New year, new holiday advertising campaigns, new challenges and opportunities.
As we approach the 2025 holiday season, we’re hearing a lot about economic uncertainty — but media costs are close to 2024’s benchmarks.
According to EMARKETER, every top-line category they track will have weaker sales growth trends in 2025 compared with 2024. However, they will still see growth: total US retail sales for November and December 2025 are predicted to rise by 1.2%, though this is a drop from the full-year growth rate.
What do advertisers need to know about planning and budgeting for 2025 holiday campaigns? We’ve been tracking the latest trends, including how to deal with the Cyber Five, channels with explosive growth, and how advertisers are expected to balance experimentation and results this holiday season.
The big question: Should I adjust my forecasts for the 2025 holidays?
Honestly, it’s based on your industry and individual business. If you’ve seen YoY growth yearlong, it’s not unreasonable to predict you’ll see growth through the holidays.
Of course, the growth may not be as large as in 2024: Nearly half (47%) of holiday gift buyers are concerned about tariffs and planning to buy fewer gifts or spend less.
The best thing you could do for 2025 is shift focus to profitability. This means scrutinizing ad spend, refining campaigns, and ensuring every dollar is driving sustainable returns. This will be a better marker of your efficiency through this holiday season than top-line sales growth alone.
For most businesses, plan for a more modest growth rate. The cash-strapped year coming to a close means that in-store sales growth will be flat, and while e-commerce will see a modest expansion, it will be driven almost entirely by mobile shopping. Adjusting forecasts to reflect these realities can help avoid disappointment and allow for more strategic planning.
Where you might modify your budget is earlier ad spend in October. According to BazaarVoice, more consumers plan to shop in September and October (37%) than in November and December (32%). Shoppers are getting used to earlier sales, like those from Walmart and Amazon, and start purchasing gifts earlier.
If you’re wondering how to allocate budget for the 2025 holidays, we wrote a whole guide to 2025 holiday ad spend.
While most advertisers will be relying on staples like display ads, signals point toward growing interest in a couple of new channels perfect for the holidays — for both audiences and advertisers:
Social media: Gen Z will be using social proof on platforms like TikTok for gift inspiration and research in 2025 more than ever before. Double down on your social ads if you’re targeting a younger audience with the strategies we recommend below.
Holiday CTV: CTV is rising in popularity for its effectiveness in brand awareness (though don’t discount its other uses!). TV ads are legendary for holiday brand awareness campaigns, and with the advent of CTV, the channel has only risen in popularity.
Mobile: Mobile commerce is expected to grow 7% through the holidays, almost twice the growth of ecommerce overall. Focus attention on mobile devices specifically.
Rolling any new experiments into an omnichannel approach will give you the best chances for creating multiple touchpoints with a customer, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
What should your holiday ads include in 2025? There are some ways you can adapt to the current economic climate and encourage conversion even with some factors working against you.
This is the season of sales — even more so this year than ever before.
With customers spending less and purchasing fewer items overall, they’ll have a stronger deal focus. Push holiday discounts earlier and for longer; consider sales ideas to supplement the Cyber Five on weeks and days where CPM won’t be costly.
Not every shopper is swayed by discounts alone. Showcase product durability, quality, or bundled value (e.g., “buy one, get a bonus gift”) to differentiate your brand and give cost-conscious shoppers a reason to choose you.
Furthermore, promoting smaller-ticket items can encourage customers to make impulse treat-yourself purchases. Categories like toys and hobbies, and apparel, footwear, and accessories are predicted to lead online sales growth, suggesting that consumers are still willing to spend on more manageable, lower-cost items.
With Gen Z and Millennials using social media to research products, you can get ahead of this initiative by showcasing UGC in your ads. Share 5-star reviews, testimonials, or videos of customers using your product or service.
Layaway is nothing new. However, the growing surge of popularity in buy now, pay later for small purchases is. Consider promoting your flexible payment options in ads (for example, suggesting “prices as low as $30/mo”). This will incentivize shoppers who don’t have the money to purchase outright but can manage a payment plan.
Encourage quicker decision-making by highlighting limited-time offers, countdowns, or low-stock alerts in your creative. Shoppers are more intentional this year, so urgency can help cut down on long consideration windows.
Shorter sales can outperform month-long deals in this time period because they incentivize shoppers to buy now. Coupled with countdown timer creatives from a Dynamic and Static/HTML5 POV, they tend to drive more urgency and immediate conversions. When we launch a sale too early, we see that consumers will wait until the last minute to purchase.
Holidays aren't just for acquiring new customers. Use first-party data to segment and deliver more personalized ad experiences that speak directly to past buyers, loyalty members, or lapsed customers.
Remind past buyers why they loved your brand, and retarget high-intent shoppers with dynamic product ads and exclusive offers to maximize ROAS from audiences that already know you.
The Cyber Five are, again, close to the last ship date before Christmas, only one day longer than the 2024 holidays.
And despite many claims that Black Friday is dead, this sales season is still important to shoppers: 73% plan to shop Black Friday deals. EMARKETER expects growth, though at a lower percentage change than previous years:
(Source: EMARKETER)
With large companies like Amazon and Walmart pushing sales earlier, it’s a good idea to start promoting BFCM sales long before they actually arrive. Consider early-bird promotions and VIP access ads ahead of the BFCM rush.
We still see our clients’ best-performing days of the season on BFCM, reinforcing that customers are going to wait until the last possible minute to make the best purchase they can.
Remember the AI ad from Coca-Cola a few holiday seasons ago? It was met with severe backlash, prompting a discussion on AI’s place in ad creative and strategy.
Now isn’t the time to launch an AI agent that will run an entire campaign for you wholesale. Nor is it ever the time to use AI to replace human creativity.
Instead, savvy advertisers will be using AI to enhance existing campaign strategies. Here’s how they’ll use it for holiday advertising strategies:
Smart budget allocations: AI can advise on how to shift budget across ad groups, campaigns, products, or audience segments to maximize ROI during high-traffic periods like Cyber Five or the last week before Christmas.
Creative suggestions: Use AI to test headlines, ad copy, and creative variations.
Timing optimization: Get recommendations on the best days or times to push certain ads, particularly your sales.
Post-campaign reports: After the holidays, AI can generate reports comparing performance across products, campaigns, or segments, giving you takeaways for the next year.
AdRoll’s AI assistant, for instance, can give you advice on your holiday plans, suggest optimizations, and create tailored reports for your campaigns.
Despite its challenges, the 2025 holiday season could be your best yet if you strategize well. We’ve asked our dedicated team of account managers their plans for holiday strategy and seen tailor-made approaches that set their customers up for success — and every advertiser will need to build their own custom approach to the holidays.
Want to give AdRoll a shot? Check out our platform today.
Last updated on September 15th, 2025.
