Brand of the Week: The Home Depot

When it comes to digital advertising in the Home Improvement category, there's an 800-pound gorilla (The Home Depot) and a 400-pound gorilla (Lowe's). And then there's everyone else.

This week, we're looking at The Home Depot and how they compete for share-of-voice against Lowe's and the other Home Improvement players.

Comparing spend

As the chart shows, looking at seven of the top home improvement outfits by digital ad spend, The Home Depot's share was 67% as measured by Pathmatics over the last 30-days. Lowe's had a 27% share. The remainder was hammered out among the rest. The spend volume includes desktop display, pre-roll video on desktop and mobile web, and mobile web display in the U.S. region.

Video in the mix

With the exception of Ace Hardware, desktop video was the top media for all the players. Not all brands are spending as big on mobile video, though. The Home Depot, for example, spent little on mobile video, while for Lowe's, mobile video was 29% of their spend. True Value also had a large share of their spend on mobile video (24%).

With all the DIY videos out there, we expect the home improvement brands to take advantage of that audience. And more often than not, when we see an advertiser spend big on video, their biggest share of spend and impressions is on YouTube.com.

The Home Depot bucked that trend.

Their "Next Generation" themed videos like the one above were all over ESPN.com, MLB.com, and Realtor.com, targeting sports fans and home seekers. YouTube.com was fourth on their list with 4% of spend and 5% of impressions. By contrast, Lowe's desktop video spend was 98% YouTube.com.

How is The Home Depot buying across devices?

The Home Depot's top purchase channel is Direct buys at 83% of spend and 48% of impressions. Google AdX was their top Ad Network with a 7% spend share and 25% impression share.