Why You Should Give Your Ads a Head Start on the Holidays

Key Takeaways:

Start holiday advertising early to learn what works before your largest budgets go live.

Use early campaign data to improve products, audiences, creative, and landing pages before peak shopping season.

Enter November with proven campaigns (not unanswered questions).

Don’t Wait Until Black Friday to Start Learning

For many retailers, Black Friday still feels like the official starting line for holiday advertising. Campaigns go live, budgets increase, promotions begin, and everyone hopes their ads perform when it matters most. The challenge is that shoppers don’t wait until Black Friday to start making buying decisions.

Long before they click “Buy Now”, many customers are researching products, comparing retailers, reading reviews, watching videos, building wish lists, and deciding how much they want to spend. According to recent Salsify data, 17% of consumers expect to begin holiday shopping mid-season this year; 16% plan to start in October and 25% anticipate beginning in November. That means a significant portion of holiday shoppers are already in research mode well before the busiest promotional weeks arrive.

“Starting early gives holiday ads two jobs: reaching shoppers before the rush and collecting useful data before the largest budgets are committed.”

– Brandon COLE
Digital Ads Manager, Technology Therapy® Group

Why Starting Early Matters

Holiday eCommerce continues to grow. And so do the ways shoppers discover products. Adobe reports that U.S. online holiday spending in 2025 reached $257.8 billion between November 1 and December 31, a 6.8% increase over the previous year. More than half of that revenue came from smartphones, making mobile-friendly ads, landing pages, and shopping experiences more important than ever.

At the same time, shoppers are relying on more than traditional search and social media to find products. According to Salesforce, AI agents and shopping assistants influenced 20% of all retail sales during the 2025 holiday season, contributing to $262 billion in revenue through personalized recommendations and customer engagement. As AI-driven discovery becomes a larger part of the shopping journey, retailers need to think about how their products and offers appear across these emerging experiences as well.

For retailers, this changes how holiday advertising should be viewed. Starting early isn’t about running the same promotion for months. It’s about giving yourself time to learn. Early campaigns help you identify which products, audiences, messages, and landing pages perform best before your largest budgets are committed. By the time November arrives, you’re scaling proven campaigns instead of testing under pressure.

The Data Early Holiday Ads Can Give You

One of the biggest advantages of starting holiday campaigns early has very little to do with immediate sales. Instead, early advertising gives retailers something just as valuable: information.

Every impression, search, click, video view, product page visit, and add-to-cart helps answer an important question: Where should you invest your larger holiday budget when shopping activity accelerates?

Rather than guessing which products, audiences, messages, and landing pages will perform best during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you can use early campaigns to make those decisions based on real customer behavior. That’s where early advertising often delivers its greatest return.

Learn Which Products Generate Interest

One of the first things early campaigns reveal is what shoppers are actually looking for, not just what retailers think they’ll want.

Search campaigns can uncover the language customers use when looking for gifts, including recipients, occasions, price points, materials, product categories, and local shopping intent. Shopping campaigns and Performance Max can show which products consistently earn impressions, clicks, add-to-carts, and purchases, while Meta campaigns often highlight the products, videos, and gift ideas that capture attention before shoppers are ready to search for a specific item.

We often encourage retailers to look beyond simple sales reports. A product that generates strong engagement in September or October may deserve greater visibility in your gift guide, email campaigns, home page merchandising, or in-store displays—even if it hasn’t become your top seller yet.

For example, imagine a retailer testing two early campaigns: one focused on Holiday Gifts and another promoting Gifts Under $100. If the price-focused campaign consistently earns stronger engagement and product views, that insight can influence everything from ad creative to product collections and email campaigns before Cyber Week arrives.

Early advertising doesn’t just tell you what sold. It also reveals what customers are truly interested in buying.

Discover Which Audiences Respond

Not every holiday shopper behaves the same way. So, don’t let your advertising treat them as if they do.

Early campaigns allow you to compare how different audiences respond before your largest budgets are committed. You might discover that repeat customers engage more with early-access messaging while first-time visitors respond better to gift guides or educational content. Local shoppers may show greater interest in in-store pickup, while customers outside your market are more influenced by shipping incentives and delivery timelines.

These insights also help you build stronger remarketing audiences as the season progresses. Website visitors, product viewers, cart abandoners, video viewers, and social media engagers all become valuable audiences you can reconnect with later using more purchase-focused messaging.

That doesn’t mean creating dozens of tiny audience segments.

In fact, we often see retailers spread modest budgets across so many audiences that none of them generate meaningful learning. It’s usually more effective to test a handful of well-defined audiences, identify meaningful differences, and build from there.

Find the Creative That Earns Attention

One of the biggest advantages of early holiday advertising is that it gives you permission to experiment before every click feels expensive.

Instead of debating which creative might perform best, use early campaigns to compare different approaches. Gift guides, staff picks, product demonstrations, customer testimonials, unboxing videos, personalized gift ideas, financing options, and price-point messaging may all resonate differently depending on your audience and product mix.

The same is true for creative formats. Static images, short-form video, product carousels, catalog ads, and lifestyle photography each tell a different story, and every audience responds differently. Early testing helps you understand which combinations attract qualified shoppers before holiday competition drives advertising costs higher.

As you’re reviewing performance, don’t stop at clicks. Video completion rates, product-page engagement, add-to-cart behavior, and completed purchases all provide a more complete picture of whether your creative is attracting shoppers who are genuinely interested in buying.

We’ve found that the strongest holiday creative is rarely chosen during a brainstorming meeting. It’s discovered through testing.

Identify Friction Before Traffic Peaks

Every holiday campaign acts as a small stress test for your website. The more traffic your ads generate, the more likely they are to expose issues that might otherwise go unnoticed until your busiest shopping days. Early campaigns often reveal slow mobile pages, confusing gift navigation, broken links, missing shipping information, unavailable products, weak calls to action, or unnecessary checkout friction.

Advertising data can also uncover technical issues behind the scenes. We’ve worked with retailers whose campaigns appeared to be underperforming when the real problem was inaccurate conversion tracking, duplicate purchases being counted, missing phone call tracking, or campaigns optimizing toward the wrong conversion action altogether.

Finding those issues in September or October gives you time to correct them before peak holiday traffic magnifies every problem. By November, your focus should be on scaling successful campaigns, not troubleshooting preventable issues.

“Do not wait for the holiday rush to find out whether your ads are ready. Start early enough to learn, then use that data to spend smarter when it matters most.”

– Brandon COLE
Digital Ads Manager, Technology Therapy® Group

Turn Holiday Data Into Next Year’s Growth

One of the most overlooked benefits of holiday advertising is that its value doesn’t end when the season does. The insights you gather throughout the holidays can strengthen your marketing well into the following year. Search behavior, product affinities, audience engagement, and purchase paths all help you better understand how customers discover your business and what influences their buying decisions.

Those learnings can support post-holiday retention campaigns, loyalty initiatives, cross-selling opportunities, and future customer acquisition efforts. Instead of viewing holiday advertising as a short-term expense, think of it as an investment in customer knowledge that continues paying dividends long after the decorations come down.

The retailers that gain the most from holiday advertising aren’t always the ones with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones that use holiday data to make smarter decisions long after the season is over.

TTG’s Recommended Holiday Advertising Timeline

Every retailer’s season is different. But we’ve put together this timeline to help you decide what to prioritize as the holidays approach.

Think of this timeline as a planning framework rather than a rigid schedule. Some retailers begin holiday campaigns earlier or later depending on their products, sales cycle, and customer base, but the overall approach remains the same: prepare first, learn early, scale what works, and continue building customer relationships after the holidays.

Don’t Let November Be Your Test Run

Retailers who start holiday advertising early aren’t just hoping for more sales. They’re gathering the insights they’ll need to spend smarter when the season is at its busiest. By the time November arrives, the goal is to have confidence in your campaigns, not unanswered questions about your audiences, creative, or tracking.

Before increasing your holiday ad budget, take time to make sure your advertising foundation is ready. A little preparation now can help you avoid costly surprises later and position your business for a stronger holiday season.