How to harness AI to win in Q4

This month, Tyler explains how toy marketers can navigate the peak selling season with a little help from AI-enhanced campaigns designed to deliver clicks, views and likes.

In the age of AI-driven marketing, UK toy advertisers gearing up for the all-important Q4 period can now combine tried and tested seasonal insight with cutting-edge automation. Christmas gift shopping in the UK begins earlier than ever, and platforms like Meta, YouTube and TikTok increasingly rely on AI to connect brands with holiday shoppers. Understanding how to feed these AI systems the right inputs, and avoiding outdated tactics, means toy marketers can maximise their campaign effectiveness this peak season. Holiday purchasing patterns have shifted forward, and UK consumers are known to start their Christmas shopping sooner than any other market, with consumer trend data showing that Christmas gift-related content on social platforms starts spiking from early October. This early buzz matters because those who begin gift hunting earlier tend to spend significantly more overall: a Mintel study found UK buyers who started before 1st November spent on average £437 on Christmas, compared to £301 for those who waited until later. By detecting and acting on early intent signals, AI can help advertisers reach these high-value shoppers as they start browsing. Brands that launch campaigns early and fully utilise AI will stay front of mind as parents and gift-givers build their wish lists.

As peak season approaches, all major digital platforms from Meta’s Advantage+ to Google’s Performance Max and TikTok’s Smart Performance campaigns will lean heavily on AI to serve the right ad to the right user. To fully unlock AI’s potential this season, advertisers must ensure their campaign setup aligns end-to-end with their business goals. The first step is to produce creative assets that match the objectives set. If the goal is awareness or social engagement, the creative might focus on storytelling and brand values. If the goal is direct conversion, ads should feature clear calls to action to drive urgency. Brands should select campaign objectives and optimisation events that reflect true success. For instance, a toy brand aiming to boost profitable sales should experiment with value-based bidding (optimising for higher-value purchases) alongside volume, since value optimisation can drive higher return on ad spend and larger basket sizes. By structuring campaigns with the right creative messaging, appropriate objectives and meaningful success measures, toy advertisers can give the AI the right steer.

Advertisers should recognise that the algorithms perform best when fed with broad, high-quality inputs in terms of creative, audience and campaign objectives. Overly narrow targeting or restrictive campaign settings can starve the AI of the data it needs to learn and optimise. Instead, marketers should supply a rich mix of assets and let the machines do the heavy lifting across placements like Feed, Stories, Shorts and Reels. A blend of awareness, traffic and conversion goals can double overall brand lift versus focusing on a single outcome, as well as increase direct and organic search traffic. The takeaway is to provide a variety of creative formats and clear conversion goals, then allow the algorithm to identify pockets of demand that manual targeting might miss.

Digital advertisers have long been conditioned to chase clicks, but in Q4, clicks alone do not tell the full story of ad impact. 81% of Meta’s weekly users do not click on any ads, even during peak weeks. These passive viewers might still go on to purchase in-store or via search after seeing an ad, especially where a parent might see a video and later buy the item without ever clicking the ad link. Telling the AI to optimise solely for cheap clicks or high click-through rates can lead marketers to miss out on the majority of potential buyers. A better approach is to optimise for incremental conversions, those sales that would not have happened without exposure to the ad. Brands should be looking to advanced measurement tools and conversion lift tests to help identify these truly influenced purchases and should judge their Q4 campaigns by the extra toys sold, not just by who clicked on an ad.

AI may be orchestrating the media delivery, but creative is still king. Creative quality is the single biggest multiplier of campaign effectiveness, accounting for around 50% of ad effectiveness in digital campaigns. Even the smartest AI needs the spark of human insight, and a strong creative strategy can help brands achieve greater scale and resonance. Increasingly, the best-performing creatives in toy marketing is coming from creators. Partnering with influencers, popular toy unboxers, or kid-friendly content creators can dramatically improve relevance and help algorithms find receptive audiences. They can also supply unique signal to platform AI, helping to train the algorithm to seek lookalike viewers who might not be reached through traditional ads. By tapping into the builtin authenticity and following of creators, holiday campaigns can perform better than traditional ads alone.

Q4 in the toy industry can be make-or-break, but brands have an arsenal of AI tools to ensure no opportunity is missed. By combining these principles with a healthy dose of holiday creativity, toy marketers can confidently navigate this season’s cross-platform complexity. The result will be AIenhanced campaigns that not only deliver clicks, views or likes, but real business value.