Holiday advertising success: Industry experts debunk common advertising myths

The holiday season is a crucial time for advertisers, but it's also a period rife with misconceptions that can lead to costly mistakes. In the rush to capture a share of peak traffic, many brands fall victim to common myths that undermine their campaign performance. This guide separates fact from fiction, providing you with expert-backed truths and actionable tips to navigate the holiday shopping landscape with confidence and ensure your sponsored ads are set up for success.

This guide includes content from the Ads Strategy Guidebook for holiday marketing 2025. View the entire guidebook here.

Myth: When advertising cost of sales (ACOS) suddenly increases during major sales events, campaigns should be paused to avoid wasting money.

Truth: A temporary spike in ACOS doesn’t mean your ads aren’t working. On the contrary, it often means they’re doing their job. During the holiday season, traffic increases and more brands are active, which can drive ACOS higher. But ACOS only measures the efficiency of ad-attributed sales, not the full picture. That’s where total advertising cost of sales (TACOS) comes in. TACOS reveals whether your total sales (organic and paid) are growing in relation to your ad spend.

Expert advice:
“ACOS is just one piece of the profitability puzzle. Here's why: When ACOS rises during high-traffic events, we don’t immediately pull back. Instead, we look at TACOS—and often, we find it dropping. This signals improved overall efficiency, as ads are driving both paid and organic sales through increased visibility. Instead, shift some budget from branded to category terms, even if it raises ACOS initially. Category terms help you reach new, in-market shoppers who don’t already know your brand. While ACOS may climb in the short term, you're expanding total sales and visibility, which is especially valuable during peak shopping moments.”
— Adam Mellott, BTR Media

Tip: Create automated rules that adjust bids or daily budgets when ACOS exceeds certain thresholds. Remember, ACOS may spike short term—check 7–14-day attribution before making changes. Sales during peak events often occur days after the initial ad click.

Myth: A limited budget can’t help advertisers reach and engage shoppers effectively during high-traffic periods.

Truth: Strategic budget allocation and focused targeting can help advertisers of all sizes stay visible and achieve business growth, even during shopping events when traffic is heightened.

Expert advice:
“Small budgets can win when every dollar is aimed at relevance. Focus on high-converting placements at the campaign level, lean into long-tail keywords with clear intent, and actively negate irrelevant traffic. It’s not about spending less, it’s about spending smartly.”
— Ritu Java, PPC Ninja

Tips:

1. Allocate your ad spend strategically: Concentrate your budget on your top-performing products and keywords. This targeted approach can help smaller budgets drive success during peak seasons.
2. Use portfolio budgets effectively: Group similar campaigns together and set budget rules to help allocate budget efficiently. For Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, you may want to consider leveraging cost controls to automatically optimize your bids and stay within your budget.

Myth: Exclusively relying on Sponsored Products campaigns, assuming that capturing bottom-funnel search traffic is sufficient, is a strategy that works well for high-traffic events.

Truth: Sponsored Products is essential, but other ad products can also help you accelerate growth. During holiday events, shoppers don’t just search and buy. They browse, compare, and come back later. A strategy that creates synergies between different ad solutions can help you reach shoppers at different stages in their journey.

Expert advice:
“Holiday shopping is a marathon relay—and to win it, you need a team. Sponsored Products are a strong anchor, but it may need a full lineup of ad solutions to make the handoffs that move shoppers from discovery to purchase. Sponsored Brands, Brand Stores, Sponsored Display, and Sponsored TV each play a role in engaging customers at different stages. Treating holiday advertising as a team sport helps ensure you don’t miss key moments along shoppers’ journey.”
— Joe Shelerud, CEO & Co-Founder, Ad Advance

Tips:

1. 2–3 weeks ahead of the holiday season, use the Sponsored Brands video ad format to spotlight upcoming holiday deals and grab early gift shoppers’ attention.
2. Build seasonal Brand Store pages with gift guides and collections, and link to them from your Sponsored Brands ads for a seamless, fluid shopping experience.

Myth: Brands don’t need to put effort into their Brand Stores during peak events. Focusing solely on product-level advertising is enough to drive business growth.

Truth: Well-optimized Brand Stores can help boost conversion rates and average order value, especially during gift-shopping seasons when customers seek curated experiences. For example, Brand Stores updated within the past 90 days had 9% more repeat visitors and 10% higher attributed sales per visitor.¹

Expert advice:
“Amazon Ads gives you more real estate than most brands realize. Smart advertisers turn their Brand Store into a mini website, using Sponsored Brands ads to lead to curated landing pages that match what the shopper came looking for. It’s not just a brand play, it’s a conversion engine.”
—Ritu Java, PPC Ninja

Tips:

1. Create seasonal Brand Store pages: Design dedicated pages highlighting your top-selling holiday items and gift bundles. This can provide a more engaging and relevant shopping experience during peak seasons.
2. Use Sponsored Brands Store spotlight ads to drive traffic directly to your seasonal Brand Store pages. This can help showcase your full holiday offerings to interested shoppers.

Myth: Amazon is solely a place to capture ready-to-buy shoppers. Putting effort into building your brand will not drive sales growth.

Truth: Amazon Ads offers various ad formats and placements that can help you effectively build awareness for your brand and business, and nurture shoppers into repeat customers.

Expert advice:
“Since e-Comas began 12 years ago, the retail media landscape has evolved from simple purchase-intent targeting into a complex shopping journey spanning streaming TV, mobile, and AI-driven conversational browsing. Brands that excel with compelling content and videos across product pages and Brand Stores can help drive long-term business growth. We tested this approach with an oral care brand, using Prime Video ads, Sponsored Brand videos, and DSP ads informed by Amazon Marketing Cloud insights. The results were striking: a 57% increase in brand searches in the country of interest compared to 23% elsewhere.”
— Jérôme de Guigné, Founder and CEO of e-Comas

Tips:

1. Start with Sponsored TV campaigns: Launch Streaming TV ads to help reach new audiences where they spend their time. This approach helps bring you top of mind for shoppers even before they begin searching for items they plan to purchase.
2. Launch Sponsored Brands campaigns with video ad format: Create engaging product videos that showcase key features and benefits. Video ads in top-of-results placements can help differentiate your brand from similar brands and grab attention immediately.

Myth: Demand drops sharply after Cyber Monday, making further holiday-specific advertising unnecessary.

Truth: With 31% of shoppers planning to make purchases between Cyber Monday (December 1, 2025) and New Year's, cutting advertising after Cyber Monday may lead to missing nearly a third of holiday shoppers.² This extended shopping window, combined with a late Thanksgiving, makes December a crucial period for maintaining advertising presence.

Expert advice:
“After almost seven years advertising with Amazon Ads, we know that Black Friday and Cyber Monday is just the beginning of the gift shopping season. Many of our brands top their November sales in December by reengaging seasonal shoppers and people who already know their brand. Using insights from Amazon Ads and Amazon Marketing Cloud is crucial to advertise effectively and capture extra visibility from increased traffic.”
— Alessandro Carnati, Digital Turnover

Tips:

1. Analyze historical performance: Use the advertising console to review your sales history and campaign performance from previous holiday seasons. Look for patterns in product demand, click-through rates, and conversion rates to identify opportunities for this year's extended holiday shopping period.
2. Leverage the recommendations page in the advertising console for tailored insights and actionable strategies specific to you. These can help you optimize your campaigns for both peak shopping days and the high-traffic post-Cyber Monday period.

Myth: When conversion rates decline, advertisers often assume the problem lies exclusively with audience targeting and rush to modify targeting settings.

Truth: While targeting is important, conversion rate fluctuations can stem from multiple factors. These may include seasonality, pricing, or the quality of product detail pages. Before making drastic changes to your targeting, it's beneficial to conduct a comprehensive review of your campaigns and product listings.

Expert advice:
“Poor or fluctuating performance doesn’t always signal a targeting problem, or even an ad strategy problem. Fluctuation could be caused by listing content gaps, pricing gaps within the category, seasonality, or a bad retail moment. Ads only accelerate what’s already working—I like to describe them as a reflection of your overall business. They won't ever fix fundamental listing or retail problems. Try to take an unbiased approach to your business, put yourself in the shoes of shoppers, and thoroughly understand your category and key players within it.”
— Adam Mellott, BTR Media

Tips:

1. Review your product detail pages and ensure your images, titles, and bullet points are clear, accurate, and compelling. A well-optimized detail page can help improve conversion rates.
2. Experiment with your ad creatives. Test different images or ad copy while keeping targeting consistent. Sometimes a fresh creative approach can reinvigorate performance.

Myth: Holiday traffic surges automatically lead to higher conversion rates and more sales.

Truth: Increased traffic doesn’t guarantee increased conversion. In fact, many brands see conversion rates drop during major sales events. Shoppers are in discovery mode—clicking around, comparing, and waiting.

Expert advice:
"During holiday shopping events, impressions can surge by double digits while conversion rates stay flat or even decline. The winning strategy isn’t just showing up—it’s standing out and following through. With memorable creative and smart remarketing, brands can turn that wave of browsers into buyers, even when conversions are lagging."
—Joe Shelerud, CEO & Co-Founder, Ad Advance

Tips:

1. Create an attention-grabbing Sponsored Brands video: Develop clear, compelling video ads that quickly communicate your holiday offers. This can help capture attention in the crowded Black Friday-Cyber Monday environment.
2. Implement Sponsored Display remarketing: Reengage shoppers who showed interest in your products. This can help convert browsers into buyers during the extended holiday shopping period.

Sources

¹ Amazon internal data, WW, October 21, 2024.

² Mintel Reports, Look Back Winter Holiday Shopping, US, 2025.