The busy end-of-year season is full of fourth-quarter pressures, changing ad market dynamics, and last-minute media decisions. But marketers can still work toward ensuring that their campaigns achieve their goals in the last few weeks of the year with specific tools and features on The Trade Desk.
Advertising supply and demand fluctuates throughout the year — and the holiday season is no exception. Supply is somewhat volatile, but media buyers can work toward maximizing their campaigns’ scale by using a range of tools designed for pacing, performance and more.
In addition to market dynamics, consumers’ media consumption and device use around major global holidays may shift. Adding channels like digital audio, display or connected TV to your media mix could be in your campaign’s best interest.
Did you know?
A holiday shopping consumer survey discovered 44% of respondents find ads on streaming TV platforms helpful and 24% of respondents find ads on music streaming platforms helpful.1 And no surprises here — festive playlist streaming on Spotify increased 85%.2
So before you set your out-of-office alert, make the most of our platform’s tools to set your campaigns up for success in the last few weeks of the year. Start with our end-of-year media planning checklist:
- Set up auto reporting: You can leverage auto reporting that outlines pacing and performance when you’re not in the platform. With reporting updates sent to your email, you can monitor campaigns easily while you’re away from the office.
- Double-check your deals: If you’re working within programmatic guaranteed environments, it’s a good time to build in contingencies. For example, have a plan to shift spend to the Sellers and Publishers 500+ or open market if you’re unable to actualize spend in a specific deal type.
You’ll want to make sure you’re not targeting inventory that’s too constrained. And if there are specific deals at play, check if they are sending through ample available inventory. - Assess the health of your campaigns: Is your Decision Power score lower than 80? This platform metric can help you gauge if you have a buffer beyond what’s needed for your campaign to pace and spend your budget. Campaigns or ad groups with lower Decision Power scores represent areas with the most room for improvement.
- Widen your audience reach: Do the audiences you’re targeting have enough active IDs? If not, consider updating audiences with segments that are active on the platform. And if there are new audiences you’ve considered targeting in the past, now could be the time to reach them incrementally. Just upload or add new audience segments. Have you tried using holiday customer segments to build on your shopping season momentum?
- Loosen restrictions: Adjusting your frequency caps such that they are less restrictive is a great way to potentially increase the number of times viewers see your ads. During a busy season, increased frequency can help shoppers recall your brand at higher rates.
- Adjust pacing and performance: If you’ve added budgets in Q4, revisit the optimizations that have been applied to your campaigns. You can use features like “pace ahead” to help avoid end-of-year campaign shortfalls. And after you’ve assessed your Decision Power score and optimized its range, you can work toward ensuring you have the scale to deliver in full. For instance: Does your campaign fall behind in pacing on just weekends? If so, then you may want to assume it will fall behind the last few days of the year. You can address this now with platform features like “priorities” and “value-driven budget allocation” selections.
To make sure you’re reaching audiences efficiently with your budget in mind, you can select “allocate my budget for me based on value” in the platform. This option helps you enable your budget to be utilized fluidly throughout the campaign’s flight. - Ensure an omnichannel approach: Engagement with channels like digital audio has spiked, representing an opportunity for you to reach incremental audiences in new ways. On our platform, consider checking that “cross device” is enabled across your campaigns. You can adjust this setting within Ad Groups under Optimizations > Data.
If there’s a channel that is not scaling or may be increasing in cost, it might be a good time to consider reinvestment in other channels that are more conducive for connecting with consumers in their “holiday mode.” - Double-check creatives: Are your creative flight dates updated? Have you checked for any expired creatives? It seems simple, but you’ll want to make sure to update creative cut-off dates through the end of the year if they’re set to expire.
Before you embark on that annual ski trip or perfect your eggnog recipe, remember to give your campaigns the best chance to succeed. The better you’ve managed your campaign goals, spend, and targeting ahead of time, the better off your campaign should pace while you rest and recharge during the holiday season.
Your account representative at The Trade Desk is here to help too. Reach out to them if you need assistance with any of the items on this checklist.
Sources:
1. The Trade Desk Intelligence and Appinio, holiday shopping research, U.S., March 2024.
2. Spotify first-party data, Spotify users, moment = holidays, September to December 2023, U.S.