Holiday Magic: Four Trends Shaping the 2024 Season

‘Tis the season for heartwarming classics, festive streaming originals, and curling up on the couch for holiday movie marathons. As the season comes to a close, Samba TV's latest viewership data reveals fascinating shifts in how Americans are consuming their favorite holiday content. 

With nearly 20 million U.S. households tuning into the top five holiday movies alone, the data tells a compelling story of nostalgia triumphing over novelty, streaming giants battling for seasonal supremacy, distinct regional preferences shaping viewing patterns across the country, and retailers duking it out to reach audiences with their holiday creative. Read on for four key takeaways from TV screens this holiday season.

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Christmas Vacation reclaims its crown

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation has made a triumphant return to the top-viewed spot in 2024, dethroning last year's holiday movie champion, Elf. With a 7% increase in year-over-year viewership, the classic comedy drew an impressive 9.4M U.S. households between November 1 and December 10. This resurgence highlights the enduring power of holiday classics, which dominated the rankings by securing nine of the top 15 spots.

The collective reach of the top five holiday films - Christmas Vacation, Elf, Home Alone, Four Christmases, and The Holiday - was 19.5M U.S. households, demonstrating the massive cultural impact these classics continue to have on American audiences.

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Lindsay Lohan's holiday reign: Netflix dominates the streaming scene

Lindsay Lohan has emerged as the queen of holiday streaming, with her latest film Our Little Secret drawing 3.3M household views between November 1 and December 10 - outperforming last year's top streaming original by nearly 1M. This success isn't a fluke; it follows her 2022 hit Falling for Christmas, which attracted 3.2M household views.

Netflix has become the powerhouse of new holiday content, claiming four of the top five new streaming holiday originals this year - a significant increase from 2023 when it held just two spots. 

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The Geography of Holiday Cheer: A Tale of Two Americas

An interesting regional divide has emerged in holiday viewing patterns, with temperature seemingly playing a role in viewers' appetite for festive content. Northeast and Midwest cities are leading the charge, with Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Cleveland households over-indexing on more than 40 of the 56 surveyed holiday movies. Meanwhile, warmer climate cities like Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami showed markedly less interest, over-indexing on four or fewer titles.

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Battle of the Retailers: Ad Spend Surges for Holiday Season

Ads delivered over the holidays are crucial in shaping consumer’s decisions as they consider where to get deals and spend money. This year, traditional retailers flexed their marketing muscle alongside aggressive pushes from e-commerce giants. Walmart and Macy's emerged as the season's advertising powerhouses, serving up 3.5B and 3.4B impressions respectively between November 1 and December 10. 

"During the holiday season, we expect retailers to dominate the rankings. However in 2024, the gainers relative to last year include Macy's, Home Depot, Amazon and Lowe's while Walmart and Target were relatively flat. Other standouts come from the telco and insurance vertical with Xfinity gaining against Verizon's lead, and Progressive outspending its competitors to a large degree. In the restaurant category, Burger King takes a big leap forward approaching Domino's which tends to lead in 'share of voice’.” - Samba TV Co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin

Perhaps most striking is the explosive growth in online retail advertising. Amazon led the e-commerce charge with 2.1B ad impressions, representing a staggering 3,100% increase from their September/October figures. Their strategy, featuring Adam Driver in creative re-enactments of Amazon reviews, helped secure their position as the #12 holiday advertiser. Not to be outdone, Etsy and eBay also dramatically increased their presence, with monthly impression increases of 951% and 1,055%.

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