-shelf of most major ad platforms, including TV and programmatic. You can find the complete audience segment name in the appendix.
2024 Holiday spending trends and insights report
Download our latest report for data-driven insights you can use to refine your messaging and reach the right audience in their preferred channels this holiday season.
Download nowHoliday shopping styles
It’s important to understand how your holiday shopper “shops,” with individual shopping styles varying from a last-minute dash to the store to the one-stop shopper. One in three consumers anticipate beginning their holiday shopping before October this year, with Millennials and Gen Xers being the most proactive, due to concerns about items running out of stock. In contrast, 42% of Boomers are generally less inclined to shop early, wanting to start their holiday shopping in November or December. All generations are motivated to shop early by discounts.1
By choosing and activating the right audience segments, you can deliver messages that resonate with the consumer’s preferred shopping style, ensuring your holiday campaign will align with their shopping preferences and behaviors.
Here are five audiences that you can activate based on shopping style:
- Last-Minute Holiday Shoppers
- One Stop Holiday Shoppers/Power Shoppers: In-Store or Online
- Impulse Buyers
- eCommerce Diehards
- Brick & Mortar Diehards
Discount-seeking shoppers
The holiday season is a time of giving, but also saving! Consumers are driven to shop early by discounts and early sales — 52% of consumers said discounts are their biggest motivator to shop early. Price is another crucial factor — 47% of consumers said price is the most important factor when deciding where to shop during the holiday season. Major holiday shopping events, such as Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, are expected to attract a significant portion of consumers this upcoming year.2
Here are eight audiences you can activate to reach discount-seeking shoppers:
- NEW! Discount Holiday Shoppers
- NEW! Cyber Monday Holiday Shoppers
- NEW! Black Friday Holiday Shoppers
- NEW! Big Box/Club Stores Holiday Shoppers
- NEW! Online Coupon Shoppers
- TrueTouch: Online Coupon Site
- Department Store Deal Shoppers: In-Store or Online
- Post Holiday Shoppers
Gift givers
Holiday shoppers are torn between saving and splurging. Nearly a third of consumers anticipate spending more on holiday shopping this year, while the same number of consumers say they’ll be spending less. Boomers anticipate spending the most on gift cards, Gen Z on clothing, and Millennials on toys, electronics, and experiences.3
Given holiday shoppers’ varied spending habits, it’s important to target the right audience segments to maximize your impact. Targeting specific audience segments allows advertisers to better reach those most interested in their products.
Here are six audiences you can activate to target gift givers:
- NEW! Luxury Gift Shoppers
- NEW! Holiday Shopping High Spenders
- NEW! Holiday Shopping Moderate Spenders
- NEW! Holiday Charitable Donations
- High Spend Gift Shoppers
- Heavy Buyer/Spenders Holiday Shoppers: In-Store or Online
Holiday travelers
In 2023, nearly three million travelers passed through airports on the Sunday after Thanksgiving alone. Take advantage of the busy travel season with our audience segments. By targeting specific travel preferences and behaviors, you can capture the attention of individuals planning trips this holiday season.
Here are seven audiences to tailor your campaign according to travel preferences:
- NEW! Holiday International Travelers
- NEW! Holiday Travel-Train
- NEW! Holiday Budget Savvy Airline Travelers
- Vacation/Leisure Travelers: Domestic Trips
- Air Travel (FLA/Fair Lending Friendly)4
- Vacation/Leisure Travelers: Frequent Spenders
- Hotels: Frequent Spend
When you work with Experian, you work with a single data provider that gives you access to audiences across multiple verticals and categories, such as travel and retail.
Targeted advertising this holiday season with Experian audiences
The holiday season is the busiest time of the year for advertisers. Experian’s data, ranked #1 in accuracy by Truthset, allows advertisers to reach people based on demographic, geographic, and behavioral attributes (e.g. websites visited and purchase history). By using Experian’s audiences in your holiday advertising campaigns, you can reach last-minute shoppers, discount-seeking shoppers, gift-givers, and holiday travelers.
Just as shoppers seek the perfect gifts, with the right strategy, your holiday advertising campaigns can capture the right shoppers this holiday season. Can’t find the audience you’re looking for or need a custom audience? Connect with our audience team for more information.
You can activate our syndicated audiences on-the-shelf of most major platforms. For a full list of Experian’s syndicated audiences and activation destinations, download our syndicated audiences guide.
Explore our other seasonal audiences that you can activate today.
Footnotes
- Online survey conducted in June, 2024 among n=1,000 U.S. adults 18+. Sample balanced to look like the general population on key demographics (age, gender, household income, ethnicity, and region). n = 204 Gen Z, n = 234 Millennials, n = 270 Gen X, n = 272 Baby Boomers.
- Online survey.
- Online survey.
- “Fair Lending Friendly” indicates data fields that Experian has made available without use of certain demographic attributes that may increase the likelihood of discriminatory practices prohibited by the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) and Equal Credit Opportunity Act (“ECOA”). These excluded attributes include, but may not be limited to, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, disability, handicap, family status, ancestry, sexual orientation, unfavorable military discharge, and gender. Experian’s provision of Fair Lending Friendly indicators does not constitute legal advice or otherwise assures your compliance with the FHA, ECOA, or any other applicable laws. Clients should seek legal advice with respect to your use of data in connection with lending decisions or application and compliance with applicable laws.
Appendix
Here are the complete audience segment names (taxonomy paths) for all audience segments discussed in this blog post.
Holiday shopping styles
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday Shoppers: Last-Minute Holiday Shoppers
- Retail Shoppers: Purchased Based > Seasonal > Holiday Shoppers: One Stop Holiday Shoppers/Power Shoppers: In-Store
- Retail Shoppers: Purchased Based > Seasonal > Holiday Shoppers: One Stop Holiday Shoppers/Power Shoppers: Online
- TrueTouch: Communication Preferences > Purchase Behavior > Impulse buyers
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase behavior > Shopping Behavior > In-Store vs. Online: eCommerce Diehards
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase behavior > Shopping Behavior > In-Store vs. Online: Brick & Mortar Diehards
Discount-seeking shoppers
- NEW! Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday Shoppers: Cyber Monday
- NEW! Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday Shoppers: Black Friday
- NEW! Retail Shopper: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday Shoppers: Big Box/Club Stores Shoppers
- NEW! Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based >> Discount Holiday Shoppers
- NEW! Retail Shoppers: Purchased Based > Shopping Behavior > Online Coupon Shoppers
- TrueTouch: Communication Preferences> Purchase Behavior > Online Coupon Site
- Retail Shoppers: Purchased Based > Shopping Behavior > Department Store Deal Shoppers Online Spenders
- Retail Shoppers: Purchased Based > Shopping Behavior > Department Store Deal Shoppers In-Store Spenders
- Retail Shoppers: Purchased Based > Seasonal > Holiday Shoppers: Post holiday
Gift givers
- NEW! Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday Shoppers: Luxury Gift Shoppers
- NEW! Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday Shoppers: High Spenders
- NEW! Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday Shoppers: Moderate Spenders
- NEW! Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday Charitable Donations
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Shopping Behavior > Gift Shoppers High Spend Spenders
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday Shoppers: Heavy Buyer/Spenders: Online
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday Shoppers: Heavy Buyer/Spenders: In Store
Holiday travelers
- NEW! Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday International Travelers
- NEW! Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal> Holiday Travel-Train
- NEW! Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Holiday Budget Savvy Airline Travelers
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Travel > Vacation/Leisure Travelers: Domestic Trips
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Travelers > Air Travel (FLA/Fair Lending Friendly)
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Travel > Vacation/Leisure Travelers: Frequent Spenders
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Travel > Hotels: Frequent Spend
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