How Toy Brands are Leveraging Advertising – What's Working in Marketing?

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Once a week, we send out actionable tips to inform a more impactful digital strategy across paid, earned, shared, and owned channels - using the latest data from our research.

• Uncovering the the top digital advertising channels for toy brands between 2021 to 2022
• Three tweets about a Threads strategy, how to apply marketing inspo and a B2B mistake you're making

Top Digital Advertising Channels for Toy Brands between 2021 to 2022

Who is leading the advertising race in the Toy Industry?

Let's jump in!

Advertising Trends

Between 2021-2022, the competitive set allocated $196M to digital ads. Despite some quarterly fluctuations, monthly ad spend has been trending upward.?

LEGO made up 53% of the $196M total ad spend amongst the competitive set at $103M.?

All brands, except for Squishmallows, experienced an increase in their annual ad spend between 2021 and 2022. LEGO had the largest increase of +98% YoY.?

Paid Search has experienced the greatest increase in yearly ad spend, increasing from $1.2M in 2021 to $18.6M in 2022 (+1450%).

YouTube spending has seen the largest decrease, dropping from 13.6M in 2021 to 9.8M in 2022 (-28%).?

Seasonal Trends & Tactics

There was a seasonal pattern in ad spend, with higher spending occurring in Q4 2021 due to LEGO’s #RebuildTheWorld campaign & Mattel’s Hot Wheels campaign.

Click to view video 1, or 2.

Q4 2022 saw a spike due to LEGO’s Instagram and Display ads, & Mattel’s 4-in-1 game experience campaign.?

Click to view video 1, or 2.

Advertising Do's

• Emphasize sales and free shipping offers, such as Melissa & Doug providing 20% off or Lego’s free shipping on orders over $35.
• Personify toys and create a simple storyline to make the ad fun and memorable.
• Encourage audience generated content by using a branded hashtag and using audience submissions to co-create content.
• Partner with other brands and popular movie/tv franchises such as Star Wars, to capitalize on their audience base.

Advertising Dont's

• Disregard potential customer concerns and doubts in ad creative.
• Forget to emphasize product benefits in addition to sales and discounts.
• Overcomplicate messaging with too much information.
• Fail to target competitor keywords and product review-seekers.?
• Overlook platforms like Snapchat and TikTok, that have a younger audience and less competitive focus.?

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Here are three tweets you should check out this week:

1. A Threads 101 Guide?

2. How to take marketing inspo and apply it

3. A B2B marketing mistake

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