The Ultimate Cheat Sheet to Holiday Advertising in 2024

Holiday advertising, while crucial to year-over-year success, can be a daunting task for even the most popular brands. You’re not alone if navigating holiday ads for your business feels more like driving through a blizzard than taking a sleigh ride through a winter wonderland.

Luckily, all the major ad platforms have released holiday advertising playbooks anyone can refer to when in a seasonal marketing pinch. We’ve compiled the best holiday advertising and marketing resources into this one handy list you can check twice (or more) to grow your business during the most festive time of year.

Contents

• Google Ads
• Microsoft Ads
• Meta Ads
• Yelp Ads
• TikTok Advertising
• Spotify Ads
• Amazon Ads

Holiday advertising tips by platform

Here are the best holiday advertising resources from the top marketing platforms this season.

🎁 For more holiday help, download our free guide to over 130 of the best online marketing tips for more traffic, leads, and sales!

Google Ads

To kick off our list of holiday advertising resources, we’re going with one from a platform that’s extremely popular any time of year: Google Ads.

This past August, Google released an article titled “Top tips to optimize for the holiday season and beyond with Google AI.” This resource is essentially a list of ways Google recommends businesses build and optimize holiday ad campaigns using Google’s AI-powered features and tools. If you’re trying to get ahead of competitors this season, it also signals which ideas revolve around brand-new Google Ads features.

Here are the main takeaways:

• Prioritize customer data and insights for a better performance. According to Google, 72% of ecommerce businesses report that advanced consumer insights are helpful in their holiday planning, so advertisers should focus on this in their account. For example, you can try the new customer acquisition goal in Performance Max or Search campaigns for clearer tracking and better bidding optimization.
• Use updated holiday creative to increase sales during the holiday season. Google’s AI can automatically generate assets in Product Studio and beyond, allowing you to quickly create and edit ad images, product photos, and more.
• Be prepared for seasonal shifts in performance. If you use the recommendations section of Google Ads and/or Google Ads smart bidding but expect your performance to fluctuate (throwing off what Google’s machine learning would typically recommend), you can apply seasonality adjustments for more tailored AI optimization from Google.

🚨Are your current PPC campaigns ready for the holidays? Find out with our Free Google Ads Grader!

Microsoft Ads

Similarly to Google Ads, Microsoft Ads released a holiday advertising playbook in September. Microsoft Ads’ top recommendations for this holiday season are:

• Use multiple ad formats to gain exposure fast. Microsoft reports that users spend more when exposed to more unique ad formats. Advertisers should try CTV ads, display ads, videos, and native ads as early as possible to generate brand awareness and consideration throughout the season.
• Advertisers should focus their efforts on the Cyber 5. Microsoft Ads discusses the importance of advertising heavily during the “Cyber 5,” also known as the timeframe between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday that includes Black Friday and Small Business Saturday.

Like the Google holiday ads article, Microsoft Ads also encourages advertisers to take advantage of its AI-powered ad solutions to generate ad assets and optimize campaign bidding and targeting. The resource finishes out with a handy holiday checklist, too.

Meta Ads

Meta Ads offers a free-to-download guide on holiday advertising that’s broken out into four steps, which are:

1. Plan: To get ready for the holidays, Meta advertisers should focus on setting a budget, optimizing for the Conversions API, and simplifying their account structure.
2. Experiment: Meta Ads recommends that businesses A/B test using Meta Advantage+ features, and source inspiration from other successful brands to brainstorm experiments.
3. Push: Use recommended best practices from Meta Ads to efficiently measure and progress holiday campaign performance.
4. Sustain: Meta reports that Facebook ad costs are typically lower in the new year. By keeping holiday campaigns active for longer, advertisers can maintain success at a cheaper cost.

The guide also covers strategies for customer engagement and lead generation during the holiday season using Facebook Lead Ads.

💡See how much your seasonal Facebook campaigns might cost using our free Facebook Ads benchmarks report!

Yelp Ads

While Yelp doesn’t have a downloadable guide for seasonal marketing, it does offer a comprehensive article full of holiday tips for Yelp advertising.

Here are some of the recommended best practices for holiday Yelp ads:

• Focus on the quality of your Yelp ads (from your audience’s perspective). Yelp puts an emphasis on ensuring your holiday ads are genuinely helpful to your target audience. This will help your ads stand out during such a busy season. For example, you want your ad text to be relevant and personalized.
• Make it as easy as possible for customers to convert from your Yelp ads. To solve any logistical problems for your customers during this time of year, you could mention options like “buy online and pickup in-store” or “buy now, pay later.”

In addition to Yelp’s holiday article, the platform offers a free on-demand webinar covering Yelp advertising for the holiday season.

TikTok Advertising

TikTok publishes a holiday advertising guide every year, and this year’s covers:

• The importance of using holiday hashtags. The platform recommends using these top seven TikTok hashtags to increase holiday visibility: #thanksgiving, #blackfriday, #cybermonday, #christmas, #hanukkah, #kwanzaa, #nochebuena.
• Getting ahead of your holiday marketing plan is crucial for TikTok campaign success. TikTok recommends creating content for before, during, and after the holiday buzz.
• There’s a three-part formula for the perfect holiday TikTok. TikTok encourages businesses to create videos that include a killer hook within the first three to five seconds, unique selling points, and one clear CTA (and consider partnering with an influencer).

For advertisers just starting this season, the guide also includes some insight into the ad campaign buildout process in TikTok Ads.

Spotify Ads

The latest holiday ads resource from Spotify Ads might not be as long as some of the others on our list, but it still covers a ton of holiday marketing stats you can use to get ahead this season.

For example, did you know that festive playlist streaming increases by 59% in November and 85% in December? That means a larger potential audience is available for your business to tap into this time of year.

Here are some of the other quick tips from Spotify for seasonal ads:

• Combine different ad formats for the perfect Spotify holiday campaign strategy. Spotify recommends using multiple ad formats to ensure your holiday ads are seen and heard at different moments throughout the day.
• Use first-party data to build a Spotify audience you can count on this season. Whether you deliver a festive message via audio or video (or both) you can pair Spotify with your business’s first-party data to help your ads reach audiences when they’re most engaged.

Amazon Ads

The holiday advertising resource on the Amazon Ads site is a compilation of articles created to help brands grow during the platform’s busiest season. It includes:

• A seasonal marketing calendar for key Amazon holiday dates. You’ll want to ensure you have ads running during Amazon’s high-volume shopping days like Diwali and New Year’s.
• Case studies and insights from thought leaders. Amazon refers to six different successful holiday ad campaigns businesses can learn from. It also includes a link to insights from a marketing expert regarding the importance of incorporating Amazon Ads into a cross-channel marketing strategy for maximized holiday success.
• A holiday marketing FAQ section. Amazon provides answers to key holiday advertising questions like “when is the holiday season?” and “what are the key seasonal and cultural events marketers should prioritize?”

Use these resources for a winning holiday advertising game plan

No matter which marketing channels you decide to leverage this holiday season, there are resources available to help you navigate the rush of festivities.

These holiday advertising playbooks all have one theme in common: consumer engagement has been proven to increase during the holiday months. So, regardless of whether you’re advertising sales or services, you’re more likely to see campaign success when you enable campaigns over the holidays and all winter. For more help with your seasonal marketing, see how our solutions can empower you to make the most out of your holiday campaigns.