Overview
- Meta has opened its 2026 Holiday Insights Center, which provides access to marketing stats and ad tips to help marketers build their holiday marketing plan.
- Meta also published the results of a recent survey consisting of 14,473 shoppers across 18 countries to guide marketers on how consumers are planning to spend their money this holiday season.
- Meta cites a +3% ad conversions, +5% click-through rate gained since Q4 of 2025.
- House of Marketers‘ Insights on what the report reveals and how marketers can benefit from the Holiday Insights Center.
Meta has launched its 2026 Meta Holiday Insights Center recently. This is basically a hub of usage stats and ad guidance built to help marketers plan the holiday season. Alongside this Meta has revealed results of a fresh Ipsos survey of nearly 15,000 holiday shoppers across 18 countries. Given recent research, Meta expects the 2026 holidays to drive more than $1.4 trillion in retail spend, with online shopping now growing 2.5x faster than in-store sales.
We work with brands on the creator side of exactly this shift, so the numbers Meta is surfacing aren’t abstract to us; they match what we’re seeing in campaigns running right now.
Below is what’s actually in the data, and where it connects to what we’ve already told marketers to expect.
What Is the Meta Holiday Insights Center?
The Holiday Insights Center is a resource hub Meta built for advertisers, combining an 18-country consumer survey with platform usage data and creative/ad guidance ahead of the 2026 holiday season. It sits alongside a new Holiday Marketing Playbook for SMBs, which packages the same research into checklists and campaign-timing advice.
Source: Meta
This is a complete data based action plan to guide marketers to create winning holiday marketing campaigns this year.
Let’s discuss some of the major insights this report has to offer.
Insights from Meta’s Holiday Marketing Playbook for SMBs
Let’s discuss a big-picture view of what these insights are, what hthey mean for marketers, and how to use them in your campaigns
Influencer Marketing & Creators are Crucial to a Successful Holiday Campaign
And the data supports this because,
- 94% of shoppers using Meta’s apps say they look to creators for holiday shopping guidance
- 57% of social shoppers say creator content is likely to influence what they actually buy.
Crucially, what shoppers want from creators isn’t lifestyle inspiration; it’s product reviews, help finding deals, promo codes, and demos.
]Meta’s data confirms the same mechanic on its own apps: shoppers aren’t asking creators to sell them a dream; they’re asking them to help the users do their homework first.
Source: Meta
Social Commerce Is Now Driving In-Store Visits, Not Just App Sales
Meta’s survey found that 85% of social shoppers have bought something in-store after seeing it on social media.
78% of shoppers on Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp have purchased directly within those apps.
The content that sends people into a shop is practical:
- high-quality product photography and video (47%)
- in-store promotion ads (46%)
- user-generated content (39%).
We flagged this exact convergence of discovery and commerce with the rise of social search and its link with in-app social commerce. That piece made the case that platforms are adding checkout options in-app because a growing share of shoppers were discovering, researching, and deciding to buy in the same scroll.
Meta’s numbers show that loop closing on its apps too, and extending into physical retail rather than staying app-bound.
Source: Meta
AI & AEO Is Now a Holiday Shopping Channel
Meta reports that nearly 1 in 4 global shoppers used AI for holiday shopping last year, and that ratio is expected to grow again this season.
Shoppers reach for AI at the exact moments holiday shopping gets overwhelming. They use it for generating gift ideas, comparing products, and choosing for people whose preferences they don’t fully know.
If a brand isn’t part of the answer an AI tool gives, whether that’s a citation, a product mention, or a comparison, it doesn’t get considered at all. Holiday shopping is where that shift becomes commercially unavoidable, since it’s the moment shoppers are actively looking to skip the research grind.
Business Messaging is an Emerging Commerce Channel
Fifty-nine percent of social shoppers using Meta’s apps have messaged a business directly during the holiday season, primarily through Messenger, Instagram or WhatsApp, and customer service is only the fifth most common reason. Shoppers are messaging businesses to discover products, add items to a basket, and pay, not just to ask for help after a purchase.
Important Detail for Marketers:
Meta’s playbook flags that Black Friday falls on 27 November 2026, only 28 days before Christmas, roughly a week tighter than usual. Meta’s guidance is to start ads by mid-October so Meta’s algorithm has time to learn before peak demand compresses further into the Black Friday–Cyber Monday window.
House of Marketers Insights for Marketers
As an influencer marketing agency, three things stand out to us in this data. First, creators are being used as researchers and discount-finders, not inspiration boards, which means seeding and gifting campaigns built around authentic, high-frequency posting will keep outperforming one-off polished partnerships this holiday season.
Second, the boundary between social discovery and in-store or in-app purchase has effectively disappeared, so a holiday content plan needs to hold up as commerce content, not just awareness content, from the very first post.
Third, AI-assisted discovery is no longer a channel to watch for next year; it’s already shaping which brands get shortlisted this holiday season. With the shopping window closing in, brands have less runway to fix that gap once the season starts.
So if your holiday strategy needs an influencer marketing programme built around what shoppers are actually asking for this season, get in touch.