Still feeling nervous heading into the holiday rush? Don’t be. There’s already plenty of early data—and some low-hanging merchandising wins—you can act on right now.
Your core campaigns, offers, and creative assets should be locked in, but here are five quick optimizations you can make before Thanksgiving to boost performance and set yourself up for a strong Cyber Weekend.
1. Mine 11/20–11/24 Data for Insights
Amazon’s T12 window always starts the Thursday before Thanksgiving, which means last weekend’s data is your best bellwether for Cyber Weekend performance. All channels, including Walmart, Amazon, D2C, etc saw this pre-holiday bump. Make sure you dig into:
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YoY comparisons
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Click and impression deltas
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Bid performance
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Conversion shifts
This short window gives you real, high-volume signals about what’s working—and what needs a fast tune-up.
2. Update Your A+, Brand Story, and Storefronts
Speaking of Amazon, there’s still time to freshen your content and boost visibility for trending items. Before the heavy traffic hits:
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Swap outdated A+ modules
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Move holiday-leading SKUs “front and center” in your Brand Story
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Update Store pages with seasonal collections or best sellers
A quick content refresh can give you free incremental exposure without touching your ad budget.
3. Sweep Your Low-Performing Product Pages
The spike from last weekend—brands saw roughly a 35% week-over-week lift in traffic—is a perfect way to identify products that aren’t converting, even with more eyeballs. Review product detail pages for:
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Weak titles or bullets
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Missing benefits
- Any other attributes or easy updates to help improve your close rate
4. Add Cross-Channel Purchase Links to Social
One of the most common brand mistakes: posting holiday content without multiple purchase paths. Every holiday post—Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest—should include:
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Amazon link
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Walmart link
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Your own DTC site link
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Target or other marketplaces (if relevant)
Consumers default to the platform where they’re most comfortable buying. Make it easy for them.
5. Scale Budgets First, Not Bids
Retail media platforms—Amazon, Google, Walmart, everyone—love to recommend “increase your bids.” Don’t fall for it.
Your first move should be raising budgets, not bids. Why?
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You want to capture the surge in impression volume
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Bid stability keeps your ROAS predictable
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You can evaluate performance before getting more aggressive
Set your automated bid adjustments to start early on Black Friday and let the algorithms do their job.
Final Note
This playbook assumes you already have bid automation in place and running cleanly. If you don’t, call us after the holidays—you’re due for a performance upgrade.