Using online readership data across a multitude of publisher sites in Australia, Taboola has looked at what people are reading about right now. Unsurprisingly, Halloween is leading the charge ahead of the trick-or-treating on Monday, 31 October.
What people read about changes depending on what they are going through and what’s happening in the world. This is what makes readership data reliably current for advertisers seeking to know what’s on their audience’s mind. It can lead to the discovery of seemingly “new” or unexpected topics their audience is reading about.
In recent years, Australians’ keen interest in Halloween has continued to grow. Across its Network, Taboola saw 400,000 page views related to Halloween over the past 90 days with an enormous increase of 108,030% with 120,660 page views on 25 October.
Taboola trends have captured a range of data in the lead-up to Halloween related to costumes, pumpkins, and lolly and candy searches with some interesting results.
Globally, Taboola data shows that House of the Dragon, Stranger Things and The Rings of Power were the most popular TV debuts globally in 2022, and expect them to inform costume choices this year. While sci-fi and fantasy dominated this genre, Elvis and the Top Gun movies made the top five appearances in six of the nine countries Taboola looked at, so expect some varied costume choices walking the streets.
In Australia, there were some differences from other countries in terms of popularity. While House of the Dragon topped page views with 1.1 million in the past 90 days, followed by Stranger Things (717,000) and Rings of Power (349,000); Star Wars (276,000) and Batman (187,000) were also top contenders showing that sometimes traditional picks are still a top choice close to home.
Unsurprisingly, searches for pumpkins saw a spike in page views in the last 45 days. Locally we saw 50,000 page views, compared to the US which saw 4.6 million page views, up 6,440%, with a spike on August 30 – the day Starbucks released its pumpkin spice latte.
Searching for Halloween costumes has also risen by 18%, to 140,000 page views in Australia, with huge spikes during the last week of October.
