Paid Search Spend On “Black Friday” Terms Began Surging A Month Earlier Than Last Year [Study]

More evidence that the holiday shopping season is starting earlier: Paid search spend on a set of 161 keywords containing “black friday” began surging the week of September 27, a month ahead of last year. Between September 27 and Sunday, November 22, 1,226 advertisers spent $7.3 million on these keywords, according to paid search monitoring firm AdGooroo.

Advertisers spent $3.68 million on the term “black friday deals” — and that’s just on Google desktop text ads. That term also garnered the largest number of impressions by far, with close to 50,000, compared to the next biggest term, “black friday,” which generated 17,000 impressions.

Among advertisers, Target topped the list of biggest spenders on Google desktop text ads in the US during this time period, according to AdGooroo’s monitoring data. The report shows Target.com spent $1 million, beating out Amazon.com, which spent $790,000 on “black friday” keywords. The full list is available here.