Valentine’s Day Searches Start Now: When They’ll Peak Depends On The Category

February 1 is here, and that means Valentine’s Day searches are set to begin surging right up to February 14.

New data from Bing provides key trends on Valentine’s Day-related searches — including gifts, candy, flowers, restaurants and jewelry — and ad performance to help guide marketers’ efforts in winning over consumers in this year.

This week will see more activity than last week, but the real surge in searches happens in the final week before Valentine’s Day. Looking at last year’s search history from Bing, the final-week spike was more dramatic on desktop than on mobile in 2015, On desktop, searches in the final week (February 8–14) increased 77 percent, while mobile searches rose by 71 percent from the prior week.

Overall, mobile accounted for 32 percent of Valentine’s Day-related searches and 17 percent of clicks on Bing last year.

The Bing data show that Valentine’s Day Gift-related searches peaked on February 11 last year, while candy and chocolate searches didn’t top out until February 13.

It appears, would-be Valentine’s Day shoppers desperately sought out cards at the last minute; searches skyrocketed from February 12 right through to February 14.  (Update: The previous sentence has been updated. A sharp-eyed reader noticed that it was Cards — dark gray in the chart below — not Jewelry — light gray in the chart below — that spiked in the final days.) These differences point to the need for customized budget and bidding strategies depending on the types of terms and products advertisers are competing for in paid search.

Overall, click-through rates were highest between Februrary 10 and 14, averaging 4.9 percent. On desktop, click-through rates peaked in the afternoon of Feburary 12 between 2:00 and 8:00 p.m. On mobile, last minute-shoppers and reservation-makers drove CTRs highest on Valentine’s Day between 3:00 and 10:00 p.m.

For more Valentine’s Day data, including ad copy and keyword insights, see the full presentation from Bing on SlideShare, available here.