Should You Pause Marketing Over the Holidays?

Short answer: no. For most businesses, the holidays are the worst time to go quiet. Customers spend more in November and December than in any other stretch of the year, more of that spending happens on their phones, and the brands that keep showing up carry the attention into January. Pausing feels like saving money. In practice, it hands your customers to whoever kept their ads running.

Every year around this time, we hear the same plan from founders: "Let's pause the campaigns and pick it back up after the holidays." We understand where it comes from. Budgets are tight, ad costs climb, and the team is tired. But across 900+ growth and capital-raise campaigns, we've watched that decision cost more than it saves.

Do people really buy less during the holidays?

No. The National Retail Federation forecasts that US retail sales in November and December will grow 4.2% this year to $1.013 trillion. Adobe expects online holiday spending to reach $275.1 billion, up 6.7% from last year.

The bigger shift is where that spending happens. Adobe projects that 57.4% of online holiday sales will come from phones, with mobile expected to hit a record 63% of online spending on Thanksgiving. Adobe also expects traffic to retail sites from AI tools to grow 130% year over year. Your customers are on the couch, on their phones, with more time and more intent to buy. That isn't a season to disappear from.

Aren't ads too expensive in Q4?

Ad costs do rise in November and December. More brands compete for the same placements, and the price of attention goes up. But buying intent rises with it. The number that matters isn't your cost per click. It's your cost per customer.

A click that costs more but converts at a higher rate can still bring in your cheapest customers of the year. That's why we tell clients to judge holiday spend on results, not on the price of an impression. If the math still works, keep going. If it doesn't, get sharper with targeting and creative instead of shutting everything off.

What should you keep running over the holidays?

If you're going to trim anywhere, trim the experiments. Protect the channels that already work:

• Email. Your list is the cheapest customer you have. Keep sending.

• Retargeting. These people already know you. Don't give them a reason to forget.

• Your best-performing ad. If it works in November, it usually works in December.

• Mobile-first creative and landing pages. With most online spending on phones, anything built for a desktop screen will leak.

• Founder content. Short videos and posts from you keep the brand human while everyone else goes quiet.

What happens after Christmas?

The week after Christmas is one of the most overlooked windows of the year. Many brands go dark between Christmas and early January, and as competition drops, ad costs tend to ease. Attention doesn't disappear, though. People are off work, scrolling, spending gift cards and planning for the new year.

The brands that stay on through that window walk into January with momentum. The ones that paused spend January paying to win back the attention they gave away.

The bottom line

Pausing your marketing over the holidays rarely saves money. It usually just moves your customers to a competitor. Stay visible, spend where the data says it's working, and use the quiet stretch after Christmas to get ahead.

We're breaking down the full holiday growth playbook live on Tuesday, November 24th at 10am PT. Join DNA CEO Jason Fishman and Head Media Buyer Nicky Cheung for "Don't Go Dark for the Holidays." It's free, and everyone who joins live gets our holiday growth checklist. Register here.