October's Top Digital Advertisers

While you were getting your Halloween costumes ready, advertisers like Apple and Zulily were kicking off Q4 with huge digital advertising campaigns. Coming in as the top digital advertiser for the month of October, Apple Inc. put an emphasis on video, and had a major new product release to fuel spend. The Auto category continued strong, falling only to Financial Services overall, but led on video for the first time in 2016.

Finishing out the top three categories on digital was Retail, with a large presence on desktop led by Zulily. The online retailer dedicated over 95% of their digital budget for the month on desktop/display advertising, with the remaining 5% going towards mobile+tablet. Read on for more digital insights from the month, and download the free report detailing all of the cross-channel top digital advertisers here.

Apple, Inc. Is October’s Top Digital Ad Spender

Apple threw down over $21.9M across desktop, mobile, and video during the month of October, more than doubling its digital ad spend from September. We recently looked at Apple’s desktop strategy during October, but their main focus was video - consuming 73% of their total digital spend for the month across channels. Fueled by the major release of the new MacBook Pro, and a continued push for the Apple Watch Series 2, seventy four unique digital creatives were released in total for the month.

True to their style, 100% of their placements were purchased through direct deals, a very different strategy from Samsung, one of their top competitors. YouTube was the top site by spend and impression, consuming much of the brand’s digital budget and was the top target for their video campaigns.

Source: Pathmatics US Digital Data, 10/1/16-10/31/16.

The Auto Category Leads on Video For the First Time in 2016

For the first time this year, the Auto category overtook the Financial Services and Food & Drink categories on video, with Ford in front. Ford spent over $8.9M on video advertising during the month, all of which went to direct deals. The Auto category generally preferred direct buys on video, consuming over 90% of the category’s spend. YouTube was the top video site for the category, followed by these other publishers:

Source: Pathmatics US Video Data, 10/1/16-10/31/16.

Zulily Tops Retail on Desktop

Retail put up a fight on desktop, overtaking the Auto category and coming second to Financial Services. Zulily, the e-commerce giant, ranked as the top Retail desktop advertiser - outspending Amazon.com, Jet.com and Best Buy Co., Inc. Funneling nearly all of their desktop spend into Google AdX + AdSense, YouTube was the top site for the brand with almost half of their spend.