‘Tis the Season for Holiday Advertising

POV by Gellena Lukats, Director, Paid Social and Kate McNee, Associate Director, Paid Social  

Are you ready to engage Holiday Shoppers? Read on to learn more about top market factors, tips on polishing up your campaigns, and how to ensure your best holiday season yet.   

The current digital landscape  

If the digital holiday landscape could be summarized in one word, it would be: clutter. With the average individual exposed to 4,000 to 10,000 ads daily during the holidays, standout creative and razor-sharp media tactics are critical. In 2023, social commerce alone generated $75.6 billion in the US, a +38% growth YoY. With more consumers turning to short form videos through channels like TikTok, we anticipate this number to be even higher in 2024, especially since social commerce is forecasted at $2 trillion by 2025. 

So how are we advising you get ready for this season, and make yourself heard in a time of limitless ad fatigue? 

Listen to your users  

With 60% of the global population on social media, social platforms are an unparalleled resource for gathering customer feedback and insights. Start to develop your holiday marketing strategy by tapping into this data, specifically by analyzing mentions of your brand across channels, messages you receive directly from consumers, and general trends/discussion topics that over-index with your audience. Tap into what consumers are talking about, including what factors are influencing their holiday shopping choices and what consumers like/dislike about your products. Consumers will create their own path to purchase; social provides unparalleled insight into how this journey unfolds.  

Social Listening tools like Sprout Social or Hootsuite can help you search for common keywords, monitor trends, and develop content that can be used for the holiday season and beyond. For example, if keyword analyses may show sustainability and consumer responsibility over-indexing for your brand, this can be tested and impact brand messaging in the long term.  

Know where Social is in your media mix  

64% of digital buyers buy products from social, with 91% of consumers using TikTok for product discovery and 40% of people in the US making a holiday purchase after seeing a social commerce ad.  

Many of these purchases are completed directly via social, after consumers click into a social ad and purchase on site or on apps via Checkout technology. However, many other purchases are offline, completed after a user was shown (and inspired by) an ad from weeks or even months before. 

As such, it’s important to think about the full user journey, remembering that social is a key digital space for nurturing users and is often the first touchpoint. Get creative with tactics such as filters, immersive shopping experiences, or influencer campaigns, all of which can help you stand out amongst the competition and drive brand loyalty.  

It’s also important to think about how which tactics work together during which time. Ahead of the shopping season – which now begins as early as late August/early September – we recommend focusing on prospecting/consideration tactics if your budget/strategy allows. Specifically, plan to spend more on awareness and consideration campaigns to help build retargeting pools and generate awareness ahead of the busy season.  

Integrate holiday messaging in early October, if possible, and continue scaling with awareness/consideration. After several weeks of ramping up with awareness/consideration holiday messaging, begin shifting more funds to conversion-driving tactics to nurture that relationship and compete in the marketplace as CPMs/CPCs continue to rise. Create specific ads for Black Friday/Cyber Monday, leaning fully into conversion-driving tactics as the competition is the thickest on these days.  

Make it also easy to make a purchase, with a one-click solution. A lot of impulse purchases are made from ads, so make the user feel like they have to have it. Limited time promos/availability and urgency messaging always makes a splash. 

With data deprecation, first-party data and customer personalization are key to customer success in a cluttered landscape. You need to define your key audience, use contextual marketing insights, and use top-performing segments to drive retention, re-engagement, and brand loyalty. Be sure to store the data in a compliant way and ensure you are targeting the correct user on the right platform.  

Make your creative an immersive experience  

Don’t forget about tapping into the magic of the holiday season, and ensure you are reflecting the mood of consumers. As advertisers, we want to inspire meaningful experiences with our brand during this time, and this means focusing on family, stories, and imagery with human elements versus just product shots. Work with your creative team to develop standout creative, ensuring you have a clean brand guidelines/lookbook ready to go. We have found that ads that have consistent branding across channels and match the targeted landing page have a higher CTR. 

In addition to infusing holiday messaging and consistent branding into your creative, make sure you are speaking to key consumer priorities and benefits. More than half of consumers (56%) reported that “value” was the most important factor when purchasing holiday gifts this year, according to a survey from InMarket (ranking above “quality,” “price,” “product reviews,” “coupon/sale/promotion/rebate” and more).   

Whenever possible, discounts and sales should be front and center in creative during the competitive shopping season. Moreover, make sure content speaks to the benefits consumers will gain from purchasing products in different ways. Examples include leaning into how your product’s top-notch quality will help it last longer and drive savings in the long run; or how your product will help consumers save time (the most valuable commodity of all).   

Focus on creative diversity with format, messaging, and aesthetic style. With static content able to offset high CPMs, we recommend continuing to integrate, but prioritize video and Story/Reels content, given platforms are prioritizing this ad inventory. Since we can create retargeting audiences from specific video content, which we can then sequentially message, this makes videos particularly valuable.  

As always, ensure your ads are designed for mobile viewing (vertical and sound enabled but not required). 60% of global shoppers are interested in AI, with 57% of TikTok users prioritizing AI tools that simplify the process, from makeup filters to styling outfits.  

Use historical data  

Analyze data from prior years, reviewing personas/behavior especially with cookie-less futures looming. While every year doesn’t look like the last, there are some wins from prior years- some questions to consider:  What formats performed best? Did you ramp up the first two weeks? What messaging performed best? 

Experiment and run your split test/AI tools and brand lift studies before the holiday season – the time to test is not when bids/competition are higher, especially with this year being an election cycle. Simplify your strategy and campaign setup to ensure you are out of the learning phase and can scale when your customers are ready to purchase. This can be integrating creative with the catalog or ASC, or simply only running purchase objective leaning into the last few weeks of the holiday.  

Ensure you are active in Q1 as we see cost dips and a lot of scale/potential in that time period; in fact 41% of holiday shoppers keep buying past the holiday season.  

Platform capabilities are growing, Make sure you know the platform to use 

There have been some platform changes right in time for the holidays that should be helpful in improving performance. These changes are designed to help brands maximize their end-of-year sales and enhance personalized engagement with their audiences. Let’s dive into the key feature enhancements: 

For META, Advertisers can now utilize platform to showcase discount codes on ad overlays, explore testing personalized discounts/first purchases offers and have reminder ads with text overlays and increased frequency of these ads during the hectic holiday season. You can also, test multiple landing pages and META  is adding a way to target tourists who are considering holiday options (i.e., if someone is planning a trip and engaging with NYC content, they will receive ads from that area). Additionally, META is adding an ad format to drive in-store purchases with an option to target people most likely to shop in-store based on location/META historical data. Don’t forget about META’s tried and true ASC campaign tools/AI, which does help with costs/dynamic targeting. META has reported that still 54% of holiday shoppers discover brands or products on META with 77% of Black Friday/Cyber Monday shoppers saying META helped them make a key decision.  Live Commerce is particularly enticing, with 40% of shoppers interested in the real-time nature of these ad units, particularly on TikTok and Instagram.  

TikTok has decided to stand out this year, launching Search Ad Campaigns with Keyword Targeting.  In fact, according to the platform, “23% of users search for something within 30 seconds” of opening the app.” This is just the beginning and we anticipate this growing. This is important because 57% of users use the search function, so this could be a key tool for holiday product discovery, and instrumental for product success, especially if you have a younger demo.”⁽¹⁾According to TikTok’s internal data they are the #1 platform for platform discover.

LinkedIn is a great platform for niche audiences, especially in verticals like education. The first-party data and self-identification for member groups help reach a professional audience, which can be used for e-commerce. For instance, if you are selling software to teachers, you can schedule an appointment with lead gen or start conversations. This is a great place to nurture those relationships.  

Reddit is another nuanced platform, and this platform focuses on real reviews of products/brands. In fact, an average of 16 requests for gift giving and 69% go to the platform for reviews on the products, higher than other social platforms, with 85% of people who used Reddit for holiday gifting ending up making a purchase.  These loyal users and Reddit ads should be a part of your mix if you’ve seen success with your evergreen ads. If you have serious funds, consider takeovers 

Pinterest is an excellent discovery tool, especially for significant moments and events. In fact, 71% of weekly pinners say they found new brands and products while planning holidays on the platform, making it incredibly helpful for holiday planning. Start building brand awareness now and help users discover your products. A lot of engagements also happen during the holiday season, making this a good time to also show up for those users’ life events. If your media mix allows it, test in dynamic catalog feeds and shopping ads as “Brands that ran shopping campaigns in Q4 2023 saw a 60% higher growth in ROAS compared to brands that didn’t run shopping campaigns.” ⁽²⁾

X, albeit unpopular for its political undertones, still has over 250 million in the app daily. X users are 32% more likely to test new products and 24% more likely to share product recommendations. If you are over indexing in the sports category or live events, there is still a place for this medium in your marketing mix, especially at the holiday time when they see a +20% increase of impressions and 49% of last-minute shopping mentions. It is not the most crucial platform, but still has its seat at the marketing mix table.  

As you can see, most of the platforms use similar features. For a good e-commerce strategy, it is important to have good creative assets, with a particular preference for video/short form, to measure audience impact on each channel, and focus on multi-media measurement through another partner. If you can see where in the user journey, and for what purpose the social channel is, the impact from social on e-commerce is unparalleled.  

Make sure you are aware of key holiday moments, particularly for Cyber Week. Small Business Saturday, Boxing Day, last minute shopping, and Thanksgiving/New Year’s.  

Quick Check Out:  

Influencer Marketing is Key  

With privacy at key focus, it is more important than ever to show engaging, authentic, and personalized content, especially for the awareness and consideration funnels. TikTok is impacted largely by the influencer market with 55% of users likely to buy a product for holidays they see in platform. 

While users are likely to ad block/opt out of traditional ads, this is not the case for influencer content, making this impactful during cookie deprecation. 

Additionally, there is more clout when it comes to influencers –  67% of social media users consider a brand if it’s promoted by their followed influencer and 41% of shoppers will go on to purchase products from these influencers. There is a wide range of micro versus macro influencers, but there is certainly an engaged market by content type available for the taking.  

This form of paid media continues to grow, and we anticipate this becoming an important phase of e-commerce for social, especially seeing growth trajectory.  

Align your team 

Each brand and stakeholder needs to work with internal and external stakeholders, ensuring clarity on KPIs and gauging campaign success \while ensuring they are keeping the consumer in mind and maintaining privacy compliance.  This is integral to the entire digital journey. Make sure you are clear with your goals and driving purchase intent on each platform. 

Be certain to work specifically with your analytics team on measurement, ensuring you have all the CAPI/media mix models in place.  

The Journey 

Customers are looking to brands for experiences, but each brand needs to do its own deep dive into what success means to them. Ensure you use performing assets at different touchpoints (prospecting versus remarketing) and across channels. A strategy for different verticals will require a bird’s-eye view. Remember to build the brand for long-term retention.  

By leveraging social media insights, creative diversity, and strategic planning, you can maximize your holiday advertising impact. For more personalized assistance, contact our Paid Social Media experts.