Wired Magazine recently declared that Amazon "owns" the internet. Good to see the owners of the internet turning to print to rally last minute holiday sales:

 Full story from PaidContent.org here

Amazon Includes Circular In Weekend Newspapers

The front page of the circular says “Last Minute Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List.” (Excuse the not-great cell phone picture.) The inside pages feature products that are eligible for free one-day shipping, including DVDs, electronics, video games, music and Kindles. A box on page 5 explains what Amazon Prime is and offers a free trial by visiting amazon.com/primeholiday.

Each item featured in the circular includes its list price, which is crossed out, then “Our Price: ? Check latest price at Amazon.com.” Each item is also accompanied by its star rating and reviews on Amazon.

Books are not included in the circular or in the free one-day shipping promotion.

Amazon recently ran a price check promotion that made many people very mad, but that I believe was more of an effort to compete against big box stores than independent bookstores. This circular seems to be part of that same strategy.

From Ad Age. Full story here.

Print Still Reigns, but More Retailers Turn to TV, Online Ads for Holidays

BDO Survey: Flat Holiday Budgets Mean a Little Less for Print as Marketers Spread Resources

By Natalie Zmuda
Published: November 29, 2010

"Retailers are investing their holiday advertising and marketing dollars across a widening set of platforms, as they emerge from the recession," said Steve Ferrara, partner-retail and consumer product practice at BDO USA. "The fact that only 20% cite a decrease in budgets signals that they have a bit more flexibility in how they stretch their advertising and marketing spend."

Many retailers are scrutinizing the budgets they do have and allocating more to TV. One-quarter of CMOs said they were spending most of their budget on broadcast this year, up from 13% a year ago. Best Buy is just one of the retailers increasing its presence on TV this holiday. The retailer, which said it would increase its TV spending by a low double-digit percentage, began running holiday spots on Dec. 1 this year. To free up funds for TV, the retailer pulled money away from inserts.

Most CMOs -- 42% -- said they allocate most of their holiday budget to print ads, down from 64% a year ago. And 27% said they'd be investing the bulk of their budget in online ads, including social-networking sites. That's up from just 18% last year.

Overall, social media is gaining traction among retailers, many of whom still needed to make major improvements to the strategies used last year. According to the survey, 75% of retailers are utilizing social media this year, up from 51% a year ago. Facebook is the clear winner there, with 92% of CMOs utilizing the site. More than 60% say they use Twitter, while just 20% use YouTube and only 8% use MySpace.

"Retail CMOs' sharpening and increasing focus on social-networking sites speaks to the growing popularity and effectiveness of this medium to reach consumers across demographics," said Mr. Ferrara. "The low-cost nature of social networking gives retailers more room to boost their broadcast media investment for the holiday season."

Still, social media is a relatively small part of retailers' overall budgets. The majority, 62%, said less than 10% of their marketing efforts would focus on social-networking sites, while just over 1% said 70% to 79% of their efforts would revolve around those sites.

Some interesting stats on holiday shopping trends from the Newspaper Association of America, keep in mind the audience this is written for are newspaper execs.

How Important is Holiday Shopping to Your Retailers? Very!

This holiday shopping period was shaping up to be a tough period even before the financial crisis hit the economy. The Center for Media Research reported in mid October that this year’s sales would likely be the worst in 17 years (versus 1991 when sales increased by 1.2%). Still holiday shopping is projected to be $42.5 billion.

These dim forecasts are coupled with the fact that the extremely late Thanksgiving means significantly fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. No wonder it feels like holiday decorations were going up in July. Seriously, the days when Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, was the biggest shopping day of the year are officially over. Some reports suggest that Black Friday has slipped to the 8th biggest shopping day of the year.

A study just released by MediaMark (MRI) reports that 62.3 million adult consumers will begin their holiday shopping before Thanksgiving. That is 35.1% of all shoppers are reporting that holiday shopping is now starting before Thanksgiving. 36% of adults will commence shopping between Thanksgiving and December 15th. Another 26% start shopping between the 15th of December and Christmas eve while 2% wait till Christmas Eve to begin holiday shopping. By the way, 1.3% of all consumers don’t start Holiday shopping until after Christmas.

This information is important to your retailers who may not be aware of when sales are now taking place and therefore may be promoting at the wrong time, potentially too late. This is a good time to share the new data from MRI with advertisers.

A few other significant learnings from the MRI 2008 Omnibus study conducted this September:

1. More women shop early: 61% vs. 38% of men
   
2. Households with less income start earlier. 42% of those earning under $59k start early, 35% of those earning $50-100k, while only 22% of those earning over $100k start early.
   
3. 69% of early shoppers give a gift card.
   
4. 33% of adults give a gift wish list to friends and family.
   
5. Halloween is growing as an annual celebration according to NRF’s BIG Research with the average celebrant spending $66.54 on the holiday. 18-24 year olds spend even more, $86.59 on Halloween. Total Halloween spend is now projected at $5.77 billion.