• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, October 12, 2016

With less than three weeks to go, finding a Halloween costume for the kids seems like the least important event as we head into what feels like the most volatile U.S. presidential election year in history. Nonetheless, here's a little Halloween paid-search trivia to briefly take your mind off politics.

How much are advertisers spending in aggregate and what type of Halloween costumes are getting the most investment?

Paid-search text ads, by far, outpaced investments compared with product listing ads (PLAs) running across google.com on desktop. Advertisers in aggregate spent about $747,006 on PLAs vs. $551,770 for product listing ads (PLAs) running across google.com on desktop between Aug. 1 and Oct. 4, 2016, according to AdGooroo, a Kantar Media company.

The data serves to aggregate a ranking of the top 20 costumes based on the amount advertisers spend on paid-search text ads and PLAs. The findings analyze about 2,959 Halloween costume keywords for U.S. Google desktop search.

It's interesting to note that advertisers investing more on PLAs compared with paid-search text ads include those promoting Pirate, Little Red Riding Hood, Catwoman, Mad Hatter, Nija, and Peter Pan.

Poison Ivy, a fictional supervillain in American comic books published by DC Comics, takes the No. 1 spot with $158,653 in paid-search ad spend. Advertisers spent about $91,600 on PLAs and $67,052 on text ads during the time analyzed. Pirate and Ninja Turtle rounded out the top three with $101,278 and $101,082, respectively.

Advertisers promoting Pirate spent $55,622 on PLAs and $45,654 on text ads. Advertisers promoting Ninja Turtle spent $55,622 on PLAs and $45,654 on text ads.

AdGooroo also analyzed data from the sale of Halloween masks for U.S. presidential candidates to determine whether the data agency could predict the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.

Although "clearly unscientific, the post points to a report by CNN Money from 2012 with the headline "Halloween mask sales predict Obama win 60-40."

Advertisers selling Hillary Clinton masks spent $2,981 on keyword derivatives of "hillary clinton costume." Advertisers selling Donald Trump masks spent $1,909 on keyword derivatives of "Donald trump costume," according to AdGooroo data.