Marketing

QSR monthly ad wins revolve around official + 'unofficial' holidays

White Castle was a big online ad winner over the last 45 days, as was Taco Bell. (Photo: iStock)

May 5, 2020

Ad-based content recommendation engine, Taboola, said this week that it is seeing big gains in online readership about recipes and ingredients and that actually has been trickling over into ad popularity rankings for QSRs in the runup to Cinco de Mayo. In fact, readership for Mexican food recipes reached its highest peak of the year Saturday, while Taco Bell won the pageview prize for the week with its "At Home Taco Bar," which included ingredients for a full dinner for six, as QSRweb reported last week. 

Taboola said the promotion drove nearly 200,000 pageviews for the brand over the weekend, which is 125% more than a typical weekend. In fact, Taboola Public Relations Director Dave Struzzi told QSRweb via email that the nation was definitely in a "taco kind of mood," at the end of April. 

"We saw clear food and dining trends on April 20 — readership about tacos reached its highest peak during the last 90 days on 4/20," Struzzi said in the email. "On Monday, 4/20 there was a large 983% spike in readership when compared to the previous Monday, 4/13. In terms of food brands, when looking at readership on 4/20 compared to the previous Monday, 4/13, White Castle saw a large 2760% increase.

As to why the huge White Castle increase on that day, Struzzi told this website it was likely all about the unofficial recreational marijuana holiday of 4/20, when both a famous movie with White Castle in the name and the brand's own promotion that day, fanned the proverbial flames of ad-based stardom. 

"It's likely due to two things," he told this website. "One, they had a 'Muncheese Deal.' … Two … the brand's association with the 'holiday' of 4/20 is also a strong one in the pop culture realm because of movies like 'Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.'"

White Castle itself would not comment on the data since it was sourced outside of their company. Nonetheless, White Castle didn't steal the whole ad readership show as Taboola relayed it. As previously mentioned, anything with a South of the border slant recently probably got some associated lift in online ad readership over the past 45 days, when Taboola said it has seen large spikes in readership around these topics: 
1. Tortillas (538%+). 
2. Nachos (316%). 
3. Margaritas (135%).
4. Guacamole (90%). 
5. Agave (86%).
6. Beans (79%).