Advent calendars are one of the biggest seasonal talking points. Social-first agency SAMY Alliance has found a 368% year-over-year (YoY) rise in engagement (likes, reposts, comments, shares, etc) with advent calendar-themed posts. 

Recent stats from Clearpay research show the growing interest in these calendars, with those aimed at women increasing by 240% YoY.

In 2023 and 2024, for the period in question, when it comes to brand mentions, beauty brands dominate the online conversation, with no appearance yet by brands from other sectors.

Looking into the most talked about beauty brand advent calendars, SAMY Alliance’s data showed that:

• Charlotte Tilbury is the most talked about advent calendar during the period in question for 2024 and 2023.
• In 2024 SpaceNK comes next with 72% of the social chatter generated by CT.
• Boots finds itself in third place, followed by Cult Beauty and Sephora, with 71%, 57% and 52% respectively of the number of posts achieved by Charlotte Tilbury.
• John Lewis, Elemis and The Body Shop had all broken through into the advent calendar social media conversation in 2023 but have not appeared so far this year.

SAMY Alliance’s analysis of social media conversations about advent calendars also revealed:

• Social media platform share of voice saw Pinterest take the lead in 2024 – accounting for 22.9% of conversations compared to just 11.8% over the same period in 2023.
• X comes in next at almost 20.6%, up on the same period in 2023 when it took a 16.6% share.
• Facebook comes next at 15.6%, down from 2023 when it was the lead platform with a 16.8% share of voice.
• Instagram is up substantially YoY from only 3.1% of mentions in 2023 to 10.4% in 2024.
• For the period 15 to 21 September - there has been a significant spike in interest, with 313 articles about advent calendars published across mainstream media.

SAMY Alliance will be tracking advent calendar social conversations monthly in the run-up to Christmas. To be kept up to date on new data, visit samy.com.

All YoY data above compares the period of 25 August to 22 September 2024 vs 2023.