For decades, consumers have been fighting the post-Thanksgiving coma on the Friday after Thanksgiving—all in the hopes of getting the can’t-beat, must-have deals on holiday shopping. In this report, Kantar Media has taken a look at ads featuring Black Friday messaging to determine critical trends driving the Black Friday advertising bonanza, using 2012 data as a benchmark for the trends we can expect this year.

We’ve used our AdScope tool to analyze occurrence, expenditure, and creative data for ads that featured “Black Friday” messaging during the three weeks leading up to the year’s biggest sales event. We studied ads that aired from 11/5–11/23 in 2012, across network, cable, spot, and syndicated television (including both English and Spanish-language ads), as well as FSI/coupon promotions. Highlights of this brief include:

• Measured retail ad and promotion expenditure by day, week, and channel
• Measured TV ad expenditure by retail advertiser and product category 
• Creative strategy analysis for the two top spenders, Target and Walmart