• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, July 2, 2021

Across the West Coast, millions of Americans expect to spend their Fourth of July sweltering in a record-setting heat wave. That’s likely to alter plans for fireworks, barbeques and other traditions associated with the holiday. 

According to Pattern89, which uses AI to analyze ad trends from a global database, we’ll see fewer ads featuring images of fireworks over the long holiday weekend and more ads featuring swimming pools imagery. 

The company found the following trends in ads this year leading up to the July 4 weekend versus a year ago: 

• Images of fireworks are down more than 17% in ad copy
• The word “cookout” decreased 89%
• Click-through-rate declined 21% for ads with “cookout” in the copy
• Imagery of the sun is down 10%
• The word “Hot” is up 43% in ad headlines
• Images of grills declined over 97% in ads
• Images of pools increased 18% 

Happy Fourth and try to stay cool.