No wonder traffic is up

Target was the top-ranked retailer during the first half of 2010 in terms promotional advertising pages, according to Kantar Media, with roughly 1.3 billion pages. That figures represents a 67% increase from the first six months of 2009 when the company also was the top-ranked retailer in terms of promotional pages. Following Target in the ranking of promotional pages were Dollar General, Walgreens, PetSmart, Family Dollar, CVS, Kroger, Petco, Publix and Ralphs.

The promotional data was part of a study in which Kantar examined free standing insert (FSI) trends during the first six months of the year and discovered a 10.1% increase.

“In addition to Target’s expanded use of cooperative FSI coupon vehicles to support their retailer promotion activity, other leading retailer are expanding their use of retail promotion events, especially with the food, drug, value and pet specialty channels,” said Mark Nesbitt, president of Kantar Media Intelligence. “One of the trends observed in response to the declining economy was consolidation of retail shopping trips within the super center format. The increase used of retail promotional events wtih cooperative FSI coupon vehicles may be an effective retail response to company the consolidation of trips.”