Jewelry and flower brands who briefly ramp up ad spend for Valentine’s Day love their private marketplaces.
In early February, they set up private marketplaces with publishers who can provide the right audience and context. They test which sites yield conversions in the weeks before Cupid’s holiday and dial up the spend the final week at the sites that tested the best.
Publishers running private marketplaces should take an active role in campaign management, said Jana Meron, Business Insider’s VP of programmatic and data strategy.
“[It’s] important to stay engaged with the buyer. It’s not set it and forget it,” Meron said.
One week into an advertiser’s two-week Valentine’s Day campaign, Business Insider asked the company how the private marketplace was performing. “They came back and said they want to scale up. It required us to reach out to them and ask how the campaign was going,” Meron said.
Valentine’s Day ad spending is often last minute. According to a Consumer Pulse study conducted by Rubicon Project, 38% of people buy presents the day before Valentine’s Day. 89% wait until a week before to pick up a present.
“We’ve seen that over the course of this week, compared to last week, an increase in key categories related to Valentine’s Day,” said Sheri Ham, Mode Media’s VP of programmatic sales.
Within its own platform, Rubicon saw spikes in traffic on Wednesday among brands vying for lovers’ dollars. “Across Rubicon Project’s marketplace, we see flower brands nearly tripling their average daily spend in the past 24 hours and jewelry brands ramping their spend by nearly 50%,” said Anthony Katsur, head of Buyer Cloud.
Advertisers doing multiple calendar-based buys can turn private marketplaces on and off as needed. A flower brand, for example, can turn on its private marketplace again once Mother’s Day rolls around.
“It’s an ongoing conversation with the advertiser,” Meron said. “We know it’s going to happen, get it all set up, and then all we have to do is turn it on. We have over 100 private marketplace deals, with 50-100 running at any one time. Some are completely finished, some go on and off. It’s super flexible.”
“They key is that they have the ability to make decisions in the buying strategy throughout this short window of opportunity to influence consumers regarding products relevant to Valentine’s Day,” Ham said.
