As with any live awards show, the 80th Golden Globes brought its fair share of pleasant surprises: Jerrod Charmichael calling out the HFPA for its racism, Michelle Yeoh’s whole acceptance speech, and, of course, Jennifer Coolidge announcing that her dream role is a dolphin.
But the question remains: Were there any surprises for entertainment advertisers looking to cash in on the big event?
Well, we made our predictions on January 3, and now that the January 10 event is over, we can step back and analyze the creative trends and best practices that emerged from the show.
With these insights, you can better plan your campaigns for the next major awards event — be it the Oscars, Tonys, Emmys, or 2024 Golden Globes — and increase results.
When to Ad Run Campaigns
First, we pulled readership data from from Taboola’s US publisher network on January 24. Here’s what we found: Traffic for the term “Golden Globes” didn’t truly pick up until after the award ceremony. Even on December 12, 2022 when the nominees were announced, we didn’t see much of a spike in traffic.
Interestingly, the largest spike in readership traffic came the day after the show, January 11. And it didn’t taper off until around January 20.
It seems readers were mostly interested in recaps of the event to catch up on what they might’ve missed. Given those findings, our recommendation to advertisers would be to start their campaigns on the day of the event and run them for about two weeks afterwards.
Top Stories and Readership Trends
Next, we pinpointed spikes in readership data for some of the top terms over a 90 day period, including:
- White Lotus – 6,611,420 pageviews
- Austin Butler – 4,106,180
- Jennifer Coolidge – 2,981,230 pageviews
- Eddie Murphy – 1,815,070 pageviews
- Abbott Elementary – 524,950 pageviews
These spikes in engagement matched up with some of the show’s most notable moments: Jennifer Coolidge won for her iconic performance in “White Lotus,” Austin Butler won for “Elvis” (and curiously maintained his movie accent in his speech), “Abbott Elementary” took home four awards, and Eddie Murphy referenced the infamous Oscars slap of 2022.
But don’t just take our word for it. Let’s look at how top entertainment publishers launched content around these hot topics.
Vulture teased Austin Butler for still using his “Elvis” voice at the Golden Globes:
E! Online praised Jennifer Coolidge for her hilarious “White Lotus” acceptance speech:
And ET Online announced some big news for “Abbott Elementary” after multiple award wins:
Ad Creative Best Practices
We dug into Taboola Trends to see which types of creatives drove the most engagement across US entertainment publishers on the week of January 8. The verdict? Native ads with illustrations, no text, color, and close-up shots saw increased clickthrough rates (CTRs) among audiences.
When it comes to crafting ad copy, advertisers can also use Taboola Title Analyzer to see which headlines drive the highest-predicted CTR. Among these Golden Globes-related headlines, for example, we can clearly see that “Golden Globes Fashion Trends For Less” will be the best pick:
Targeting Best Practices
Once you have your creatives ready, you want to get them in front of the right audiences at the right time. That’s where these best practices can help:
- Automate with SmartBid. Taboola’s automated bidding tool, SmartBid, uses machine learning and historic data to bid on impressions that are most likely to drive conversions. Meaning, it can help you use your budget more efficiently while increasing results.
- Consider High Impact Placements. Reach customers across the world’s top publisher sites with premium image and video ad placements, helping you drive brand awareness at scale in brand-safe environments.
- Shake things up with Motion Ads. Nestled in between image and video ads lies a third option: Motion Ads. These are short, eye-catching GIFs and looping videos that are proven to raise conversion rates at a low cost-per-action (CPA).
Lights, Camera, Action! How to Get Your Campaigns Red-Carpet Ready
The Golden Globes may come just once a winter. But you can use these insights to build strategies for similar events like the Oscars, Grammys, Tonys, and Emmys, which are peppered throughout the year. Each event provides an opportunity for advertisers to harness engagement and meet new customers with targeted ads.
So next time an award show rolls around, your campaigns will be red-carpet ready.