Holiday Shopping Trends 2025: What Our Experts Predict for the Peak Season

The holiday season is always the biggest moment for brands to capture demand. This means that in 2025, digital advertisers will be under a lot of pressure to deliver results in a marketing landscape that has become increasingly complex.

Consumer expectations are evolving, and competition continues to increase along with advertising costs. To help you stay ahead during the peak shopping season, here, industry experts at Taboola have shared their informed predictions and strategies for this year’s holiday shopping trends.

Follow These 10 Holiday Season Trends by Our Taboola Experts

1. Keep Testing Your Creative

This holiday season, advertisers should resist the temptation to rely solely on what’s worked before. As Katia Gelfman, senior growth marketing manager at Taboola, explains, “A new year is a great opportunity to challenge your creative tactics, whether it’s trying a new format that you didn’t try before, or thinking about new ways to have a better understanding of your creative’s results.”

Successful campaigns are the result of constant iteration and a willingness to try new things. You can uncover winning combinations by testing new formats, such as user-generated content (UGC), motion graphics, or AI-generated visuals.

That said, the creative testing process should go beyond just changing visuals. As Gelfman notes, “You can try to find the strength of your creative — is it a high CTR? High CVR? Then, think about how you combine these two strengths together, and iterate again. If a woman creative worked for you, try a man. If a specific hook worked for you, try it with a different angle. Remember, your customers are relying on your advertisements when they’re considering whether to buy your product/service or not, so remember to be innovative, and don’t just stick with the ones that are already working. Maybe there’s another creative iteration that could have worked even better!”

In short, continuous experimentation could be the secret to discovering your next top performing ad.

2. Maintain Precise Tracking

With increased competition and the shift toward AI-powered performance marketing, precise tracking of your campaigns has never been more critical, especially during the peak holiday season.

“As the holiday shopping season approaches, brands face increased pressure to maximize performance across every touchpoint,” says Shani Zagron, an expert campaign manager at Taboola. “With Google’s shift toward first-party data and similar changes across platforms, precise and privacy-compliant tracking is now essential. Strong data infrastructure enables real-time optimization, accurate attribution, and smarter budget allocation — all critical for capturing demand during the most competitive retail period of the year.”

As we head toward holiday season, then, now is the time to ensure your tools and processes are set up to provide you with a clear view of the factors driving results. This way, you can adjust your ad spend dynamically as consumer behavior shifts throughout the season.

3. Navigate Higher Digital Marketing Costs

Not surprisingly, the holiday season brings increased competition, but there are ways to keep your costs manageable. Taboola’s demand generation director, Rima Sherman, says that, “Marketers need to think outside the box when it comes to campaign timing — success during the holiday season isn’t just about showing up, it’s about showing up early and strategically.”

By ramping up campaigns in Q3, Sherman suggests, marketers can establish their brand voice, refine their messaging, and stay top-of-mind for consumers before peak shopping season begins. “This early momentum reduces acquisition costs and ensures brand familiarity when shoppers are ready to act. You can then also double down in Q5 to capture last-minute buyers and extend the season’s impact beyond the traditional peak.”

Rather than relying on traditional channels, Sherman adds, try to think strategically about when and where you spend. “Diversifying channels and identifying new growth engines — whether it’s emerging platforms, new placements within existing ones, or untapped audience segments — can give your brand a competitive edge,” she says. “Early action, creative timing, and smart platform choices are key to winning the season.”

4. Consider Your Analytics

Holiday marketing campaigns can’t succeed without clear, actionable insights at every stage of the funnel. As Yoav Shaham, data and measurement team lead at Taboola, puts it, “When it comes to reporting and analyzing your holiday campaign performance, the conventional wisdom is that if it’s not measurable, it’s not worth doing.” But, he insists, this doesn’t mean you should focus solely on bottom-of-the-funnel metrics, which are traditionally easier to track and more directly tied to business results. “Ideally, you should determine your most important KPIs across the entire funnel, top to bottom, and make sure to set the right goals for every phase.”

By defining and measuring KPIs across the entire customer journey, from awareness right through to purchase, marketers can aim for sustainable growth, rather than just achieving quick wins. This broader perspective is critical for optimizing your campaigns throughout the funnel.

5. Be Flexible With Your Campaign Budget

The days of fixed budgets per channel are over, especially during the holiday rush. “In 2025, the changing landscape of online marketing demands flexibility more than ever,” says Taboola’s growth marketing director, Eyal Shnaides. “It’s no longer just Google and Meta: Most advertisers now run campaigns on at least two or more additional platforms, like retail media, TikTok, programmatic, or content discovery platforms.”

It’s a shift, Shnaides adds, that has created more competition and made both performance and cost less predictable. “The brands that succeed will be the ones that stay agile, constantly reallocating budgets based on real-time signals like performance trends, creative fatigue, and shifting demand. Fixed budgets by channel are becoming outdated. Flexibility is not just important — it’s essential for maximizing results during the peak season.”

If you can adopt this flexible mindset, you’ll be much better positioned to make the most of the holiday season.

6. Focus On Content Personalization

During the holidays, consumers are bombarded with an overwhelming number of ads, promotions, and competing offers, so generic messaging doesn’t cut it. You need to produce creatives that are not only relevant, but also highly personalized.

“In 2025, successful brands will be ones that deliver custom experiences at every touchpoint,” says Maayan Leshem, director of creative shop and AI strategies at Taboola. “With AI-powered personalization, you can go way beyond adding someone’s first name to an email: You can serve content that feels custom-made for each shopper’s interests and behaviors.”

You could, for example, use browsing and purchase history data to create gift guides tailored to each user. Let’s say a shopper recently browsed hiking gear and outdoor apparel: You might highlight a “Top Gifts for Adventurers” collection, featuring best-selling camping equipment, winter jackets, or hiking boots. These could be delivered in an ad or an email at the ideal moment.

By adding urgency triggers, such as “limited stock” or “final day for free shipping,” you can also make the offer feel personal and timely. The goal is to make every interaction, whether it’s an ad, email, or a landing page, feel like it was made just for them. If you do it right, you’ll boost engagement and drive higher conversion rates throughout the peak shopping season.

7. Use Authentic-Feeling Design

Great holiday ad creative needs to feel festive, authentic and engaging. “During the holiday season, people crave ads that feel real and timely, not overly staged or generic,” says Taboola creative strategist Tyler Sorensen. “Ads should display energy, with movement, organic footage, and a clear seasonal vibe, as it grabs attention and blends naturally into the content your audience is already consuming.”

The numbers prove it: Holiday-themed creatives deliver a conversion rate 4.4x that of generic ones. This might include showing your product placed in a warm holiday setting, with a Christmas tree or flickering candles in the background. Perhaps it’s a gift basket displayed next to a cup of hot cocoa. You could even share a quick “holiday hack” using your product, e.g., you could film a 10-second clip of someone wrapping a scarf as a gift.

8. Prepare Omnichannel Strategies

Shoppers expect to switch seamlessly between channels, so brands need to deliver a smooth, cohesive experience. Shaked Afek Lifshitz, senior marketing automation expert at Taboola, recommends “focusing on a seamless omnichannel strategy to stay ahead, starting by using AI-driven personalization to tailor content and offers across all customer touchpoints.” She adds that you have to ensure that the customer’s experience is smooth from discovery to conversion, whichever path it takes.

Lifshitz also recommends incorporating live commerce experiences, such as livestream product demos, and following up with smart retargeting and personalized emails to keep audiences engaged throughout their journey. As the season heats up, Lifshitz advises setting up proactive tools like “live chat, AI bots, and self-service options” to minimize friction, since these tools can prevent bottlenecks, helping to maintain that smooth customer experience.

9. Practice Good Data Hygiene

More holiday traffic means more potential revenue, but it can also have a down side, warns Taboola marketing automation expert, Igor Shwarts. “During the holiday shopping season, the surge in traffic might be a double-edged sword: While it brings more potential customers, it also attracts a flood of fake sign-ups, bots, and low-quality leads,” he says. “Left unchecked, these distort campaign performance, inflate costs, and send optimization models chasing the wrong signals.”

To combat this, marketers need to focus on smart segmentation and real-time lead enrichment. “By detecting and filtering out gibberish inputs, disposable emails, and mismatched intent at the point of entry, advertisers can ensure their campaigns focus only on high-quality, purchase-ready users,” says Shwarts. “The result? Better ROAS, cleaner signals, and more effective algorithmic optimization.”

In other words, don’t just go broad — go smarter this holiday season. Shwarts truly believes that “brands that prioritize data hygiene will be the ones converting intent into revenue.”

10. Let Data Guide Your Holiday Engagement Plan

While you want to gear up for the holiday season, don’t forget about the testing you’ve been doing all year long. Per Einat Wishnevski, user engagement team lead at Taboola, “This is the time to leverage everything you’ve tested throughout the year and put those insights into action, to maximize impact during the busiest and most competitive period.”

Wishnevski says that to do this effectively, you must answer the four core questions of engagement:

• Who are your customers — new, existing, or casual?
• When is the optimal time to reach them — early for consideration, or later, with FOMO-driven urgency?
• Where do they prefer to be contacted — email, SMS, or in-app?
• What is the right message?

As Wishnevski puts it, this last question is “the ultimate variable. The message cannot be static: It must be personalized, evolve as the holidays approach, and be relentlessly validated through A/B testing, allowing you to analyze and optimize on the fly.”

It’s essential to engage customers early, creating a sense of urgency closer to key shopping dates. Use your audience’s preferred channels and, as Wishnevski advises, never stop testing your messaging — always refine to keep engagement high throughout the season. Remember, a flexible, data-driven engagement plan is crucial if you want to convert customer interest into dollars and cents.

Key Takeaways

This holiday season, the most successful brands will be the ones that are flexible, data-driven, and willing to innovate. From creative testing and tracking to budget flexibility and omnichannel engagement, the strategies highlighted by our industry experts demonstrate the importance of adapting to the evolving landscape. By embracing these expert predictions, you can benefit from the massive opportunities that the holiday season brings.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the trend in holiday spending? Is holiday shopping up or down?

Not surprisingly, consumer spending tends to increase during the holiday season. According to a recent survey by Salsify , a product experience management platform, more than half of consumers (53%) plan to maintain their 2024 holiday spending level in 2025. Additionally, 22% of holiday shoppers plan to spend more money this year than they did last year. The National Retail Federation has forecasted retail sales growth in 2025 between 2.7% and 3.7% compared to 2024. While it remains to be seen how much shoppers will spend during the 2025 holiday season, these projections indicate solid spending numbers.

What do people buy the most during the holidays?

According to National Retail Federation data, gift cards were the most desired product on people’s wish lists for 2024, at 53%. Other popular holiday purchases include clothing and accessories, books and other media, and personal care items.