Long-Term Planners Spend More Than 3x as Much as Last-Minute Shoppers, According to Rocket Fuel’s Holiday Shopping Report

90 Percent of Holiday Shoppers Make Decisions about Black Friday and
Cyber Monday Shopping Plans in Advance

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Rocket Fuel (NASDAQ: FUEL), a leading Programmatic Marketing Platform
provider, today announced the release of its annual report on consumers’
holiday shopping habits and preferences. The report identifies the
demographic, behavioral, and contextual factors that influence shopping
decisions and highlights the optimal way to reach consumers by focusing
on moments — rather than more singular, event-based targeting centered
on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

“The 2015 holiday shopping season will be driven by moments,” said Ryan
Bleich, director of market development for retail at Rocket Fuel. “The
market continues to shift focus away from Black Friday and Cyber Monday
shopper targeting to a more holistic, moment-based experience throughout
the shopping journey during the holiday season. Ultimately, a marketer’s
influence on consumers’ holiday shopping decisions will be reliant on
their ability to score time of day, day of week, device, mindset, and
recent purchases in order to identify the best moments to reach
those consumers with targeted ads across any and all kinds of their
devices.”

Key findings of the report include:

• Long-Term Planners Spend More than 3x as Much as Last-Minute
  Shoppers
  In Rocket Fuel’s consumer survey of holiday
  shoppers, three distinct shopper categories were identified: Pouncers,
  who typically wait until the week (or day) of Black Friday or Cyber
  Monday to shop; Planners, who start making plans one to two months in
  advance; and Prognosticators, long-term planners who start planning
  three or more months in advance. Of the three groups,
  Prognosticators plan to spend the most, at an average of $2,191.89.
  Planners plan to spend an average of $793.31, trailed by Pouncers, who
  plan to spend an average of $682.82.

• Nearly Half of “Black Friday” Shoppers (45 percent) Already Know
  What to Buy and Where
  One-third of all shoppers surveyed will
  have already made a decision about either what to buy or where to buy
  it; for Black Friday shoppers the number jumps to 45 percent. Since
  shoppers are making buying decisions so far in advance of Black
  Friday, marketers must be prepared to target the precise moments to
  reach and influence them earlier than ever before.

• Moment Marketing Drives 8x Increase in Addressable Audience
  By
  identifying shopper type; identifying whether the shopper has already
  decided what and where to buy; and identifying the right moments of
  influence, Rocket Fuel estimates that advertisers may be able to
  increase their potential pool of “persuadable” Black Friday and Cyber
  Monday consumers from 6 percent to 55 percent during the week prior,
  and by even more during the month prior.

The National Retail Federation is forecasting a 3.7 percent increase in
sales this year, higher than the 10 year average of 2.5 percent.
Sophisticated technologies, such as Rocket Fuel Moment Scoring and
cross-device optimization, allow marketers to reach consumers at the
precise moment of influence, taking into account key factors including
demographic, behavioral and contextual information, to deliver higher
performing, more effective marketing campaigns.

As part of its report, Rocket Fuel surveyed 600 consumers ages 18 and
older in October 2015 about their holiday shopping habits, including
their plans to shop on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and how they were
going to decide what to buy and where to shop.

For a copy of Rocket Fuel’s 2015 Holiday Shopping Study:Influencing
Shopper Decisions, please visit:
info.rocketfuel.com/holiday-shopping-study

About Rocket Fuel

A leading Programmatic Marketing Platform provider, Rocket Fuel (NASDAQ:
FUEL) offers brands, agencies, and platform partners managed services,
as well as a SaaS-based Data Management Platform (DMP) and Demand Side
Platform (DSP), to optimize performance, awareness, and lift across
marketing objectives, channels and devices. By applying artificial
intelligence at big data scale, Rocket Fuel’s Moment Scoring™ technology
performs a real-time calculation of each ad opportunity based on a
marketer’s goal to determine the likelihood a consumer will engage in a
desired action. Moment Scoring goes beyond 1:1 marketing by learning to
predict what marketing actions to take with a campaign at a precise
moment in time, which results in a much more efficient use of marketing
dollars. Rocket Fuel serves 96 of the Ad Age 100, three of the top five
agency holding company trading desks, and partners with some of the
world’s leading CRM platforms, marketing platforms and systems
integrators. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, Rocket Fuel has
more than 20 offices worldwide.

Contacts

Rocket Fuel
Kristin Holloway, 650-480-7561
pr@rocketfuel.com