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.

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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.

Stay ahead of every holiday event by knowing the best times to ramp up or scale back your campaigns. Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest advertising news, trends, and updates on paid social media.

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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.

The post Inspiring Insights for Your 2025 Valentine’s Day Ad Campaigns appeared first on Strike Social.

TLDR? Jump straight to our comprehensive guide at the end.

2024’s Valentine’s Day Advertising Trends on Social Media

Valentine’s Day celebrations have evolved outside of mostly romantic and exclusive for couples. With the evolution of celebration, Valentine’s Day has gone from cherishing moments with family, friends, and even pets. Brands are taking the opportunity to connect through heartfelt paid social campaigns.

Expressing love can sometimes mean giving gifts or creating experiences during this season. And where does anyone look for Valentine’s gift ideas? Nothing short, almost everything is on social media platforms. Let us observe last year’s trend in ad spend and audience engagement to better prepare for the upcoming celebration.  

YouTube’s Valentine’s Cost and Engagement Dynamics Trend

Strike Social data recorded an early spike during early February, suggesting early ad placement is critical in setting up love campaigns. Interestingly, the Click-Through Rate (CTR) steadily climbed as Valentine’s Day approached, peaking on the actual day. This trend shows more consumers are engaging with ads as the day of love draws near.

Facebook’s Valentine’s Cost and Engagement Dynamics Trend

Facebook showed a consistently high CTR through the first half of February. Notable peaks of CTR appeared during the weekends. Together with the streak of CTR, a midweek spike in CPC has been recorded. This pattern suggests that advertisers actively engage audiences throughout the days before the big Vday. 

TikTok’s Valentine’s Cost and Engagement Dynamics Trend

TikTok experienced significant spikes in CPC, particularly on the weekday before Valentine’s Day, reflecting a competitive environment as advertisers vied for attention. Despite a relatively lower CTR than Facebook, TikTok’s dynamic platform remains a fertile ground for trend-driven and creative campaigns for the younger demographic and even the much older ones.

Marketers’ Love Language: Mastering Keywords

The art of using words in marketing transcends greeting cards and sweet nothings. For media buyers, it’s a key to unlocking the hearts of social media users. When used strategically, keywords attract and engage the right audience and help avoid unwanted content, ensuring brand safety and suitability.

This section will discuss keyword strategies to enhance your campaigns’ ROI and turn them into a blooming success.

YouTube Ads: Balancing Targeting and Brand Safety with Keywords

Selecting the right keywords for Valentine’s Day is more than just finding relevant search terms. It involves thoughtful thinking on keywords to use to reach and create a positive impact on audience perception. Specific keywords like “Valentine’s Day gift for her” target niche audiences, increasing ad visibility. Conversely, adding terms like “Cheap Valentine’s Day gift” to your Keyword Exclusion list prevents negative brand associations. Mastering this balance between visibility and relevance is crucial.

TikTok Ads: Diverse Keyword Usage for Creative Insights

TikTok’s dynamic platform offers a unique advertisers’ playground for keyword experimentation. The TikTok Creative Center inspires advertisers to craft compelling ads with diverse keyword applications. Using the inspiration tool, the Strike team searched for keywords related to Valentines that could influence the TikTok community to engage with ad creatives.

Based on the team’s observation, TikTok segments keyword usage into three types: ad text, overlay text, and voice-over. The top short-form video platform challenges traditional contextual targeting, primarily focusing on captions or hashtags.

The recent TikTok Creative Center data shows that the keyword “Valentine’s Day” positively impacted viewers, but results varied. Voice-over resulted in a median CTR of 5.06%, with 5 out of 10 ad creatives applications. Meanwhile, ad text delivered 4.61% engagement with 4 out of 10 ad creatives. Interestingly, a single ad creative using text overlay drove an impressive 8.53% CTR.

Facebook: Navigating Interest Targeting with Precision

While Facebook Ads Manager relies on interest targeting rather than traditional keywords, the principles are similar. With Meta’s extensive user base,3.05 billion users engaged on its platform, precise interest targeting on Facebook reaches specific audiences effectively.

Putting this into action, our analysis of various Valentine’s-centric interests revealed insightful cost metrics. For campaigns running from February 1st to 15th across North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and Minnesota, targeting ages 25-65+ of all genders, we found that CPM for awareness campaigns ranged from $6.56 to $12.50. CPCs varied from $0.54 to $1.6 for action-centric campaigns with link-click objectives. This data highlights the importance of selecting the right interests to optimize ad spend and maximize campaign reach.

From YouTube’s strategic balance of targeting and brand safety to TikTok’s innovative use of diverse keyword applications, each platform offers unique opportunities for engagement and brand alignment. Facebook’s precision in interest targeting further underscores the importance of understanding and leveraging user interests to maximize campaign effectiveness.

Our analysis across these platforms reveals vital insights into optimizing ad spend and enhancing campaign ROI. For an overview of these strategies and to access the data, download our guide and bring out the full potential of your Valentine’s Day advertising efforts.

Valentine’s Day 2024: Evolving Synergy of Storytelling and Data Precision

For media buyers and advertisers, this season is a dynamic fusion of ‘Roi and Roses,’ where the art of crafting heartfelt campaigns intersects with the science of achieving returns on advertising investments. This year, with an estimated 52% of adults participating and nearly $26 billion at stake, the occasion is not just a celebration of romance but a great window of opportunity for savvy marketers.

Platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok each present unique opportunities and challenges, necessitating tailored strategies. YouTube’s fluctuating CPC and steadily increasing CTR highlight the need for timely, targeted campaigns. Facebook’s consistently high CTR underscores the effectiveness of interest targeting, while TikTok’s dynamic keyword trends call for creative, trend-aligned content strategies.

For advertisers and media buyers, mastering this blend of creativity and data analytics will be critical to unlocking the full potential of this opportunity, turning the month of love into a period of meaningful returns.

The post ROIs and Roses, 2024 Valentine’s Day Social Media Advertising Trends appeared first on Strike Social.