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The experiential stores aim to reposition the brand from a place to buy holiday gifts to a year-round destination. Our take: Retailers are growing more cautious as the Trump administration鈥檚 policies drive up costs and prompt consumers to tighten their spending鈥攆actors that are likely to make merchants more hesitant to take risks on opening new stores.

Mattel is banking on in-store retail to uplift holiday sales, while Kimberly-Clark is building its profile through storytelling-driven ads. McDonald鈥檚 drawing customers to its loyalty program thanks to gamified features in its mobile app. Here are three insights from each company鈥檚 most recent earnings and what marketers can learn.

The new product will be launched in the coming weeks and will be fully scaled across Walmart by the holiday season. OnePay will also reportedly take a position in Klarna when it goes public, per CNBC. Why it matters: The Walmart tie-up switching hands ramps up the rivalry between Klarna and Affirm ahead of Klarna鈥檚 IPO. It鈥檚 a big loss for Affirm.

Key stat: 18% of US adults spent more on gifts than they intended to during the 2024 holiday season, per Ipsos鈥� Consumer Tracker data. However, twice as many (37%) said they stuck to their budgets. Nearly half (49%) of consumers did most of their holiday shopping online.

After a disappointing holiday season, Kohl鈥檚 announced plans to close 27 underperforming stores across more than a dozen states to improve profitability. Meanwhile, Macy鈥檚 expects sales to be at or slightly below its previous guidance of $7.8 billion to $8.0 billion.

Automated shopping bots accounted for 57% of all ecommerce web traffic during the 2024 holiday season, per Radware鈥檚 2025 Ecommerce Bot Threat report, up from 49% the year before. Malicious bots comprised 31% of ecommerce web traffic. They can scrape content, make fake account registrations, or abandon carts.

Retailers must continually test and adapt their strategies to find what resonates with consumers ahead of the holidays. An extended holiday season requires a dynamic approach to promotions, while brands aiming to reach Gen Z should use creators and video ads. Here are three pieces of advice on a successful holiday ad campaign from Meta and two of its advertising partners, 鈥嬧�婳gee Beauty and AS Beauty.

In fact, 39% of US holiday shoppers cited the fear of rising prices due to tariffs as the key reason for increased purchases before the holidays, according to CreditCards.com. Our take: Marketers should track economic shifts, prioritize high-ROI channels, and stay agile to seize emerging opportunities.

North America retail sales grew 9.5% YoY, with record results during Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales events that contributed to a holiday season that Amazon called its 鈥渕ost successful yet.鈥�. Advertising revenues rose 18% YoY to $17.29 billion, slightly short of the $17.4 billion expected. Earnings per share of $1.86 were up 86% YoY, well ahead of the $1.49 expected.

Apple stores nationwide saw weekend traffic rivaling the holiday shopping season, with many shoppers asking if prices would rise, per Bloomberg. Panic-buying reveals real-time consumer sentiment and market sensitivity to shifting economic trends.

It鈥檚 also not unusual for delinquencies and debts to increase in Q4 as consumers ramp up holiday shopping, which means this quarter鈥檚 data release could be more noise than signal. Our take: Issuers likely won鈥檛 see a significant improvement in delinquencies until credit card interest rates come down.

Zooming out: The ad market鈥檚 strong end-of-year performance reflects a robust consumer appetite during the holiday season. But the key question is whether that growth will extend into 2025 as economic uncertainties swirl.

The company鈥檚 ecommerce gains during the 2024 holiday season shows the effectiveness of its AI-driven ad platform in sectors beyond gaming, including fintech and retail. AppLovin plans to expand this success by launching self-service tools to scale its ecommerce revenues and enhance ad performance with AI-driven personalization, which could improve conversion rates.

Our take: While US retailers entered the year on relatively solid footing following a strong holiday season, they鈥檝e quickly found themselves on shaky ground. The chaotic and fast-changing nature of the Trump administration鈥檚 policies has made medium-term planning difficult鈥攁nd long-term planning nearly impossible.

GenAI traffic to retail sites shot up by 1,200% in February compared with July 2024, building on momentum from the holiday season. Those shoppers also tend to spend more time and are more engaged than visitors originating from other channels, with a 23% lower bounce rate. That speaks to users鈥� growing trust in genAI to offer relevant and useful information.

For example, to drum up beer sales during the holiday season, Stella Artois created an in-store display featuring an LED fireplace decorated with garland and a stocking. 鈥淭hese are the types of opportunities [where brands can grow] incremental sales and steal wallet share from competitors,鈥� said Galvin. Photo credit: Path to Purchase Institute. 4.

27% of UK and US adults plan to start buying holiday gifts as early as October, according to an April 2024 survey from Salsify.

The 2022 holiday season鈥檚 solid retail sales gains were mostly attributable to inflation, but they nevertheless paint a cautiously optimistic picture for the 2023 holiday season.

GenAI worms its way into the shopping journey: Generative AI (genAI) played a larger role in holiday shopping this year, whether buyers knew it or not. AI-powered product recommendations, targeted offers, and customer service support influenced $229 billion of global online holiday sales, according to Salesforce. Traffic to retail sites from genAI chatbots grew 1,300% YoY, per Adobe.

Why it matters: The data provides additional puzzle pieces to the picture of a strong economy, as retailers like Target, Abercrombie & Fitch, and lululemon Athletica raised their Q4 outlooks after generating better-than-expected holiday sales.

TTD鈥檚 results were a startling miss for a company that had become an ad industry and stock market darling鈥攑articularly during the ad-filled holiday season. 鈥淲e are disappointed that we fell short of our own expectations in the fourth quarter,鈥� CEO Jeff Green said in a press release.

Amazon Prime Day 2023 will drive a surge of activity for Amazon, competing retailers, and brands looking to generate a sales boost before the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons.

Strong holiday shopping. 鈥淚n the US, consumer holiday spending growth was in the upper mid-single digits on a year-over-year basis,鈥� per CFO Chris Suh. Discretionary categories including retail, travel, and entertainment led growth. New international card partnerships. Visa launched a bevy of new consumer credit cards like one with digital bank Neon in Brazil.

Beauty, despite strong holiday sales, cut its full-year forecast after a 36% YoY profit drop and a weak start to January. The China challenge: L'Or茅al and Est茅e Lauder face steep sales declines in China. L'Or茅al鈥檚 North Asia Q4 sales shrank 3.6% on a like-for-like basis, or -3.1% on a reported basis, while Est茅e Lauder鈥檚 Asia-Pacific net sales plunged 11% YoY during the quarter.

The company reportedly told advertisers in mid to late December that it was struggling to reach enough listeners with ads during the holiday season, a busy time for ad buyers. Zooming out: Spotify has made its advertising ambitions clear. It said in 2017 it aimed to be the third-largest ad platform behind Google and Meta and called podcasting a 鈥�$20 billion opportunity鈥� in 2022.