Why TikTok Should Be Part of Your Peak Season Strategy

What we learned from TikTok's 2026 Peak Season webinar, and why the window to prepare opens months before Black Friday.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday might feel like a November problem, but consumer behaviour tells a different story.

We recently attended TikTok's 2026 Peak Season webinar, where one statistic stood out: a large share of shoppers had already started their holiday shopping by September, two full months before Black Friday.

That means if your BFCM strategy only kicks off when the sale goes live, you may already be missing a valuable window to build awareness, influence purchase decisions, and get your brand in front of shoppers before the competition ramps up.

While other platforms got more expensive, TikTok got more efficient

Here's the number that should change how you plan your budget: during last year's peak season, while advertising costs rose across the board on other platforms, TikTok moved in the opposite direction:

• Cost per acquisition dropped 29%
• Cost per impression dropped 27%
• Average order value increased 12%
• ROAS jumped 28%

That's double-digit improvement, in one of the busiest, most competitive ad periods of the year. In plain terms: TikTok delivered lower costs, bigger baskets, and stronger returns, at exactly the time when every other platform gets more expensive and more crowded.

TikTok is where people search now, not just scroll

Search behaviour on TikTok has quietly changed how people shop. This isn't a scrolling app people happen to buy from anymore, it's becoming a search engine in its own right.

• 35% of TikTok users come to the app specifically to search, not just to browse their feed
• 1 in 4 users start searching within 30 seconds of opening the app
• Shoppers search with real intent, compare, and purchase, often within the same session

The journey: Watch It. Love It. Want It. Buy It.

Every purchase on TikTok follows the same path, someone watches it, loves it, wants it, then buys it. It takes the right content at each stage, and three ingredients make that content work: brand, product, and a clear call to action.

Watch It: Attention is everything in the first few seconds. Trends, text overlays, fast value, and relatable creators over polished celebrity content earn that second look.

Love It: Product demos turn "I like it" into "I want it," seeing something in action builds more confidence than a static image. What actually drives the purchase isn't just the discount, it's inspiration, emotion, and simplicity.

Want It: Most brands only show up once the sale starts, but the real decision happens earlier, in the "undecided middle." Short-form video is what bridges that gap, helping shoppers decide and often prompting the buy directly. This stage alone drives close to half of all purchases, and brands that invest here see stronger results right across the funnel.

Buy It: The final push. Premium placements like TopView and FocusView earn attention and boost effectiveness, while Smart+ Catalogue, TikTok's hero performance product, is built to convert. Showing up in search matters just as much, don't let a competitor take that spot.

More creative volume and variety is also one of the strongest predictors of performance, a wider range of hooks, formats, and messages gives the platform more chances to find what resonates, and helps avoid ad fatigue as spend scales up.

Why a hook matters

The first couple of seconds decide everything else. Miss that window and nothing else about the ad gets seen, not the product, the offer, or the call to action.

A strong hook is the gatekeeper for the rest of your creative, and these aren't just good ideas, they're measurable:

• Leveraging trends makes a video 2.3x more likely to hook
• Text overlays make it 2.6x more likely to hook
• 10+ spoken words in the first two seconds makes it 3.3x more likely to hook
• Relatable creators are 2.2x more likely to hook than a celebrity

Peak season is about scaling up, not shifting budget

The mindset shift that matters most: Scale the whole funnel, don't just reallocate budget into performance at the last minute.

Peak-tagged video content grows significantly earlier than most brands plan for, starting well before Black Friday itself, with video views climbing first and conversions following close behind.

Top-performing advertisers didn't put all their eggs in one basket. They kept spend weighted toward performance as always, but funded the rest of the funnel too, pairing premium reach with a commerce push and combining multiple objectives for a stronger overall lift.

The strategy that worked ran in three phases:

Build: speaking to the undecided middle while costs are low.

Peak: Black Friday week, cutting through the noise

Sustain: Keeping the momentum through Boxing Day instead of switching off. 

The takeaway

Your performance ads close the sale, but they're rarely the reason someone actually bought. That decision gets made earlier, in the undecided middle, weeks before the discount goes live, and increasingly, in a TikTok search bar rather than a Google one.

Start before demand peaks. Win the undecided middle. Cut through with content built to convert. Scale your funnel instead of reallocating it.

Not sure where your peak season strategy stands right now? Get in touch with the Squid team and let's build one that captures the sale, not just the discount.