Not long ago, ‘Peak’ meant a December rush into Christmas, followed by preparing for the January sales as a separate push to clear stock. A short, frantic window before the new year reset the clock.
That picture has changed. Peak now stretches from late September through to January. Black Friday, Christmas, and the January sales together form a season-long cycle, a quarter of the retail year that demands as much planning and attention as all the other months combined.
The dynamics are tougher. Media costs surge. Shoppers start researching earlier and stretch their journeys across multiple touchpoints. Loyalty is more fragile, with price-sensitive behaviours, from early deal-hunting to last-minute gift buying, becoming the norm. Competitors are also pulling demand forward with extended promotions, so there’s no longer a single crescendo but a series of “peaks within Peak.”
In this environment, success isn’t about switching media on and off around one or two shopping days. It’s about building system-level agility so you can flex budgets with demand, keep Google’s Performance Max (PMax) learning effectively, and carry momentum straight into January.
Peak begins sooner. Many shoppers are making purchase decisions weeks before November. If you wait until Black Friday, you’ve already missed much of the consideration window.
Peaks within peaks. Black Friday is no longer the only event. The weekend before Black Friday, Cyber Weekend itself, and the first December weekends all drive distinct surges, each with its own cost dynamics and opportunities.
Don’t dial down too soon. The weeks leading into Christmas remain highly efficient, and the January sales arrive almost immediately afterwards. Cutting budgets right after Cyber Weekend can leave demand (and incremental customers) on the table. A better strategy is to maintain activity, transition smoothly into a lower-budget BAU mode that continues to feed PMax with valuable data.
Create your own tent-pole moments. Retailers don’t have to rely solely on the industry wide retail calendar. Strong trading plans and well-timed promotions can generate demand spikes of their own, turning quieter weeks into mini-peaks. These moments often come with the added benefit of a less competitive landscape and lower media costs, making them highly efficient opportunities to win share.
PMax readiness means putting the right controls in place and then letting AI optimise.
Four levers matter most in Peak:
AI can only optimise based on the data and assets you give it. That makes the fundamentals even more important when pressure is highest:
Measurement: Conversion tracking must be watertight. Check out our Performance Measurement Framework for demand-led growth
Data quality: Refresh and enrich your first-party audiences to give PMax the best signals.
Creative: feed the PMax system a wide mix of assets - imagery, video, seasonal messaging - so it has options to test and scale and feed the AI model.
Search alignment: Paid search still captures a huge volume of in-market demand, especially as queries become longer and more specific. It should scale in parallel with your PMax activity, not play catch-up.
Gift-driven shopping has grown into one of the most reliable accelerators of Q4 performance. Treat it as a core part of your Peak planning:
Gifting gives an opportunity for early influence and many shoppers make gift decisions weeks before Black Friday. Be present in discovery and consideration channels well ahead of that point.
Gift cards extend the season, because as shipping deadlines hit in the run up to Christmas, interest in gift cards spikes, often right up to Christmas Eve. A structured approach here can add significant incremental revenue.
Retention is the prize. Gift recipients are effectively new customers you didn’t have to acquire in the usual way. They can be identified through gift card redemptions, delivery–billing mismatches, or first-time accounts created after Christmas. Capturing this segment in January with welcome offers, tailored onboarding journeys, or personalised creative can turn a one-off gifting purchase into long-term customer value that pays dividends well beyond Peak.
Peak doesn’t stop at midnight on Black Friday. Nor does it end when the Christmas wrapping paper goes in the bin. Retailers that sustain activity into January are best placed to capture the sales surge of the new year and feed their AI with meaningful data.
The key is to avoid dialling down too soon. Transition your PMax and paid search campaigns into lower-budget BAU activity, but keep them running. That way you maintain visibility, continue to gather data, and set yourself up for the spring with momentum intact.
Peak used to mean December and the January sales. Today it runs for an entire quarter, stretching from September’s early research through Black Friday, Christmas, and into January promotions.
For modern retail marketers, the challenge is no longer just timing a single campaign. It’s about system-level readiness: clean data, strong creative, budgets that flex with demand, and the discipline to hold ROAS and CPA targets steady so AI like PMax can optimise without interruption.
Those who plan for Peak as a four-month season, and resist the urge to dial down just as December heats up, will be the ones who capture the full upside of the most important period in the retail calendar.