Strike Overview
- As soon as your Christmas and New Year campaigns wrap up, you’ll likely start hunting for trends and insights to guide your 2025 Valentine’s Day ad campaigns.
- The National Retail Federation (NRF) has forecasted Valentine’s Day spending for 2024 to reach $25.8 billion, with spending increasing on average by 5.87% YoY from 2021 to 2024. This suggests that 2025 could see up to $27.3 billion in spending despite a slight dip last year.
- However, several significant changes in 2025 could influence trends and advertising strategies for this Valentine’s Day. These include the uncertain TikTok ban, the potential impact of Trump’s 2024 U.S. Presidential election win, and Super Bowl LIX taking place during the same week as Valentine’s Day.
- Let’s break down the 2025 social media advertising trends and insights to help craft the perfect strategy and capture your audience’s hearts this Valentine’s Day season.
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Feel the Love With Our 2025 Valentine’s Day Advertising Guidebook
As the first major holiday following the Q4 rush, Valentine’s Day offers the perfect opportunity to kick off your 2025 advertising efforts with fresh ideas and dynamic campaigns. Known as a season of love and thoughtful gifting, it’s a time for brands to connect with audiences on an emotional level and celebrate relationships.
This year, we’re bringing you the latest trends and actionable strategies to lock in your Valentine’s Day ad campaigns capture hearts—and deliver results.
Top Valentine’s Day Trends for 2025
Before we discuss specific advertising insights, let’s first explore what consumers are thinking about this Valentine’s Day. Understanding what shoppers are searching for, where they’re shopping, and how they plan to celebrate provides guidance for shaping your paid social strategies.
Ideas for Valentine’s Day Gifts
When it comes to Valentine’s Day gift ideas, sweet treats like chocolates and candy continue to reign supreme, with 52% of consumers listing them as their go-to choice. Flowers and gift cards take second and third spots, hinting at celebrations that range from intimate dinners at home to outings at restaurants or bars.
Shopping Destinations
Online retailers remain the top choice for Valentine’s Day shoppers, with 36.55% favoring Amazon for gift purchases. However, physical stores are not far behind, as 36.37% of consumers still prefer shopping in-store.
Interestingly, even with a projected rise in overall spending, about 3 in 10 U.S. consumers prioritize affordability, opting for lower-cost gifts. This trend makes discount stores, alongside department stores and local businesses, a key destination for Valentine’s Day shoppers.
Choice of Celebrations
Will your audience be staying in or heading out this Valentine’s Day? According to Statista, more than 20% of U.S. consumers plan to celebrate with a home-cooked meal. Interestingly, many celebrations are expected to occur before or after February 14, as consumers aim to avoid crowded restaurants and high costs associated with peak Valentine’s Day activities.
Valentine’s Day isn’t just for couples. In 2024, 29% of Valentine’s Day spending was dedicated to celebrating with friends, coworkers, and classmates. This growing trend of “Galentine’s Day” or group celebrations highlights that love comes in many forms—romantic, platonic, or professional.
Love is indeed everywhere, and this just proves that advertising during Valentine’s Day is not just for flowers and chocolate brands, right?
Valentine’s Day Advertising Insights on Paid Social Media
Even if your brand doesn’t offer traditional Valentine’s Day gifts or experiences, there’s still ample opportunity in social media advertising. Whether you’re a sports brand or an industrial service company, your Valentine’s Day ad campaigns can be tailored to resonate with a wide audience.
As mentioned earlier, Valentine’s Day is not only about romantic love. People celebrate various forms of love, making Valentine’s Day ad campaigns highly versatile. Check out these insights and trends to guide your advertising strategy this year:
YouTube Ad Trends for Valentine’s Campaigns
As with other major holidays like Halloween and Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day sees a significant spike in activity, particularly during the week of the event. But how much of a spike can you expect? Let’s take a look at our YouTube data for Awareness campaigns:
If you’re mainly advertising on YouTube for your Valentine’s Day 2025 ads, expect higher CPM (cost per thousand impressions) during the event week. CPM starts to rise during the last two weeks of January, stabilizes for a short period, and then spikes back up on Valentine’s Day week.
For YouTube bumper ads, the optimal period for awareness campaigns is two weeks before Valentine’s Day, continuing through the first week of March.
Views-focused campaigns follow a similar pattern during the week of Valentine’s Day. The cost-per-view (CPV) trend favors Video View Campaigns more, showing steady movement during Q1.
Early spikes are also seen by the last week of January. As February progresses and into March, YouTube VVC shows more stable results.
Facebook Advertising Insights for Valentine’s Week
With online shopping dominating this Valentine’s Day, Facebook, the largest social media platform in the U.S., should definitely be part of your advertising strategy. If you’re considering launching your Valentine’s Day ad campaigns on Facebook, our data indicates you’re in good hands.
During Valentine’s Day Week, Facebook campaigns tend to show relatively stable performance in both top and mid-funnel efforts. Let’s take a closer look at the data:
Last year’s Valentine’s Day campaigns proved successful, with both awareness and click-focused campaigns performing well during the event week. Our Facebook advertising cost benchmarks for CPM ranged from $2.78 to $9.60, and our Q1 data shows an average of $3.51 to $5.91. For the Valentine’s Day week specifically, our Campaign Lab insights show CPM levels between $3.95 and $5.82.
Click-focused campaigns also showed positive trends, with Q1 CPC ranging from $0.14 to $0.72 (vs. $0.14 to $0.72 benchmarks). We expect Valentine’s Day 2025 trends to exhibit an identical pattern, especially with the 8.5% increase in ad spending as 2024 closed.
As we previously indicated from our Valentine’s Day 2024 trends, being specific in the target audience interest may raise costs. However, Valentine’s Day ad campaigns on Facebook show that February sees a lower cost level right after the mid-January peak. Costs stabilize as we approach March Madness and the end of Q1, creating an optimistic outlook for Valentine’s Day campaigns on Facebook.
Case Study:
Our Valentine’s Day advertising insights show a typical uptick in ad costs a week or two before the holiday. However, our recent campaign for a CPG brand promoting specifically for Valentine’s Day revealed a different trend.
The goal of this Valentine’s Day campaign was to acquire 88 million impressions over a one-month period on Facebook. While we did observe the usual CPM spike in late January, the weeks leading up to and including Valentine’s Day showed more controlled and optimized CPM levels.
With the help of Strike Social’s team in continuous campaign optimization, we achieved a 31% improvement in CPM efficiency. Additionally, by optimizing campaign pacing during the key weeks of Valentine’s Day, we reduced costs by up to 36%. This approach helped the brand meet its target number of impressions within the campaign’s timeframe while keeping ad costs under control.
While it’s common to see high peaks in ad activity during the event itself—just like any other holiday—this shouldn’t deter you from focusing on your campaign goals and driving more traffic or sales during Valentine’s Day.
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Leap Into Success with Your Valentine’s Day 2025 Advertising
It’s a given that paid social media advertising is not for the faint of heart. Thus, your Valentine’s Day ad campaigns should also be resilient and adaptable to make sure you get the best results at the best costs.
Strike Social offers a data-driven approach to maximize the effectiveness of your paid social campaigns. With over 10 years of machine learning combined with our proprietary tool, Campaign Lab, and the expertise of our media buyers, we’re here to help you surpass your Valentine’s Day 2025 campaign goals.
Schedule a demo with our team to discuss your campaign targets and how we can help you succeed.
