The holiday shopping season is almost upon us! Within the 8 weeks leading up to the New Year, retail and holiday shopping volume explodes online and offline. Due to the increased advertising demand, inventory and audience data becomes more expensive. With our historical knowledge of the 4th quarter digital retail space, it’s important to make sure your digital partners have anticipated these changes and have made adjustments in order to drive performance.

These optimization strategies will help deliver the most targeted and efficient online media plan during the volatile holiday season:

1. Make delivery and pacing adjustments to account for Thanksgiving weekend traffic drops. We have seen over the past several years substantial drops on Thanksgiving day, Black Friday and the holiday weekend.
2. Purchase inventory across sites that see a seasonal spike and have holiday content. However, be strategic! With heavy in-market ad budgets from big box retailers like Target and Walmart, focus on increasing your impression load in the first 10 days of December and then again in the last week of the month, keeping spend to a minimum in the week leading up to Christmas. This strategy makes the most effective use of your ad budget.
3. Leverage cross-device targeting to ensure you’re reaching consumers across all devices in the household.
4. Optimize campaigns on recent shopper cookie data and target the 1-14 day shoppers to help increase performance and provide high quality traffic to your site.
5. Ensure that effective reach, scalability and targeting parameters are in place to drive lower funnel activities, leading to better in store sales.
6. Utilize predictive data, also known as look-a-like modeling, to ensure you are appearing on sites that index high for your target consumers.

Following these strategies is sure to deliver a successful 4th quarter!