It’s no secret that the state of the 2024 media ecosystem is, well, fractured. Couple that with an economy that sometimes feels like a roller coaster, and you can see why many marketers stress and struggle to tackle the high holy days of retail: Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Media rates are skyrocketing, breaking through is tougher, customers become increasingly price sensitive and data grows at exponential rates. So, how can e-commerce marketers make sense of it all?
To find out, we sat down with Darren D’Altorio, vice president of social media at the agency Wpromote. He gave us his expert take on what it takes to craft successful strategies, what a winning media mix looks like in 2024, how to prepare for Black Friday all year and more.
Darren D'Altorio, VP of social media at Wpromote
Leave the past behind?
As many e-commerce marketers will attest these days, every Black Friday is different. Those who survived the pandemic one year were faced with depleted inventory due to supply chain issues the following year. The following year flipped this dynamic with retailers trying to remove backordered goods along with current stock. There was a “year of efficiency,” and there is now talk of a “soft landing” in the United States.
For Darren and his team, it means that history is unlikely to repeat itself from one year to the next.
“At the end of the day, if you’re spending too much time looking in the rearview mirror, you’re prone to making bad decisions,” said Darren.
Still, that’s not to say historical data is useless. It can provide interesting context and benchmarks to work against — so long as you don’t over-index on those past results. Instead, Darren focuses on the current market dynamics and puts the customer at the center of the strategy for his clients.
“Customer centricity might be a buzzword, but we really want to know where people are right now,” he explained. “What is the macro and microeconomic environment like for people?”
Indeed, while many US economists praise the American economy on a macro scale, individual consumers still feel price pressures after years of significant inflation. This is creating a unique environment for the Wpromote team and its clients.
“We want to know where people are in terms of household income right now,” said Darren. “What do customers value right now? While our proprietary intelligence platform Polaris gives us insights into past successes by brand and vertical, we have to avoid becoming overly focused on the past. Our goal is to understand the challenges of today and craft the stories that will resonate.”
Putting the customer front and center
Darren advised that any winning strategy for Black Friday 2024 needs to put every aspect of the customer at the core. It needs to account for their financial situation along with the kinds of stories they are consuming across various media. Then, your brand needs to natively become part of that conversation.
“Take the opportunity to tell your story in an authentic way,” said Darren. “Then, build your value into that story — whether it’s in a gifting capacity, a self-gifting capacity or a community-building capacity.”
According to Darren, the creative has to lead and find the customers where they already are.
Finding the customer
So where, exactly, do you find customers this Black Friday? You might not be surprised to hear this (especially from a VP of social) but social media is your best bet.
“Social media is one of the best tools in the toolbox to blend mass reach at a highly affordable cost per impression,” said Darren.
And it’s not just Meta that matters. Rather, it’s the entire digital entertainment sector.
“The way linear TV is deteriorating, premium content is largely shifting to ad-supported and subscription-supported video on demand,” he said.
That means platforms like TikTok, Snap and, yes, Instagram are capturing that attention. And according to Darren, these platforms are being used for entertainment and search (which is also eating into Google’s share of the market).
This isn’t exactly a secret, though. Many advertisers are already turning to these platforms and competing for eyeballs.
“The attention game is challenging,” said Darren, “especially when people on these platforms are either endlessly scrolling or are engaging with a second screen that’s also fighting for attention.”
A balanced media diet
With so much attention being paid to emergent social media platforms, Darren advised that it’s best to consider these opportunities in a larger, more holistic context.
In fact, depending on the brand and budget, Darren recommends using social platforms for mid- and lower-funnel messaging. At the same time, Alphabet properties remain useful
“Search on Google and YouTube is still very valuable for lead generation,” Darren said.
For those with the budget, connected TV can achieve the scale of traditional linear TV but with a more premium context. This allows advertisers to deliver higher quality, brand-awareness messages that serve positioning strategies.
Yet, while every tactic has its place, data must serve as a strategy to back up the investment.
“We see too much ‘spray and pray’ with lots of emotion-based decisions and not enough data backing up those decisions,” said Darren. “The creative should be informed!”
A year-round holiday strategy
Beyond balancing the media mix, Darren pointed out that successful e-commerce brands use Black Friday to capitalize on a year-long effort. For the Wpromote team, the holiday retail season really starts in July.
“When you get to the actual days of peak holiday shopping, that’s when every [advertiser] comes to the table and prices go up,” Darren said.
To avoid paying premium fees for a saturated market, Darren advises clients to start delivering upper-funnel messages in the third quarter of the year. This builds awareness and consideration for your brand. It also works to seed an effective retargeting motion that can be employed at a lower cost in Q4.
Darren and his team find this strategy of drawing in new customers throughout the year and then focusing on conversion on Black Friday most effective. A year-long strategy also helps acquire a wider diversity of customers with a broader representation of potential lifetime value.
“There are lots of acquisition opportunities around the holidays,” said Darren. “But if that’s your only customer acquisition period, you risk only attracting deal-motivated shoppers who are more price sensitive in the long run.”
Instead, it’s important to consider the Black Friday season an activation opportunity. Retargeting may convert some potential customers, while compelling loyalty programs can re-engage existing customers. According to Darren, it’s all possible with clean data and audience management.
“This approach can be more technical, but understanding your segmented audiences and identifying lapsed customers or high-value customers can help you to target auction systems, personalized email and more,” said Darren.
A 5-quarter approach
It used to be said that retailers would figuratively starve for 48 weeks of the year. Then, they would make almost all their revenue around the holiday shopping season.
This dynamic appears to be fading, though. Integrated, direct-to-consumer approaches and always-on marketing are changing the dynamic. For Darren, the “Q5” period (the two-week period just after the holidays) can be a magical time for marketers.
“Q5 is a great time. Cost per impression rates come down, but Grandma just gave you cash to spend. At the same time, people are self reflecting before the New Year, which opens them up to receive messaging,” said Darren.
This can set retailers up nicely for any Q1 lulls. And by the second quarter, summer comes into focus.
“As we approach summer, we develop messages around key shopping opportunities like Mother’s Day and Memorial Day,” said Darren. “Then, we hit summer which is festival season and travel, the Fourth of July, grad season, Father's Day and Prime Day.”
According to Darren, consumers are now expecting to spend around these tentpole events, making them receptive to messaging outside of the typical holiday crush. These events throughout the year also provide retailers and their agencies time to hone creative strategies and build up their databases to again activate on the next Black Friday.
The wish list
By balancing messaging across digital platforms and building their customer base throughout the year, Darren can help clients achieve Black Friday success no matter what the macroeconomic environment might throw at him.
So, what (if anything) would make Black Friday easier for Darren and his team?
After some thought, he landed on the perfect holiday wish: for clients to give up last-click attribution.
“We’ve seen a lot of changes in the industry with privacy at the center of the conversation,” said Darren. “I think about the ways attribution and measurement have become central to success via conversion APIs, the technical aspects and all the nerdy stuff that allows you to manage data correctly. I wish brands could understand that last-click measurement was the antithesis to their success.”
In Darren’s eyes, it’s a mismatch between trying to prove a marketing investment's value and measuring the marketing's impact. After all, last-click attribution doesn’t take into account the vast majority or the customer journey — nor can it account for activity in “walled gardens.”
“I would love to see a shift away from last-click and an embrace of marketing mix modeling while prioritizing technical pieces like conversion APIs,” said Darren. “That would make our signal so much stronger and we could be more strategic. That also means we can be more insightful with our clients and have much deeper, more meaningful conversations.”
That’s something we all can wish for this year.