Reviewing 2021's Google Shopping Holiday Retail Trends

It’s 2022 and are looking back to December 2021 to analyze the Christmas shopping trends. People were optimistic during this season, despite the latest Omicron variant growing, and the continued supply chain disruption and inventory issues. According to NRF, consumers planned to spend $997 on gifts, holiday items, and other non-gift products in 2021. NRF also estimated an increase of between 11%-15% to a total of between $218-$226 billion in online purchases in 2021.

Some experts suggested getting the holiday shopping done earlier than usual to avoid delays or missing out on products. 49% of people surveyed had planned to start shopping by November this year which is 7% more than in 2020.

Experts at GrowByData analyzed the ads data for the Christmas shopping season using Ad Intelligence to look at what the trends were for ads, advertised, sales/discounts, and local inventory ads.

The Trend of Ads and Advertisers

Looking at the graphs below, we see that retailers had been advertising for the holidays since early November and they were continuing to increase ads as we got closer to Super Saturday and Christmas day.

The Trend of SALEs and PRICE DROP

Next, we analyzed the usage and trend of tags like SALE and PRICE DROP annotations. The use of these tags increased in early November peaking during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It stayed steady and our forecast estimated that the trend would start going upward again, as shown on the graph below.

The Trend of Local Inventory Ads

In terms of local inventory ads, ‘Pick-up today’ was far and away the most popular one followed by ‘In store’. Looking at the trend graph, the pick-up today annotation was consistently used throughout the last month except for on Thanksgiving Day. The reason for this could be that many physical stores decided to close for Thanksgiving this year.

Top Advertisers

Next, we wanted to see who the top advertisers were for the Christmas shopping season on Google Shopping. Amazon.com was the top advertiser on the platform followed by big-box stores like Walmart and Target. Furniture giant Wayfair and home improvement conglomerate Home Depot round out the top 5 advertisers for the holiday season so far.

Products, Advertisers, and Discounts by Shopper’s Journey

And finally, we dove into the competition of ads and advertisers based on the shopper’s journey. In terms of advertisers, the highest competition is on the awareness phase keywords as 38% of the total advertisers competed for ads in this stage.

Looking at the products competition, the highest competition is for ads from the decision stage keywords. And with regards to discounts, we found keywords in the decision stage of the shopper’s journey had the most discounts as shown on the graph below.

In Conclusion

For 2022’s holiday season, will consumers decide to shop more in stores as we get closer to Christmas or will online shopping remain the first choice for many? One thing shoppers should avoid this year is last-minute shopping as manufacturing and shipments are currently slow at the moment. However, we will continue to monitor the various trends on Google Shopping to provide you with interesting trends and insights from the 2021 holiday season.