Businesses gearing up for the holiday shopping season know this: They need to influence customers across touchpoints because purchase journeys today are non-linear.
But there’s more.
The latest shopper insights reveal just how complex holiday shopping journeys are, and how Australian shoppers are behaving across moments like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and Boxing Day.
With these insights, you can better shape your holiday marketing campaign and scale Australia’s retail peak from October to December.
1. Why holiday shopping is a complex journey for Aussies
The holiday shopping season is unlike other retail moments in the year because 79% of Australian holiday shopping occasions are for “someone else.”1
With Australian shoppers focused on buying for others instead of themselves, the customer purchase journey becomes especially complex in two ways:
- They’re shopping for products unfamiliar to them, to give to others. Around a third of holiday shopping occasions in Australia were for unfamiliar categories (33%) or categories that shoppers do not shop for frequently (31%).2
- They’re buying gifts for multiple people at a time. That means they’re making quite a few purchase journeys and the complexity of shopping in unfamiliar categories is compounded.
The need to make multiple, complex purchase journeys across unfamiliar product categories, however, does not deter Australian holiday shoppers.
2. How Aussies navigate complex holiday shopping journeys
Careful research instead of buying on the spur of the moment. That’s how Aussies are going about their holiday shopping season, purchasing multiple gifts in unfamiliar categories.
The increase in researched purchases is reflected, for instance, in the sustained and significant rise in search interest for "Black Friday, Cyber Monday" last year.
That rise happened over a longer period of time, as compared with a more fleeting spike the year before.
Indeed, Australian shoppers are in an always-on research mode for the holiday shopping season.
For example, high percentages of Australian Christmas shoppers engage in discovery (82%), research (80%), exploration (72%), and decision or purchase (61%) throughout the entire season.3
3. Where Aussies go to discover, research, and buy holiday gifts
When it comes to discovering and deciding on gifts, Australian holiday shoppers are turning to Google and YouTube — a billion shopping moments happen across them daily.4
More than three quarters (78%) of holiday shoppers in Australia say they couldn't do without Google/YouTube.5 And Google is the number one touchpoint consumers say lets them make informed decisions.6
Additionally, the shopper experience on Search is being transformed by Google AI.
Take for example AI Overviews, which provides AI-generated summaries on complicated topics — including holiday shopping — and useful links. It now has over 2 billion monthly users across more than 200 countries and territories and 40 languages.7
And AI-powered features like Circle to Search are making holiday shopping more visual and intuitive. Younger users (18–24 years) who have tried Circle to Search before, now use it to start more than 10% of their searches.8
To keep pace with AI-powered customer purchase journeys, your business can tap into Google’s AI-powered ads for your holiday marketing campaigns.
4. The “Power Pack” for your holiday marketing campaign
The “Power Pack” is Google’s next generation of AI-powered campaign solutions, built for this new era of Search and multi-modal experiences.
Comprising Demand Gen, AI Max for Search campaigns, and Performance Max, the “Power Pack” helps marketers generate demand, capture intent, and drive conversions across the entire customer purchase journey.
- Demand Gen: The campaign creates an optimised mix of high-impact visuals and messages that is served across YouTube and Google’s most immersive surfaces, including Shorts and Discover.
The creatives generate demand by engaging new, qualified audiences through lookalike segments, helping to expand your reach and drive consideration. - AI Max for Search campaigns: It supercharges Search campaigns and powers up performance by expanding your reach into new queries that you weren’t accessing before.
It’ll also intelligently adapt your ad content to match emerging user intent in real time, so that your ad stays highly relevant. - Performance Max: It lets you drive awareness and conversions across all of Google’s channels, including Search, Shopping, and YouTube, with one campaign.
Additionally, it uses the full power of Google AI from end to end, to improve your bidding and generate creatives that will optimise your performance across the channels.
With the “Power Pack” fueling your holiday marketing strategy, you’ll be ready to meet Aussies in their complex purchase journeys and hit new highs this peak retail season.
