How Advertisers Can Survive (and Thrive) This Holiday Shopping Season

With consumers demanding more from every interaction, and competition for ad space at an all-time high, brands can make small campaign adjustments to improve efficiency and impact as we head into holiday shopping season.

We asked our partners - brands, agencies, measurement partners - and product experts what strategies are top of mind right now. Here’s what we heard:

Efficiency, Efficiency, Efficiency

Every dollar counts. This has long been a north star for performance marketers, but in today’s landscape, it’s even more paramount. Consumers are discerning while they shop, so it’s never been more important to make sure you’re delivering the right ad to the right person at the right time.

• Good Data <> Good Signal: Leveraging something like Snap Pixel + CAPI can help advertisers reach the right audience, measure events that matter, and optimize campaigns based on real results. Advertisers that use both the Snap Pixel and CAPI have seen the following:

  • +22% increase in attributed purchases

  • +25% increase in purchase value

  • -18% reduction in Cost per purchase ¹
    

• Bid Strategies That Drive Results: With the help of AI and ML, enhancements to ad delivery are happening industry-wide, helping advertisers reach the audiences most likely to convert. Snap recently launched an updated version of our target cost bid strategy (tCPA), which aims to keep average CPA within a reasonable range of the bid, so advertisers can scale with larger budgets and trust that CPA will not overshoot the set target cost.

Focusing on these lower funnel optimizations can make a significant difference in holiday campaign results. It’s a competitive time, so give yourself a boost.

Measure Beyond Last Click

Last click misses a lot of the value you work hard to achieve - especially with your holiday campaigns in Q4. Make sure your measurement (and your execution) is set up to capture it all: 1) Multi-touch attribution to better quantify the consumer journey; 2) Halo impact to understand the performance across distribution channels; and 3) Experiment now to develop winning strategies for holiday.

• CFO = BFF: It’s no secret that every marketing dollar is logged, tracked and questioned when it comes to ROI. Turn your CFO into your BFF by helping them see the incomplete picture that comes from only tracking last click. It misses out on critical sales channels like walled gardens and offline. And Snapchat measurement partners like Fospha, Measured, Northbeam, Triple Whale, and WorkMagic, can seamlessly help you create and understand this holistic picture. Spend time with your finance team to educate them about the value of all of your touchpoints, and how they’re supporting business growth. Test, learn, and iterate to give your stakeholders confidence through repeated testing rather than one and done.

Come As You Are - Opt for Authentic Creative

We’re constantly hearing advertisers ask how they can cut through the clutter this time of year. The mechanics of delivering an ad to the right person at the right time are critical, and the flywheel wouldn’t be complete without creating resonant content for your audience and meeting them where they are.

• Jump Out of the Scroll and into the Chat: Whether you’re testing a creator campaign or experimenting with lo-fi content in your vertical videos, advertisers need to speak the same language as their audience and show up in the surfaces they’re already spending time in.
  
  Sponsored Snaps is one way to do that. The experience starts with a brand showing up right in a Snapchatter’s chat feed. The Snapchatter can open the Snap to full-screen media, and after seeing the ad, they’re returned to the chat feed, at which point, they have the opportunity to open the Snap again to a 1:1 chat with the advertiser. Sponsored Snaps are proving highly effective in driving incremental conversions, delivering up to a 22% increase when included in an advertiser's broader Snap campaign mix. ²
  
  

• Lean into Creator Partnerships: It’s not about the most beautiful, polished imagery and videos, but rather all about the realness. We’ve all seen the impact of watching one of our favorite creators use a new lip balm and thinking, “should I buy that?” In fact, a study with IPG Magna found that 49% of Snapchatters are likely to purchase products featured by creators they see on our platform. ³ To help your brand stand out this shopping season, consider creators who speak directly to the audience you’re trying to reach in a truly authentic way. Meeting your audience where they are already trusting their favorite creators’ recommendations should be in your holiday shopping strategy this year.

TLDR: when brands use their creative as an opportunity to connect with their audience - across the funnel - performance results speak for themselves.

We discussed all of this and much more at our Performance in a Snap Summit 2025! Interested in gaining more insight into performance on Snapchat? Check out success stories from our partners.

And curious how Snapchatters celebrate, shop, and engage during the holidays? Stay tuned in to our Snap for Business blog for more holiday-related insights.