Holiday season app marketing: a November to January calendar

Most of the holiday season on the app stores is decided before it starts. By the second week of November, anything that needs a review, a build or an approved ad account is already on a deadline, and anything that doesn't is easy to overdo. I have watched teams change their screenshots every few days through December and then struggle, in January, to say which change did anything.

So this is the calendar I work from, starting today with about eleven weeks to go until February. It treats the period as three short seasons that want different things: the offer weekend at the end of November, the week between Christmas and New Year when a lot of new phones get set up, and January, when people tidy up their home screens and their intentions. The dates assume an app that sells in Europe and the United States.

What can change without a new build

Before you plan anything, sort your store assets by how they reach the store. Some ride on an app version, some have their own review, and some you can edit at midnight from your phone. At the time of writing, it looks like this:

Two details in that table shape the rest of the plan. Apple's in-app events guidance says price promotions that don't introduce new content, features or goods are not good candidates for an event, so a plain discount needs another home on iOS. Google's promotional content has an Offers type made for discounts and trials, but for apps (games are treated differently) it is only available if you meet Google's eligibility criteria for its premium growth tools. Check that in Play Console before you build a campaign around it.

The other detail is new with iOS 27. The App Store now takes creative assets for the product page header and for search results, separate from screenshots and allowed to show brand and seasonal artwork rather than the app in use. According to Apple's help on managing App Store assets, you can get them approved in the Asset Library on their own and then place them on the version that is already live, without submitting a new one. That makes a seasonal look on iOS far cheaper to switch on and off than it used to be. Apple lists them for iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 or later, so people on older systems keep seeing your screenshots.

The calendar, week by week

Mid November: decide less than you want to

The most useful decision of the season is what you won't do. A small team can run one offer and one seasonal look well, and I would rather see that than five campaigns stepping on each other. Write the offer as one sentence with its start, end, who is eligible and what happens afterwards. For subscriptions, the App Store supports introductory offers, promotional offers, win-back offers and offer codes, and Play Console has its own subscription offers. They aim at different people: introductory offers at new subscribers, win-back offers at people who left. Choose the audience first and the mechanism second.

Then count backwards from the review queues. An event on Google Play that should start on December 1 with featuring requested has to be submitted by November 17. Apple's creative assets and in-app events go through App Review too, and you want them approved while the queues are short, not in the week before Christmas.

Before anything changes, export a baseline: two weeks of impressions, product page conversion rate, installs by source and day-7 retention. Without it, January's review of the season turns into a debate about feelings.

Late November: the offer weekend

Black Friday is a retail fixture across most of Europe now, Portugal included, and shoppers browse the stores in the same mood they browse everything else that weekend. If you are running an offer, set it up so it starts and ends on its own. Promotional text does not expire, so put a reminder in your calendar for the morning the offer ends, and check the copy on both stores that evening.

Paid campaigns are where I see the most money wasted. In my experience, auctions get crowded around this weekend because retailers and big games are bidding on everything, and an app that hasn't run ads before is learning at the most expensive moment of the year. If paid acquisition isn't already working for you in October, this is not the week to start; our guide to the first 90 days after launch explains why paid should wait until retention has a floor.

Push notifications deserve one line of caution. Apple's App Review Guidelines say promotional pushes need explicit opt-in through consent language in your app, plus a way to opt out. A Black Friday message sent to everyone who allowed notifications for reminders is the kind of thing that ends up in a review, and not a kind one.

Early December: the gift angle and the last release

Some apps are gifts, and many more get used for gifts: shopping lists, recipe apps, photo books, games. If yours is one of them, a seasonal custom product page linked from your own ads or newsletter works better than redesigning the default page for everyone. On Google Play, a custom store listing reached through its own URL parameter does the same job.

Plan the last release that carries marketing changes for the first half of December, so new screenshots or keywords go through review while it is still quick. Keep the seasonal artwork in the header and the captions' background, not in place of the app. The first three screenshots still have to explain what the app does, as covered in our guide to screenshots that explain the app in five seconds.

Mid December: hold steady

In past years Apple has announced, in November or early December, that App Review stays open through the holidays but that reviews may take longer around Christmas; for 2024 it named December 20 to 26. Check Apple's developer news page for the current notice before you plan anything for those days. Google, for its part, warns that some apps are subject to extended reviews of up to seven days, or longer in exceptional cases. Neither is a reason to panic. Both are reasons not to submit new screenshots on December 22.

Christmas week: new phones, quiet hands

A lot of people set up a new phone around Christmas and restore or reinstall their apps. For them, your app's first launch on the new device matters more than anything in the store, so make sure sign-in and restore purchases work and that the support inbox is staffed, even lightly.

This is also the worst week of the year for store experiments. Holiday visitors are a different crowd, and a treatment that wins with them may lose in February. Our piece on A/B testing in mobile apps explains how a shifting traffic mix can mislead you; I simply pause tests from mid December and restart them in January.

January: switch back and read the season

Take the seasonal header down and rewrite the promotional text on the first working day of the year. Nothing on a product page looks older than snowflakes in the second week of January. End any custom pages you made for December ads, and point the links somewhere sensible.

Then compare the season with your baseline: impressions, conversion rate, installs by source, and how the December cohorts retain against November's. Write one page with what ran, when it was approved, when it went live and what moved. Next November, that page is the first thing you will want.

Before November 17: a short checklist

1. Write down the one offer and the one seasonal look you will run, with start and end dates.
2. Confirm whether your Play Console account can use promotional content and how many featuring requests are left in the quarter.
3. Upload seasonal creative assets to Apple's Asset Library and submit them for approval.
4. Submit any in-app event that is about new content, not a discount.
5. Build the custom product page or custom store listing your seasonal ads will point to.
6. Export the baseline numbers and save them where January's review will find them.
7. Put every end date in the same calendar as its start date, with a named owner.

That last point is the one I would tape to the monitor. Most of the seasonal mistakes I see in February are not bad ideas. They are good ideas nobody switched off.