Dive Brief:

• Retailers, such as Macy's, are making a bigger holiday campaign push this year into social media. The iconic department store is synchronizing its Facebook and Instagram holiday campaigns.
• Macy’s will begin running campaigns with elements that track and re-target users across Instagram and Facebook taking advantage of the two social networks’ shared ad platform.
• And Target is increasing its social media budget 30% running campaigns on Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook. Advertising on Snapchat will be a first for Target.

Dive Insight:

Social media marketing is seeing its moment in the spotlight thanks to retailers like Macy's and Target that are leveraging it for their seasonal campaigns. What's more, for the holiday marketing season, Facebook is offering advertisers a new targeting segment called “holiday shopping season” that reaches users engaged with holiday planning and retail-related activity.

Macy’s holiday social strategy will coordinate marketing efforts between Facebook and Instagram. Serena Potter, gvp of digital media strategy at Macy's, told Adweek, "You can tell a piece of the story and then target that customer who engaged with that first ad unit with another element of the story later in the day. We're able to understand the customer and the audience that engages with our ads within Instagram and retarget them within Facebook."

Facebook also recently debuted new “Shopping” sections on the site and app. These new sections will curate advertisers’ products in a single place side by side with its familiar News Feeds, Pages and Groups.

Meanwhile, Target is planning on being particularly active on Snapchat beginning with a Thanksgiving-themed geofilter for U.S. users and a new holiday-themed geofilter released each day of December through Christmas. Colleen McDuffe, senior director of social media at Target, told Adweek, "Holiday this year represents Target's most ambitious social spend for a single campaign. For the first time, Target will be leveraging Snapchat to engage our guests during the holidays."

At six billion video views daily, Snapchat is closing in on Facebook’s eight billion daily video views, making the messaging app an attractive option for advertisers looking to connect with its millennial-heavy audience.

Target isn't unfamiliar with harnessing tech to take marketing risks. Earlier this year the retailer used Shazam's technology and ran digitally interactive print ads in Vogue's iconic September issue to wide applause.