Halloween can be the kick-off to the holiday shopping season and Bing Ads has released data about Halloween shopping trends: Halloween Insights, Tricks And Treats For Digital Marketers.

Shoppers tend to begin early or late, but Bing Ads found the majority starts early. One-third of Halloween shoppers begin before October, but one-third don’t begin shopping until two weeks or less before Halloween.

If it seems like Halloween marketing hits earlier and earlier every year, you could be right.  Halloween merchandising was already up in retail stores prior to Labor Day.

The basics of the holiday are somewhat expected:

• 95% of shoppers plan to buy candy and spend an average of $29
• 34% search online for costumes
• The top search on Bing, across devices, is “halloween costumes”

However, in our rapidly growing mobile economy, we see:

• Halloween searches on mobile grew 1,052% on Bing Ads in 2014.
• Mobile searchers spend half the time on a website in comparison to a desktop visitor.
• Ad CTRs for mobile are averaging <2.5% while the same searches on desktop are seeing CTRs up to 7%

How does this information help us to optimize for PPC?

1. Use mobile preferred ad copy to increase CTRs and capture mobile searches.
2. Location extensions are perfect for advertisers with a physical store, even if there is also an online option.
3. Ad scheduling and automated rules can help efficiencies, for example when CTRs are high, but conversions are low.
4. Data reveals generally that “kids costumes”, “themes”, and “sizes” are winning combinations in ad copy and can be applied to many business types, especially if the advertiser can think creatively.
5. Searchers are using several other channels before making their final purchase decision, so consider how offline, social media, print etc channels impact searches and PPC.

In 2014, $7.4 billion was spent on Halloween products so its no surprise the data is important for advertisers, especially online retailers in the Halloween market or gearing up for the Q4 holidays.

You can view even more Halloween related marketing stats below: