Planning Your Q4 Strategy? Invest in Your Commerce Media Ecosystem for the Gift That Keeps on Giving

One of the easiest ways to go off track with your Q4 holiday planning is by prioritizing the wrong things. The smart thing? Focus on the 75% of your budget already working together, where even incremental gains will deliver success during the holiday shopping season.

Think about how your customers actually shop for holiday gifts. Someone spots a weighted blanket in a TikTok video, googles best weighted blankets that evening, checks Amazon for reviews, goes back to Google for deals, browses Target to compare, asks friends for recommendations, checks Instagram for influencer mentions, and finally orders from the Walmart app for same-day delivery.

That’s seven touchpoints across four platforms before one purchase! That’s why every modern marketer who sells a product online already uses paid search, social advertising, and retail media.

But what if you could get them all working together a bit more?

Marketers have always known that channels working together deliver better results than isolated efforts. The challenge has been making it happen in practice. To make your key channels work together effectively this Q4, you need to invest in your commerce media ecosystem.

Good news: your 75% is already a commerce media ecosystem, no assembly required

Today’s marketers can’t be everywhere, but they need to be present at the key inflection points where consumers naturally go to discover, research, and purchase. Paid search, social advertising, and retail media capture these essential touchpoints, which is why 75% of global digital advertising budgets now flow there.

And not only are they the 3 most important digital channels to reach modern consumers, they also have the most advanced capabilities for driving performance:

• Decades of optimization and data
• Precise targeting that offline can’t match
• Real-time measurement and feedback
• Automated bidding and budget optimization
• Direct access to purchase-ready consumers

An ecosystem is a network where each participant benefits from the success of others. In nature, ecosystems thrive when different species support each other through mutually beneficial relationships. In commerce media, ecosystems describe interconnected channels where success in one area strengthens performance in another, creating sustainable growth across the entire network. Each interaction creates value that enhances the next interaction.

You’re already spending the majority of your digital budget on these three channels. Most marketers don’t realize they’re already operating within the commerce media ecosystem. If you’re running holiday campaigns across social media, search engines, and retail platforms, you’re using the three components.

The question isn’t whether you’re in the ecosystem. It’s whether you’re investing in it strategically or letting value remain trapped in different silos.

The mindshift: silos are tough to break down; plan around them instead

Easier said than done, right?

The mindshift isn’t about forcing cross-channel integration. We’ve tried that approach for 20 years, and if it were possible to mandate coordination across separate channel teams and platforms, it would have happened already. Maybe one day, but it’s not going to happen before this October!

The mindset shift is actually recognizing that these three channels are already working together in the market, whether you control them or not. Your social campaigns influence search behavior. Your search campaigns drive traffic to retail sites. Your retail media performance provides insights that could improve social targeting.

The breakthrough comes from planning with dual goals: optimize your individual channel performance while simultaneously planning to maximize the ecosystem effect. You may never interact with the other channel teams, but you can still plan your piece in a way that maximizes both your channel’s ROI and helps strengthen the overall ecosystem. This isn’t about breaking down organizational silos; it’s about planning smarter within the existing structure.

Instead of optimizing in a vacuum, you can plan with awareness that your channel connects to others. When you plan social discovery campaigns, you can anticipate the search behavior they’ll generate. When planning search campaigns, consider how they’ll drive retail media traffic. When you plan retail media campaigns, you can think about how the conversion data could inform future social and search efforts.

The ecosystem strengthens when each component is planned with the whole system in mind.

Eight ways to invest in your holiday ecosystem

So, you’re a channel marketer in paid search, social advertising, or retail media. You rarely talk to the other channel teams or even know who they are! They could be in a different office with a different agency across the world.

If you can get to at least chat with, or see the plans of, the other teams, that would make all of this even better, but it’s not required.

That’s fine. You can still invest in the ecosystem from your position.

As you read these eight strategies, focus on the ones that apply to your channel while keeping the others in mind for context. Each tip shows how to plan your piece of the ecosystem to maximize both your individual channel performance and the value that connects to other channels. You don’t need to coordinate with anyone else to make these work.

1. Plan your channel to create value downstream. Design your October campaigns around products and themes that will drive activity in the next phase of the customer journey. If you’re in discovery, create content that naturally leads people to research specific products, brands, or categories. If you’re in research, guide users toward conversion-ready destinations. Include elements that make the handoff to the next phase seamless.

Example: Social ads for fitness equipment include product model numbers. Search ads then target those specific model searches. Retail media captures traffic with the same product focus.

2. Plan to capture value from upstream channels. Anticipate the demand that earlier touchpoints will create and prepare your strategies accordingly. If discovery campaigns are highlighting certain products, be ready to capture that interest. If research activity is spiking around specific themes, align your messaging to connect with that existing value rather than starting from zero.

Example: A beauty brand’s social ads drive “clean makeup” searches. Search ads capture this with “clean foundation” and “non-toxic lipstick” keywords. Target ads show clean beauty products prominently.

3. Plan your channel to align with the broader journey. Design your campaigns to complement what’s happening in other phases rather than operating in isolation. Your product selections, messaging themes, and timing should reinforce the overall customer experience, not compete with it. Think about how your piece fits into the larger story customers are experiencing.

Example: A pet food campaign uses “Healthy Pets, Happy Holidays” across all channels. Social ads show happy pets, search ads target “healthy dog food” keywords, Walmart ads feature the same messaging on product pages.

4. Invest in audience data flow in both directions. Design systems to both receive insights from earlier stages and provide data to later stages. Create audience segments based on performance data you can share, and build targeting strategies around insights that upstream activity provides. Your conversion data, engagement patterns, and user behavior can inform targeting in other phases.

Example: Amazon ads show that protein bars convert best among males ages 25-34. Social ads target lookalike audiences of those converters. Search ads increase bids for protein bar keywords when targeting that demographic.

5. Coordinate ecosystem timing, not just channel performance. Instead of optimizing only your individual KPIs, plan around key customer decision moments. Time your peak activity to align with when customers are most likely to engage with your phase of the journey. Peak discovery before major shopping events, capture research during active consideration periods, convert when purchase intent is highest.

Example: A gaming headset campaign peaks social ads in early November for discovery. Search ads ramp up during Black Friday week for research. Best Buy ads maximize during Cyber Monday for conversion.

6. Invest in creative consistency across touchpoints. Design visual themes and messaging that build recognition as customers move between phases. Your creative should feel connected to what customers experienced upstream and set up what they’ll encounter downstream. Create one cohesive brand experience instead of disconnected touchpoints that confuse the customer journey.

Example: A holiday electronics campaign uses “Tech the Halls” tagline across all paid channels. Social ads show lifestyle scenes, search ads use same tagline for product searches, retail media reinforces theme on Best Buy.

7. Coordinate urgency across the ecosystem. Design your timing and promotional elements to work with the natural flow between phases. Your urgency tactics should create value that carries forward rather than dead-ending in your channel. If you’re creating urgency in discovery, make sure it drives immediate research behavior. If you’re in conversion, respond quickly when research activity peaks.

Example: A kitchen appliance brand runs “48-hour flash sale” social ads that drive immediate Google searches for those products. Search ads capture this with sale messaging. Amazon ads show the same discounted pricing.

8. Invest in measurement that tracks cross-channel impact. Design tracking systems that show how your channel performance correlates with activity in other phases during key shopping periods. Monitor leading and lagging indicators that help you understand your role in the broader ecosystem. Plan budget reallocation protocols for when you see connections building that could strengthen overall performance.

Example: A home decor brand tracks social ad engagement spikes that predict search volume increases 2-3 days later. When social engagement jumps 40%, they automatically increase search ad budgets and alert retail media teams.

The brands that implement these ecosystem investment strategies don’t just see better holiday performance. They build sustainable growth that carries beyond the season into Q1 and throughout 2025.

Conclusion: from seasonal wins to sustained competitive edge

Now’s the time to stop viewing holiday planning as a choice between optimizing your own channel or supporting the bigger picture. When you plan for both, driving performance in your channel while contributing to the commerce media ecosystem of search, social, and retail, you unlock a cycle of value that flows back to your results.

Skai is the AI-driven commerce media platform for performance advertising. For nearly two decades, the world’s top brands and agencies have trusted our award-winning technology to bring retail media, paid search, and paid social together into a single, strategic commerce media program. With embedded AI, connected data, and automation throughout, Skai helps marketers move faster, make smarter decisions, and drive more meaningful growth.

Ready to invest in your commerce media ecosystem for the holidays and beyond? Schedule a quick demo to see how unified strategies drive seasonal results.

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