Getting the word out about special deals—even on ice scrapers that will be returned in a matter of minutes—is vital for any business. Home improvement giant Home Depot (HD) is no exception. And by way of proof, new reports note Home Depot is still the leader in radio advertising buys in the United States. This helped give Home Depot a serious leg up, sending shares up nearly 3.5% in Tuesday afternoon’s trading.
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Home Depot remained the top ad buyer, picking up 68,135 instances over the week of November 17 to November 23. Oddly enough, that was actually down, according to the Media Monitors Spot Ten list, which tracks radio advertisers by purchase count. Last week, when we heard about these numbers, Home Depot had picked up 70,458 spots.
The top three remained static as well, according to Media Monitors, as Procter & Gamble (PG) kept the second place slot with Vicks at 49,043 ads, and Progressive (PGR) coming in at third with 46,775. Both of these also represented a decline against last week’s figures. Last week, Procter & Gamble had 50,870 ads purchased while Progressive had 47,132.
A Closer Look at AI in Home Depot
So while Home Depot’s marketing spend was down a little in advance of Black Friday—which seems a bit counter-intuitive—there was also a closer look taken at the likely impact of Blueprint Takeoffs, the new artificial intelligence (AI) powered tool that gives Home Depot a serious potential advantage with the pro builder class.
The part few had noticed back when word first came out is that Home Depot’s takeoff plan allows it to enter a part of the project cycle that it normally had little impact on. Normally, reports note, the takeoff part of a project is owned by “…builders’ merchants, specialty distributors and dedicated estimating services.” By stepping in at that point, Home Depot potentially hijacks a lot of market share that was going elsewhere and routes it into its own coffers, a big step forward.
Is Home Depot a Good Long-Term Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on HD stock based on 18 Buys, five Holds and one Sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 21.64% loss in its share price over the past year, the average HD price target of $409.91 per share implies 17.41% upside potential.