Henry Kelly.
Henry Kelly, Director of e-Commerce at Meta ANZ
If your USA summer campaign goes live in June, you are already behind. By that point, consumers have spent months discovering brands, engaging with content and forming preferences, while many Australian marketers are only just entering the market.
Summer in the USA isn’t a moment to activate against. It is a demand curve to build into, and timing is the difference between efficiency and playing catch-up.
The untapped opportunity
The USA operates at a different scale and is an incredible growth opportunity for Australian ecommerce businesses. In 2025, every single month in the USA delivered more than USD $120 billion in ecommerce sales, which is larger than Australia’s biggest quarter.1
Across the summer period, more than USD $100 billion in spend is tied to key retail and cultural moments, including Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Prime Day and Back to School.2 This year, that demand is expected to be even stronger, with the USA's 250th anniversary of independence and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with the FIFA World Cup adding further momentum across travel, retail and lifestyle categories.
For marketers, this is not a marginal gain. It is one of the biggest growth windows available globally.
Why Australian brands are well placed to win
For Australian brands, the USA summer offers a clear product and fit based on existing local trends and demand.
Across fashion, beauty, outdoor and lifestyle categories, Australian businesses are naturally aligned to summer demand. There is also a cultural advantage, with shared language, similar seasonal behaviours and a perception of Australian brands as inherently “summer-first”.
Relevance over discounts
The USA summer behaves differently from traditional peak periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and for many brands, it can be a larger commercial opportunity. Where Q4 is driven by price and promotion, summer is more closely linked to intent and lifestyle.
Around 68 per cent of USA shoppers cite lifestyle fit and special summer occasions like weekend getaways as their primary purchase driver during this period. This creates a window where growth is less dependent on discounting and more driven by relevance, creative and how well brands connect to consumers' lifestyles and identities across key sales periods.
Sydney luxury label LEO LIN worked with their agency Elephant Room to double down on the USA market in 2025. They focussed on driving mass awareness and relating to the USA market in person and online. They ran across the US and ran a major brand campaign with Bloomingdale’s in New York. As part of the campaign they leveraged paid and organic content to engage audiences in the USA. The result: 225 per cent year on year sales growth, with the USA as the primary driver.
Timing is everything
Unlocking the full economic opportunity behind the USA summer requires a shift in mindset. It is not a single campaign moment to activate against. It is a multi-month period where discovery, consideration and conversion happen in sequence.
Where many brands fall down is not in execution, but in timing. We work with many incredible Australian ecommerce brands, and consistently see interest in summer categories begin to rise from March, building through April and May, before peaking between May and July.
By the time June arrives, consumers are already well into their decision-making journey. They have discovered brands, engaged with content and formed preferences. That means campaigns launching at peak are rarely influencing demand. They are competing for it, often at a higher cost and with less room to move. For marketers focused on efficiency, that is a difficult position to be in.
There is a clear commercial case for shifting timelines forward. Brands that begin planning and activating more than 10 weeks ahead of key moments see up to 2.4 times higher return on ad spend compared to those that start just four weeks out.4
Early activity in May provides more than just lower media costs. It gives marketers more time to test creative, refine audiences and build familiarity, all of which contribute to stronger conversion performance when demand peaks. By contrast, late-stage campaigns are forced into a reactive position, where costs are higher, competition is more intense and optimisation cycles are compressed.
The brands that perform best are those that build presence early, establish relevance and carry that momentum into peak demand. In practice, performance at peak is often determined by the work done in the weeks leading up to it.
The takeaway for marketers
For Australian marketers looking to drive growth in the USA, the opportunity is not defined by the peak of summer, but by the lead-up to it.
Those who move early have the advantage, not just in timing, but in how they build demand. Creative and creators play a critical role here, shaping discovery and making brands relevant before competition peaks. This is an area where Australian brands are well placed to win, with a natural alignment to summer lifestyle and strong creative output.
Those who wait until June and beyond may still participate, but they will be competing harder for demand that has already been shaped. In the USA market, timing is not just a planning decision. It is a performance lever, and right now, too many brands are pulling it too late.
1) Digital Commerce 360, December ecommerce sales push 2025 total past $1.5 trillion
2) National Retail Federation, Mother’s Day Spending Survey 2025; AMRA & ELMA, Top 20 Memorial Day Marketing Statistics 2025; Numerator, Memorial Day 2024 Report; National Retail Federation, Back-to-School Spending Survey 2025; Capital One Shopping Research, July 4th Shopping Statistics; Facteus, Amazon Prime Day Fall 2025: Wrap Up; Klaviyo, Labor Day Weekend Sales Reveal What’s Ahead for Holiday Shopping, 4 September 2025 linked the information
3) YouGov, Special Occasion Shopping Behavior Survey, 2025
4) Boston Consulting Group, Marketing Excellence Study, March 2024