Dive Brief:

• 1-800-Flowers was the top online florist advertiser by text ad volume around Valentine's Day with 890 ads, according to findings by intelligence search solution Adthena made available to Marketing Dive. The study analyzed more than 2,700 text search ads, totaling more than 590 search terms and 17.4 million impressions from 276 U.S.-based floral and gourmet food retailers between Jan. 15 and Feb. 14. 
• Following 1-800-Flowers in the top spot for search ad volume were ProFlowers with 830 ads, FromYouFlowers with 710, Bouqs with 690 and FTD with 650. While 1-800-Flowers had more ads overall, ProFlowers had more search impressions at 18.19% compared to 1-800-Flowers, which ranked third at 16.52%. FromYouFlowers, in the No. 2 spot, had 17.095. FTD had 14.62% and Teleflora had 11.92%. 
• 1-800-Flowers also ranked highest in clickshare, with 35.32%, followed by FTD (14.81%), ProFlowers (13.5%), FromYouFlowers (13.46%) and Teleflora (9.39%). Teleflora had the best-performing Valentine's Day search ad overall.

Dive Insight:

1-800-Flowers managing to outshine the competition and snap up more than one-third of all ad clicks for flowers brands on Valentine's Day reinforces the sustained value of broad search strategies and how high ad volume around key sales points can still deliver results. Name recognition helped the e-commerce brand, but the new study showed that it bid consistently on keywords from the generic, such as "flowers," to more niche terms specific to the holiday in what Adthena's VP of Marketing Ashley Fletcher described as a "full court press." 

Consumers were projected to spend a near-record $19.6 billion on Valentine's Day this year, up from $18.2 billion in 2017, according to the National Retail Federation. While candy is the most commonly reported gift, more than 35% of consumers were planning to give flowers. More than half of consumers planned to use their smartphones to help them make purchase decisions for Valentine's Day, per Adthena, with 36.9% planning to use the devices to research products and compare prices.

Recognizing these habits, 1-800-Flowers and other brands rightfully invested in more cutting-edge digital strategies to compliment traditional approaches to search. 1-800-Flowers, along with Fandango, Food Network and iHeartRadio, provided one-to-one communications via Facebook Messenger for Valentine's Day. The florist let shoppers browse seasonal products, connect with its online customer care teams and purchase through a chatbot.