Father’s Day doesn’t mean the same thing this year. Perhaps that’s because traditional parental roles and responsibilities have changed. The National Retail Federation believes that recent months of unexpected togetherness might have prompted the shift.

Search queries for Father’s Day on Microsoft Bing typically begin about 30 days prior to the holiday. This year, despite lockdown orders, the Sporting Apparel category reported the strongest year-over-year (YoY) click gains during the Father’s Day season, up 26%.

Greeting cards are taking a virtual approach, more than in past years. This category rose 70% to date this year, up from 61.7% in 2019. Lift from clicks drove a 29% improvement to click yield from March 14 to the present, compared with the period between Jan. 1 and March 13.

Clicks on Tools & Appliances outpaced the forecast around March 14 after shelter-in-place mandates were put in place.

In 2019, the above-average or top search days for Father’s Day began on May 30 and lasted through Father’s Day, which last year fell on June 16.

Although Microsoft Shopping Campaigns drove more clicks as the holiday approached, spend allocation reduced Father’s Day indexed Shopping clicks and the percent of Shopping spend by day, according to the company.

Microsoft suggests that marketers should be aware of the top growth subcategories this holiday season and how the roles of some dads working from home may have changed in the past few months. “Add terms like ‘virtual’ or ‘video’ when marketing holiday planning regardless of occasion,” according to Microsoft.