The Effects of Seasonal Trends on Paid Advertising for Ecommerce 

‍Seasonality is an often overlooked yet powerful component of all successful ecommerce advertising. App brands that tap into seasonal trends, whether it be holidays or special events, can drive substantially higher and more cost-efficient engagement through their ads. Those who don’t are simply selling themselves short. 

You’ve likely heard someone say: “I’ll wait until Black Friday Day to buy that”, or “It’s better to buy this during a summer sale”. 

Or some variant of these statements. 

The point is that shoppers often align their purchases with key moments in the year, and these behaviours have a major impact on your ad performance and budget. With as many as 90% of shoppers looking for seasonal deals before making a purchase, factoring seasonality in your paid ad strategy is a must for success. 

In this post, we’ll examine how seasonality affects your ad strategy at a campaign level, and how to position your paid ads to drive growth when shoppers are most active. 

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What is Seasonal Marketing in E-Commerce? 

Seasonality refers to sales and traffic fluctuations (usually increases) at specific times of the year. They often occur around certain holidays, events, weather and climate changes, or other cultural traditions, many of which are celebrated or held globally. 

They include: 

• Religious Holidays (I.e., Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, Thanksgiving)
• Commercialized Shopping Days & Periods (i.e., Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Back-to-School)
• General Seasonal Changes (i.e., buying clothes for the winter or summer)

Although weather and tradition typically induce seasonal changes, industry-, region-, and product-specific seasonality can exist as well. 

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How Does Seasonality Matters in Your E-Commerce Advertising Budget?

Seasonality directly influences the cost and competition of your ad keywords. Depending on the time of year, you might have to increase or decrease your ad budget to sustain visibility and performance. 

If, for example, you’re selling electronic gear, you might need to increase your ad budget on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Boxing Day, or conversely, during Back-to-School weeks in late August. Generally speaking, all costs—CAC, CPC, CPI, and ROAS—are higher during high-intent periods.

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How Seasonality Affects Ecommerce Advertising Performance

• Ad Formats — Some ad types perform better or worse during particular seasons or times of the year. For example, dynamic product ads, shopping carousels, and promotional video/short-form videos perform better during Black Friday or Back-to-School seasons when people are actively seeking deals. Conversely, they’re not as effective as static imagery or evergreen video during off-peak periods, which are more cost-efficient. 

• Conversions—During peak seasons, conversion rates can increase by as much as 30%. However, that means your messaging, media strategy, and placement choices have to be strong to prevent your ads from becoming wasted opportunities. 

• Engagement—Seasonal marketing campaigns generally give rise to a lift in traffic, volume, install rates, purchase intent, and app open rates, especially when the messaging aligns with the holiday theme. That said, competing brands with a similar or better offer can “steal” traffic and sales if they reach your audience more effectively. 

• Audiences—During peak seasons, audiences across the entire funnel tend to show increased purchase intent, although engagement varies by channel and competitiveness. Top-of-funnel users can progress to the consideration stage faster due to heightened urgency, while re-engagement campaigns are highly effective at bringing back cart abandoners and lapsed users. 

The costs are higher, the stakes are greater, but the audiences are stickier during peak seasons. Ultimately, the opportunities increase during high-intent seasons. 

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Consequences of Ignoring Seasonal Marketing Trends?

Considering how 27% of annual retail sales come from seasonal marketing campaigns, ignoring seasonality undermines the overall effectiveness of your ad campaigns. And in multiple ways. 

First off, you risk inaccurate campaign performance since ads that perform well during peak seasons might not  be as effective during off-peak times and vice versa. Second, you risk inefficient budget allocation, which commonly occurs as budgets being underfunded during peak periods, or overfunded during off-peak times. 

Third, there can be a misalignment between your ad campaigns and actual product availability, leading to inventory shortages during peak seasons or excess inventory during low periods. 

Lastly, you could miss out on relevance, especially opportunities to tap into cultural moments that could translate into massive engagement. 

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How Do You Track Seasonal Fluctuations & Trends? 

To track seasonality across your campaigns, you’ll need to examine a mix of historical data and present activity. As the saying goes, “history repeats itself”. True, major fluctuations in traditional patterns can happen (i.e., as they did with the COVID-19 pandemic), but seasonality is relatively consistent. 

Tools & Tips to Track Seasonal Marketing Trends

• Compare week-over-week and same-season, year-over-year data for paid UA for ecommerce app metrics including AOV, ROAS, CPC, and CPA. Additionally, it’s also wise to track metrics through MMPs and at the SKAN level like ARPU, blended cost per incremental user, payback windows, and themed creative-level performance. 
• Check in-app events to identify how seasonal paid campaigns change funnel performance by cohort. 
• Monitor app store metrics such as search volume, category rankings, and conversion rates. 
• Observe external trends with tools such as Google Trends, App Store trends, social media platforms, and market reports to correlate sales and traffic spikes with your own data. 
• Tag your ad campaigns by season or events, and run post-mortem checks after each seasonal peak to see what worked and should be implemented for the following year. 

Use these tactics in combination with each other to get a more holistic view of seasonal ad performance. The wider your scope of data, the more effective your pattern recognition will be. 

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How Do You Incorporate Seasonality in Paid Advertising for Ecommerce?

There’s no single strategy to optimize ads for seasonality, but every winning seasonal strategy incorporates the following:

1. Map Your Seasonal Calendar
2. Use Off-Peak Periods for Testing & Learning
3. Ramp Up Budgets Before Peak Seasons
4. Optimize Creatives & Messaging for the Season
5. Balance Acquisition, Relevance, and Retention
6. Prioritize Attribution, Measurement, and Incrementality
7. Setup Operational Prep

Let’s examine each one. 

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Map Your Seasonal Calendar

Identify your most active seasonal periods, both global and regional. Align all events, promotions, and releases to key dates and seasonal moments so your UA, CRM, and product all move in the same direction. 

Use Off-Peak Periods for Testing & Learning

When CPCs and CPIs drop, run some tests. Seek new audiences and lookalikes. Try new creative concepts, formats, and messaging. Deploy new bidding strategies. Keep experimenting until you find the hooks and formats that have the highest performance potential. 

Ramp Up Budgets Before Seasonal Peaks

Gradually increase your budgets 2-3 weeks before seasonal spikes to send algorithmic signals and build remarketing pools. Focus on high-intent formats, retargeting high-value segments, and employing ROAS or value-based bidding. 

Adapt Creative to the Season at Hand

Tailor your visuals, keywords, and messaging to reflect the season. That may include pricing, language, and cultural norms. Additionally, prioritize urgency and value in-season incentives such as limited-time deals, free shipping, and product bundling (which can increase AOV by 20% during seasonal marketing campaigns). Lastly, increase creative velocity so that you can generate new and impactful ideas to prevent seasonal fatigue resulting from one-note messaging. 

Balance Acquisition, Reactivation, and Retention

During peak season, split your budget between new user acquisition and the reactivation of disengaged users via retargeting. During the off-season, move more toward lifecycle and retention to increase LTV from users acquired during seasonal peaks. 

Plan Measurement, Attribution, and Incrementality

Expect certain metrics such as CPC and CPI to rise during seasonal peaks. That said, look out for whether AOVs, CVRs, and LTVs increase enough to keep ROAS in a healthy range. Also, use cohort analysis and incrementality tests to learn which seasonal marketing campaigns truly drive new revenue versus those that merely pull purchases forward. 

Operational Prep: Tech and Teams

Ensure your tracking, SKAN/Privacy Sandbox setups, deep links, and product feeds are clean and functional well before a seasonal peak, because fixing measurement mid-season is costly. Also, pre-construct your campaign structures, creative variants, and contingency budgets so in-season changes are just toggles or budget shifts, not whole new builds. 

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The Season For Success

The good thing about seasonality is that there are usually multiple “peaks” every year. That means you have more than one opportunity to capitalize on natural spikes in sales and traffic—you just have to listen to the data. That could be a combination of acquisition costs, conversion rate shifts, creative performance and more, but once visible, you can plan for the next spike. And by doing so, you can maximize your ad performance to drive growth that’s otherwise hard to come by at off-peak times. 

At Z2A Digital, we specialize in helping ecommerce brands capitalize on these moments. Our playbooks, performance frameworks, and channel expertise ensure that your campaigns, creatives, and measurement systems are fully optimized for seasonal demand.        

Looking to stay ahead of and drive growth from seasonal marketing campaigns? Book a demo with us to see how we can help you stay agile and profitable during seasonal peaks. 

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Frequently Asked Questions 

How does seasonality influence marketing strategies? 

Seasonality aligns the timing of your marketing efforts with specific times of the year, namely, holidays, events, festivals, and celebrations. Depending on the particular season, shoppers tend to purchase more products, making these times optimal for ad performance and ROI.  Effective seasonal strategies include adjusting budgets, updating creative, and activating high-intent audiences at the right time.

How can seasonal trends impact an advertising budget?

Seasonal fluctuations can make it necessary for you to increase your budget during seasonal peaks, and decrease your spend during the off-season. CPMs/CPCs and competition rises, making it vital to adjust your budget. You must do this to match consumer demand and engagement at the time to capitalize on your opportunities to maximize your ROI. 

What products have seasonality?

• General e-commerce marketplaces—Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Boxing Day
• Fashion and apparel apps—Back-to-School, Summer, End-of-Year Seasons
• Home and decor—End-of-Year Holiday Seasons
• Beauty & cosmetics—Singles Day, End-of-Year Holidays
• Grocery & quick commerce—Long Weekends, Sports/Cultural Events (i.e., SuperBowl)