As Q4 rolls around, it’s easy to get caught up in the holiday hype and spend more than planned on your campaigns.
With higher competition and rising CPAs, every dollar needs to pull its weight. So how do you keep your ad spend in check without slowing down your conversions?
If you’ve been in the game for a while, you’ve probably got the fundamentals down.
But let’s skip the obvious and talk about some lesser-known strategies that will help you make the most of Q4—without burning through your budget.
Here are a few ideas to help you keep things efficient while still driving conversions.
Use Dayparting to Your Advantage
First of all, what is dayparting?
Dayparting is an advertising strategy that involves scheduling your ads to appear during specific hours of the day or days of the week when your audience is more active and engaged.
Instead of running ads around the clock, the idea is to focus on high-intent time slots—those moments when your target audience has higher tendencies to convert.
For instance, if you’re targeting professionals, you could schedule ads during lunch breaks or after work, when they're usually online.
Similarly, if you're aiming at parents, morning and evening hours when they have free time, could be ideal for ad placement.
As you can see, the goal of dayparting is to maximise ad efficiency by aligning your ad spend with times of higher user engagement, which helps reduce wasted spend and increase your ROAS.
It can be conducive during high-traffic seasons like Q4, with higher ad competition and costs.
PRO TIP: Focus on running ads during high-intent windows, and be willing to test new time slots for unexpected wins. Maybe your audience converts better on Wednesdays during mid-morning or late Sunday nights. Tap into those niche times!
Reduce Frequency Caps (Before It’s Too Late)
I’m sure you’ve been there: by the time someone’s seen your ad for the 12th time, they’re completely over it. You’re wasting money, and worse—irritating your potential customers.
With the flood of holiday ads, consumers get fatigued faster, so reduce those frequency caps earlier than usual.
How To Do It: Instead of bombarding users with ads, set stricter frequency limits and rotate creative more often. Even if someone is interested, they really don’t need to see your ad six times a day to convert.
Get Specific with Audience Exclusions
Let’s get into a simple but powerful strategy—audience exclusions.
When Q4 ad costs shoot up, it’s important to get laser-focused on who you’re not showing ads to. It sounds easy, but this step is often overlooked, and it’s where money slips through the cracks.
Here’s an example: imagine you’re running a campaign for a $25 holiday gift set. Someone buys it—great! But do they need to see the same ad again next week?
Probably not.
Instead, exclude them from that campaign. This saves you money and also keeps your ads fresh for new potential customers.
Now, take it a step further: if you're running both prospecting and remarketing campaigns, overlap can happen. For instance, a user may see your prospecting ad, visit the website, and then immediately get hit with a remarketing ad—basically wasting an impression.
When you set up exclusions between your prospecting and remarketing audiences, you avoid this overlap and make sure you’re only hitting the right people at the right stage of their journey.
Use your exclusions list to cut out recent buyers, users who didn’t engage, or anyone who just isn’t the right match for certain offers. The more carefully you refine who sees what, the harder your budget works, and you’ll stop throwing money at people who won’t convert.
The more precise you are, the more your budget works for you, rather than against you.
Run SKU-Specific Campaigns for Your Best-sellers
During Q4, broad match campaigns can eat through your budget in no time, especially with so much competition. Instead of going broad, zero in on your top-performing products or SKUs that you know people are already loving.
Take, for example, a skincare kit that consistently sells out. Running ads specifically for that kit makes more sense than promoting your entire product line. The data is already there: it’s a winner, so there’s no need to guess. Highlight the product that’s proven to perform, and you’re making a smarter investment with your ad dollars.
To make it irresistible, add a limited-time offer like “Exclusive Holiday Bundle” or slash-through pricing that gives customers a sense of urgency.
An ad like, “Our Best-Selling Skincare Kit, Now 20% Off for the Holidays!” grabs attention and makes it hard to resist during the busy shopping season.
Focusing on these top performers prevents wasted spend on underperformers. This strategy stretches your budget further and boosts your ROAS without sacrificing efficiency.
Use Automated Bidding—But Stay Hands-On
Yes, automation is a lifesaver, but here’s where Q4 can trip you up: if you go on autopilot, you’ll miss critical optimisation opportunities. Automated bidding can help maximise conversions, but only if you keep a close eye on it.
Fluctuating CPCs, competitive landscapes, and changing customer behaviour mean you need to make adjustments on the fly.
Quick Fix: Set up automated bidding, but log in daily (yes, daily) to review performance and tweak your bid strategies. Consider lowering bids on certain campaigns as demand spikes or increasing them when you see clear conversion opportunities during peak shopping times.
Final Words
Keeping your ad spend in check during Q4 doesn’t mean scaling back your efforts—it means working smarter, not harder. Focusing on what’s working and making strategic adjustments allows you to stretch your budget while maintaining strong performance.
Let’s face it, you don’t want to be scrambling in December trying to figure out where all your ad spend went. Plan ahead, stay sharp, and you'll be set to crush Q4!
SO, WHERE DO YOU FIND THIS PARTNER?
Well, aren’t we glad you asked! We at DigiCom are obsessive data-driven marketers pulling from multi-disciplinary strategies to unlock scale. We buy media across all platforms and placements and provide creative solutions alongside content creation, and conversion rate optimizations. We pride ourselves on your successes and will stop at nothing to help you grow.
Comments