Back-to-School Jumpstarts Click-Through Rates

Summer is winding down and school is just about ready to start again. Back-to-school supplies and events are already on the minds of students everywhere and this is the perfect time for companies in the retail and education vertical to double down on their products for students. Back-to-school behavior is similar to the holidays, in that retailers begin marketing to consumers earlier and earlier every year - and this year is no different.

Historically, back-to-school begins in mid-August and it's easy to tell when consumers and advertisers begin searching for back-to-school related topics. We took a look at our clients in the education and retail verticals across 2012 and 2013 to understand just how much this change in consumer behavior affected search. For users in the retail vertical, search clicks grew an average of 6% in August and September, when compared to July and search click-through rates grew 2% during the same period. The effect was even more pronounced in our education vertical, where search clicks jumped an average of 28% and search click-through rates jumped 22% across the same period, signaling the effect of back-to-school hitting consumer awareness. Based on this historical data, we predict we’ll see similar behavior across the back-to-school season this year and have already begun seeing the start of this in the past few weeks.