Many marketers assume — incorrectly — that they’ll be locked out of holiday CTV ad opportunities by big-budget advertisers who scoop up the best ad slots. The truth is, you don't have to be a national brand or plan your campaign months ahead to stand out this season.
Below, we share some guidance on how to plan, launch and optimize your holiday CTV campaign with Roku Ads Manager.
Who’s on your ‘nice list’?
Streaming activity rises steadily as the holidays approach and peaks during Black Friday weekend — just as people start shopping in earnest. This makes the weekend after Thanksgiving the ideal time to start reaching CTV audiences with seasonal deals and promotions.
As with any digital marketing campaign, the important thing is to reach streaming audiences who will convert. To that end, Roku stands ready with unprecedented segmentation and targeting options. You know your customers, and we know our streaming audience.
By accessing our proprietary insights, you can build custom segments — filtering based on demographic factors to help you advertise next to content that has the highest crossover with your ideal shopper.
Test those offers
With Roku’s self-service Ads Manager, advertisers can easily set up A/B tests to flight different creative versions and learn which offers resonate. For example, a retail app could compare a flat discount pegged to Black Friday with a “buy one, get one” offer.
Worried it’s too late to spin up new holiday-themed creative? With Ads Manager, you can easily import and augment existing creative assets from your social channels. We’ll also help you with AI-assisted upscaling so every piece is primed for CTV.
When energy app Arbor needed a cost-effective way to target three specific markets, they turned one of their existing video ads into a Roku Action Ad with a simple interactive overlay. The result was a winning campaign that cost only $0.05 per unique reach.¹
Make the register ring
You can also add ecommerce functionality directly to your creative, courtesy of our partnership with Shopify. With just a few clicks, viewers can be brought right from an Action Ad to your store page without leaving their couch.
Health supplement company fatty15 harnessed our Shopify partnership to turn exposure into action with just a few clicks. Our optimization tools allowed them to track up-to-the-minute results and retarget exposed viewers, achieving a more than a 25% conversion rate at a cost per unique reach of just $0.03.²
Unwrap performance
The launch of your campaign isn’t the end of the process with Roku Ads Manager. Our in-platform metrics provide a real-time window into impressions, view-through rates, conversions, and cost per action.
Want to try a different message? Ads Manager lets you easily change audience parameters, swap creative assets, or audition a new call-to-action on the fly. In the fast-moving holiday period, flexibility can mean the difference between hitting your goals and getting lost in the shuffle.
Give yourself the gift of simple
The best time to start your holiday campaign was in Q3. The second-best time? Today.
Even for late starters, there are plenty of opportunities to catch your audience. With viewers streaming 34 billion hours in Q4 2024 alone, and nearly two-thirds plan to keep shopping well into mid-January.³ It’s clear that audiences will spend their holidays on Roku. Make sure you’re there to meet them.
The self-serve capabilities of Roku Ads Manager makes testing, measuring, and optimizing easier than ever before. Don’t miss out on the Black Friday shoppers, the late planners, or the January gifters: get your holiday campaigns up and running now!
Exclusive offer: For a limited-time only, we’re giving new advertisers a $5,000 ad credit when you spend your first $5,000 on Roku.
Start building, testing, and optimizing your holiday campaigns now on Roku Ads Manager to ensure your brand is ready to win the peak holiday shopping season.
¹ Roku Internal Data, 2025
² Roku Internal Data, 2025
³ Roku Internal Data, 2025
