Holiday ads creep earlier and earlier

You probably didn’t even have your Halloween jack o’ lantern thrown away before you began to notice festive wrapping paper and holiday decorations at the store.

Well, Christmas came even earlier on television and online.

Holiday advertising made its debut three months before the actual holidays, with this year’s ads starting in September, the earliest ever for both media.

In a competitive sales environment, with consumer confidence high, gas prices low and an increasing number of ways to reach people via connected devices, these early ads appear to be working.

“I roll my eyes when I see Christmas trees in September, too, but they’re doing it for a reason,” says one media buyer.

“Early ads stand out, and it gets cluttered closer to the holidays.”

Kantar Media says Kmart was the first retailer to air a Christmas-themed TV ad this year, just as it has been the past three years.

In 2012, Kmart’s first ad aired in the second week of September. But this year it bowed Sept. 1, tying its own record for earliest Christmas ad on television.

Kmart’s ads focus on layaway, which allows people to reserve items now and pay for them later. The sooner that message is delivered, the sooner people can start laying away presents.

Though the retailer has been struggling for some time, last year’s holiday sales decline was smaller than in past years, indicating the early advertising helped.

Other retailers have been a bit more conservative in their approach. Wayfair.com rolled out its first ad the first week of October, and Best Buy and Sears began the last week of October, according to Kantar.

Retailers are quick to get their ads on the air after Halloween. Last year seven launched holiday campaigns before Oct. 31, but 19 had joined in by Nov. 5, eight more than in 2013.

Meanwhile, paid search holiday ads have also been out for weeks.

AdGooroo, an ad insight company owned by Kantar, says Black Friday ads started popping up the final week of September.

Desktop paid search advertisers spent $52,417 on Black Friday-related ads that week, up 324 percent from the previous two months combined.

That’s a full month earlier than the first big surge in Black Friday search spending last year, AdGooroo says.

Tags: advertising holidays, holiday ads, holiday advertising, holidays, kmart, paid search