Every August, I have some version of the same conversation with e-commerce growth leaders. They tell me Q4 planning is “on the roadmap” and that the real push starts in October. Every year, the ones who wait find the same thing waiting for them: climbing costs and crowded auctions. That’s not simply a hunch. Adjust’s 2026 data shows global e-commerce CPM rising from $2.42 to $3.19 over the past two years, a 32% increase, and in the U.S. it’s climbed to $20.54, the highest of any market. As Adjust’s Greg Wang put it plainly:
“Acquisition is getting more expensive, and paid installs are carrying more of the growth.”
One thing I’ve learned from the commerce clients we work with is that the best growth teams rarely wait for a channel to become conventional. They test early.
LATAM is one of our strongest markets for shopping, and the data backs it up. E-commerce app installs across the region grew 25% year over year in H1 2026, one of the fastest-growing regions. We work with major players across the region, including Amazon and Mercado Livre, and the pattern I mentioned above holds true every time. Those who test an unconventional channel before it’s obvious end up ahead.
The guide shows how leading apps build incrementality frameworks that hold up internally — defining a quality signal, structuring pilots, and resolving MMP vs. internal attribution conflicts. Drawn from 35+ of the top 100 US finance apps.
Download the guide.
Magalu is a great example. One of Brazil’s largest retailers, a household name with decades of history, and one of the country’s biggest e-commerce players. Seeing a company of that scale trust our team to take them into less obvious growth channels and thrive is something I’m incredibly proud of. What makes it even more rewarding is being named their number 1 OEM partner in their in-house growth index, where we outperformed others by almost 5x.No, that’s not a typo. Yes, I will shout this from the rooftops.
So, with that little bit of proud co-founder bias declared, here’s how I’d approach the next five months.
I want to first make the case, plainly, that the holiday shopping season isn’t a November problem. It’s an August decision.
The numbers say this matters more than ever. Global online holiday sales hit $1.29 trillion in 2025, up 7% year over year, and for the first time, mobile drove more than half of that revenue, 56.4%, according to Adobe’s most recent holiday shopping data. That is not a channel shift on the margins. That’s the primary battlefield moving to a screen most marketing teams still under-invest in the channels where their customers actually are.
Here’s how I think about the calendar: each month earns its place by owning one job, not by trying to do everything at once.
August and September: The Window Nobody Uses
August doesn’t feel urgent. That’s exactly why it’s valuable. CPMs are still low, and there’s room to test a new acquisition channel without the pressure of a live sales event riding on it. By September, your audience segments, creative, and budget should already be locked, because the marketers who wait until October are the ones bidding against everyone else at once.
This is also the moment to look beyond the usual Google, Meta, and Apple mix. At AVOW, our OEM partnerships reach 86% of the global Android market and 1.85 billion daily active users, most of it inventory your competitors aren’t touching. Milanuncios leaned into this exact gap as Temu, Shein, and Miravia drove up acquisition costs, delivering 30%+ quarter-over-quarter user growth with a 23% reduction in eCPA. Not by outbidding competitors. By not fighting them in the same auction at all.
October: Re-Engage the Shoppers Who Already Know You
The move I’d make with that access is to bifurcate the audience by seasonality instead of running one blanket retargeting campaign. A shopper who engaged during back-to-school season isn’t the same shopper who converts on Black Friday, and cart abandoners aren’t the same as lapsed buyers, high-value browsers, or last December’s Boxing Day and New Year’s shoppers. Each of those segments earned a different message, not a repeat of the same push notification. Joom took this precision approach, pairing targeted on-device media buying with exclusive Xiaomi placements across Europe and CIS, and generated 60,000 monthly installs and 15,000 purchases at 150% ROAS. The install number is the easy one to report. The purchase number is why the campaign actually worked.
I’m not the only one making this argument. RZR’s CMO Nancy Roberts put it well: 73% of shoppers install a retailer’s app because of an ad, which means acquisition and retargeting aren’t two line items; they’re one system on one budget. Treat them separately, and you’re paying twice for the same shopper.
November: Own the Moment With Branding
Singles’ Day on November 11, Black Friday on November 27, and Cyber Monday on November 30 all land inside a two-week window, and this is the one month I’d lean hard into branding rather than direct response. Mobile OEMs give you five placement types built for exactly this: lock screen, feeds, push, top banner, and splash, giving a brand coverage across the core moments of someone’s day instead of one ad slot competing in a feed.
That’s not a minor lift when the audience actually shows up. Adjust’s 2026 data shows shopping app sessions jump 69% above average in North America and 62% in Europe on Black Friday alone, with installs up 56% in North America that same day. That’s a built-in traffic spike branding placements are positioned to catch. If your app is invisible on the device during that window, you’re relying entirely on your own push notifications to compete with everyone else’s.
December: Capture the Devices Under the Tree
A lot of the phones your customers are using in late December are brand new, purchased during these exact same holiday sales or gifted at Christmas, and set up in the days right after. This is precisely what Dynamic Preloads, or Google Play Auto Install (PAI), is for. Also known via some OEMs as the out-of-box experience (pretty apt, wouldn’t you say 😉), it’s the app recommended the instant someone sets up a new phone, before they’ve downloaded anything else themselves, and because it’s opt-in, every resulting install starts from a more engaged place than a cold ad click.
Magaluran this play alongside Xiaomi GetApps featuring during peak seasonality and saw 9x install growth year over year, while scaling their OEM media investment by 50%. That’s not a one-off holiday bump. It’s new customers acquired at the exact moment their new device, likely bought or gifted because of a Black Friday or Christmas deal, is being set up for the first time.
It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint.
None of this requires replacing the channels that already work for you. It requires starting earlier, testing where your competitors aren’t looking, and giving each month one clear job: diversify in August and September, re-engage in October, brand in November, and capture new devices in December.
The teams that treat the shopping season as a five-month campaign, not a five-week sprint, are the ones who’ll still be growing in January.
And one final bit of co-founder bias: we’ve built an incredible team of people who live and breathe this stuff.Chloé Perrin, our VP of Client Strategy, and her team work with commerce brands on these strategies every day. If you want to test what this could look like for your app this Q4,reach out to us and we’ll get you started.
Or, if you want to dig in first, we’ve put together a full e-commerce growth playbook ➡️ here
