ECRM: Retail circular advertising trends, December 2013

ECRM compared retail circular advertising in December 2012 versus December 2013 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains. Last year, Home Depot did not run any circular promotions for the month of December and instead chose to coast on Web and email promotions. These electronic offers featured 50%-off promotions, as well as one-day-only sales. Although this online-only behavior was not repeated, Web and email remained Home Depot’s main focus: a short circular with a four day duration was run on Dec. 1 with a Cyber Monday theme.



Kroger continued last month’s shift toward a shorter, denser circular and was joined by Staples this month as well. These retailers experienced respective decreases of 40% and 34.6% in circular page count and increases of 33.3% and 28.6% in ad blocks per page. Giant Carlisle fell on the other end of the spectrum, choosing instead to run relatively lengthy circulars featuring fewer products per page: its page count increased by 50% and ad blocks per page decreased by 34.9%. Walmart and Publix also experienced large increases in circular page count, although their ad blocks per page and per circular counts were mostly unchanged.





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ECRM’s Ad Comparisons technology captures promotional data from the top U.S. and Canadian retailers in all major markets. Ad Comparisons captures more than 40 metrics for each ad block and provides hundreds of analytic reports to put the advertising data in context. Ad Comparisons takes an individual approach to ensure all data and reports fit the needs of each user.