Who else wants to boost holiday sales with Google Ads' Performance Max campaigns?
The global retail peak season in 2025 set an astonishing record, with online sales in November and December alone exceeding the $1 trillion mark, and the latest data shows that this traditional sales peak is undergoing a structural change. A joint study by Google and Ipsos revealed that the modern retail peak season has extended from the intensive promotion period from Black Friday to Christmas to a four-month marathon consumption season. This "peak season extension phenomenon" is particularly evident in the Australian market, with the consumer confidence index increasing by 5.3 percentage points from the same period last year, creating a longer golden conversion window for marketers. At this critical moment when AI technology is reshaping the marketing landscape, Google Ads' latest upgraded Performance Max campaign has achieved a breakthrough - after the 2025 update, advertisers can directly view AI-automated optimized search terms in the standard search term report, greatly improving the transparency of automated campaigns, allowing retail brands to more accurately capture four typical consumer mindsets during the extended peak season: thoughtful, determined, seeking discounts, and fully committed. This article will deeply analyze how to combine Google Ads' AI capabilities and consumer psychology insights create smart advertising strategies throughout the entire sales season.
I. Market trends and business opportunities during the retail peak season
1. 2025 peak season data analysis and 2026 forecasts
The 2025 peak season sales data reveals several market changes that cannot be ignored. Behind the global online sales exceeding $1 trillion is a fundamental change in consumer behavior patterns - the shopping decision period is 47% longer than before the epidemic, and 64% of purchases span more than three digital touchpoints. It is worth noting that the Australian market has shown unique resilience. Despite continued inflationary pressure, the total quarterly consumption from October to early January still increased by 8.2% year-on-year, among which the phenomenon of "early shopping" is particularly prominent: 23% of consumers completed their first peak season purchase before the second week of October, and this proportion was as high as 39% among household purchasers aged 35-44.
2. The strategic value of extending the peak season period
The traditional strategy of compressing the peak season in November-December is no longer applicable to the current market. Data shows that brands that evenly distribute advertising budgets from October to January have The customer acquisition cost (CAC) is 29% lower than that of centralized advertisers, and the customer retention rate is 18 percentage points higher. The reason why this "four-season" peak season strategy is effective is that it perfectly corresponds to the consumer's psychological clock - October is the inspiration collection period (YouTube viewing time increased by 33%), November turns to the price comparison stage (shopping ad clicks increased by 70%), December enters the urgent purchase mode ("same-day delivery" search volume increased by 450%), and January is the golden period for loyalty cultivation (member registration conversion rate increased by 55%). ).
II. Consumer decision journey and four key mentalities
1. Early reach strategies for thoughtful consumers
At the beginning of the peak season (October to mid-November), 35% of consumers showed typical "deliberate" characteristics - they browsed an average of 7.2 product pages, compared 4.3 brands, and the decision cycle was as long as 11.4 days. The search behavior of this type of users is obviously exploratory, using broad keywords such as "best Christmas gift ideas" and "the most worthwhile technology products to buy in 2024". Google Ads to the search term report of , brand keywords accounted for only 22% of the total in this stage, while category keywords accounted for 68%, which requires advertising strategies to focus more on demand stimulation rather than direct conversion.
2. Determined pre-holiday conversion offensive
As the holiday season approaches, consumers' mentality quickly shifts to "determined" - in the first two weeks of December, instant searches such as "open today" and "will it arrive before Christmas" increased by 320%, and the conversion window was compressed to an astonishing 4.2 hours (average from click to purchase). The advantages of maximizing the effect of advertising at this stage are fully revealed: by integrating search, shopping, display and YouTube resources, it can automatically identify high-intention signals (such as frequent visits to product pages, idle items in shopping carts, etc.), and push dynamic ads with inventory and shipping information at the best time.
III, Google Ads strategies correspond to different consumption stages
1. Cross-channel layout to stimulate demand at the beginning of the season
The advertising strategy at the beginning of the peak season (October) should focus on demand creation rather than direct conversion. Data shows that at this time, configuring the dual-goal "brand promotion + website traffic" effect-maximizing advertising can produce the best early cultivation effect. Through automated cross-channel delivery (exploratory keywords on the search network + immersive stories on YouTube + visual recommendations on Discover), the system can identify potential customers in the early research stage and establish brand relevance with educational content (such as the "2024 Gift Trend Report").
2. Effect-maximizing configuration during the critical period before the festival
When consumers enter the decision-making process In the later period (late November to mid-December), the advertising strategy should quickly switch to conversion-oriented. The best practices for maximizing advertising at this time include: uploading at least 15 product images (including holiday packaging versions), setting up "holiday limited" ad extensions, and enabling the "dynamic product ads" function to automatically push idle shopping cart items. Data shows that advertising creatives that include countdown timers ("42 hours left on offer") can increase CTR by 33%, and ad campaigns configured with a "priority conversion window" of 12 hours have an immediate purchase rate that is 28% higher than the 24-hour window.
IV. Successful cases and key execution steps
1. Analysis of the advertising architecture of international brands during the peak season
Analysis of the peak seasonGoogle Ads of international brands architecture, a clear strategic logic can be found. Taking Samsung Electronics' Diwali promotion as an example, it adopts a "three-layer advertising tower" structure: the top layer is search advertising dominated by brand words (defending against competition), the middle layer is advertising that maximizes effect to cover category words and similar audiences, and the bottom layer is configured with dynamic search ads to capture long-tail demand. This structure enables an advertising coverage rate of 92%, and the various levels work together through "target bid adjustment" - when the brand word conversion cost is less than $25, the saved budget is automatically allocated to advertising that maximizes effect to expand new customers. Key data shows that this architecture increased Samsung's advertising efficiency by 70% during the peak season: the brand word CPA remained at $18, while the cost of acquiring new customers dropped from $45 to $32. The key point of execution is to set up "combination exclusion rules" to avoid different advertising campaigns bidding on the same keywords, and to share budget pools (Budget). Pool) to achieve dynamic allocation, which is the core technology of large-scale event management.
2. Budget allocation and peak response practices
In the face of uncertain traffic fluctuations during the peak season, intelligent budget allocation is crucial. Data science shows that reserving 30% of the "flexible budget" to respond to unexpected opportunities (such as a surge in searches caused by a competitor's out-of-stock situation) can increase overall ROAS by 25%. Technically, the "seasonal adjustment" function can be used to mark expected peak dates (such as Black Friday) in advance, and the system will automatically increase the bid cap by 20-50% during these periods. The global experience of the H&M Group is of great reference value - it uses the "budget scenario planning" tool to simulate the advertising configuration corresponding to different sales growth rates (15%/25%/35%), and set automated rules: when the conversion rate is 20% higher than expected, 15% of the reserve budget will be released immediately; conversely, if the CPA exceeds the standard, the inefficient channel will be suspended. This dynamic adjustment keeps advertising spending at the forefront of optimal efficiency (Efficiency Frontier), ultimately achieving a 70% revenue growth while advertising costs only increased by 22%.
V. Topkee's Google Ads solution
Topkee provides a one-stop online advertising service based on Google Ads, focusing on helping companies improve the efficiency of potential customer development and sales conversion rate. Our service architecture covers the entire advertising ecosystem from pre-evaluation to post-optimization, and can provide corresponding professional solutions regardless of the size of the customer.
At the start-up stage of the service, we first perform a comprehensive website evaluation and analysis. We use the latest scoring tools to conduct technical SEO testing to identify structural issues that affect search rankings, and perform semantic analysis on page content to ensure that it meets search intent and has commercial value. This basic work can effectively improve natural search visibility and lay a foundation for high-quality traffic for subsequent paid advertising activities. On the technical level, we use the self-developed TTO system as the core management tool. The platform supports multi-account collaborative management and can realize advanced functions such as cross-media budget allocation and advertising account permission control. Its tag ID association technology can accurately track multi-dimensional user behavior data, and through automated conversion event settings, key behavior data can be seamlessly synchronized to the advertising background, greatly reducing the error rate of manual operations.
To enhance the accuracy of advertising tracking, the TM system we developed is more flexible than traditional UTM parameters. Customers can customize tracking rules based on 12 dimensions such as marketing theme, media source, creative type, etc., and the system automatically generates a tracking link with a unique identification code. This technology enables advertisers to instantly grasp the conversion path and effectiveness differences of each channel, providing data support for budget allocation. During the strategic planning stage, our team of experts will produce structured marketing theme proposals based on industry databases and market insights. Through competitive product analysis and demand mining, we ensure that each proposal has feasibility and differentiated advantages. Keyword research combines AI semantic analysis tools to establish a three-dimensional vocabulary from core words to long-tail words, and integrates smart bidding strategies and matching mode optimization to increase advertising reach while maintaining accuracy.Through this set of solutions that integrate technical tools and strategic thinking, Topkee has helped many customers establish a sustainable digital marketing framework in the Google Ads ecosystem. The feature of our service is to integrate data insights throughout the advertising life cycle to ensure that every budget investment can generate measurable business value.
Conclusion:
It can be clearly seen from the peak season data that retail marketing has entered a new era driven by AI. Brands that successfully integrate maximized advertising, consumer psychological insights and first-party data have not only achieved more than 70% performance growth, but also established a sustained competitive advantage. With the advent of Google Ads continues to evolve (e.g., search term transparency, generative AI creatives, etc.), the role of marketers is shifting from operational executors to AI strategy architects.
