ECRM: Retail circular advertising trends, January 2014

ECRM compared retail circular advertising in January 2013 versus January 2014 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains. The home improvement retailers appear to have reversed course somewhat. In previous months, Home Depot focused on smaller, denser circulars while Lowe’s typically featured many pages with few ads on each. While this is still generally true, Home Depot saw a moderate 25% increase in circular page count and Lowe’s doubled its number of ads per page and per circular. The only other retailer that saw such extreme year-over-year changes was Toys “R” Us, which focused its January 2013 efforts online and did not run any circulars. This year, however, the retailer ran a short six-page circular pushing a storewide clearance.



Outside of these two channels, there was not much change from last January. Kohl’s was the only retailer to experience a decrease for each of these metrics and was the only retailer to see a drop in ad blocks per page. Walmart saw moderate increases in ads per page and per circular while page count remained constant, leading to slightly denser circulars.

About ECRM’s Business Intelligence

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.