Meta Releases New Guides for Holiday Marketing

This week Meta published a series of blog posts on planning holiday campaigns. They explain how shoppers' paths to discovering and purchasing products have changed, and how marketers can update their approach to match new discovery and buying behaviors. The key takeaway: shoppers now find products across a wide range of platforms, and brands need to account for that.

According to Meta's data, 86% of holiday shoppers worldwide use social media to find inspiration in Reels, Stories and Feed, while 58% of Gen Z shoppers discover gifts specifically through Reels and Stories. Users who discover a product on Instagram go on to purchase it 64% of the time. The company notes that the more ad formats used, the more precisely its AI-powered Advantage+ system can match the right creative to the right person throughout the season.

Meta breaks the holiday shopping journey into four stages: discovery (October through early November), deals (Black Friday and Cyber Monday), gifting (throughout December), and fresh start (late December through New Year). Marketers are advised to launch campaigns for each stage as early as possible, giving Meta's systems enough time to learn audience response.

The company says Advantage+ campaigns help marketers adapt to shifting discovery patterns by automatically delivering ads to the right shoppers in phases from October through December. Meta explains that the system reads real-time signals of user intent and places ads on whichever platform is most likely to prompt that person's next action.

Meta recommends brands turn on Advantage+ placements as early as possible so the learning period can begin, ensuring campaigns are running at peak performance by Black Friday. The company also advises marketers to use Conversion Lift analysis to more accurately measure the shopping journey and properly attribute sales driven by Meta campaigns.