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Beyond the usual festive campaigns around Black Friday and Christmas, a significant but sometimes overlooked opportunity is coming up this October: Mid-Autumn Festival.
Celebrated by billions of Asians and diasporic communities worldwide, it’s a key moment for export growth, especially in gaming and apps, and travel.
To jumpstart your festive season marketing, here are consumer behaviour insights and market trends you can use.
The potential of Mid-Autumn Festival in driving business growth
The Mid-Autumn Festival traces its roots to traditional harvest celebrations. Today, it’s a time where consumers are in a holiday mood and ready to spend.
Who celebrates it: There are over 1.4 billion digital users among the people marking the holiday worldwide, according to our analysis of public data from official sources.
Why it’s a significant moment: It’s not just a single holiday but an extended period of celebration and spending.
The Festival falls on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month when the moon is at its fullest. But that day often coincides with other holidays.
In South Korea, where the Festival is called Chuseok, the holiday period can last up to several days.
Many employees in places that celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, like South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, also receive bonuses for the holiday season.
What is its business potential: The festive season is a time for reunions and leisure. That means people spend more time and money on apps, especially gaming, and travel.
Outbound travel demand for Taiwan during last year’s Mid-Autumn Festival was as high as 232% year-over-year, according to Destination Insights.
Mid-Autumn festive campaign tips for gaming and apps
To score wins for your gaming and app business during the Mid-Autumn Festival, here are a few tips based on data from the insights platform AppMagic:
- Top gaming genres: Simulation games, role-playing games, and puzzle games consistently post strong performance during this period.
- Key markets and areas of growth: The Mid-Autumn Festival happened in Q3 from 2021 to 2024, and Hong Kong and Vietnam’s app downloads grew quarter-over-quarter every year. In the last Q3, Vietnam’s in-app purchases (IAP) also hit a high of 12.5% growth quarter-over-quarter.
- Top market to prioritise: South Korea has posted four consecutive years of growth in IAP revenue and app downloads for the quarter that Chuseok falls in. Augmented reality games are especially powerful IAP revenue drivers in the market. And high demand for casual games during the Chuseok period drives strong downloads for party games and game collection genres.
For your Chuseok festive campaign to succeed, make localisation a key part of your app marketing strategy.
When gamers in South Korea were surveyed, 83% of them said they’d spend more or the same amount of time on games, driven by “Chuseok seasonal challenges” and “daily reward events.”1
Many gamers are also willing to spend money on in-app purchases of seasonal items.
Here are two types of localisation to include in your app marketing strategy for Chuseok:
- Language localisation: Generate accurate, natural-sounding, and hyper-realistic audio dubs in Korean of your existing video campaigns. Google’s AI-powered Video Ads Dubbing tool lets you do that efficiently and at scale.
- Live operations localisation: Tailor your in-game events, rewards, and creative assets to resonate with Chuseok.
Game developer Pearl Abyss, for example, ran a Chuseok-themed in-game event for its Black Desert Mobile game.
Players could go on a quest in the event arena to acquire ingredients for making a traditional Chuseok treat, “songpyeon,” and exchange it for in-game rewards. The limited-time event, with a festive touch, drew users to play longer.
Mid-Autumn festive campaign tips for travel businesses
To ride the demand for outbound travel during the festive holiday period, show up when people are searching for travel inspiration and deals to book.
Already, travel search interest is near its peak in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan.
And AI in Search is making it easier for people to ask Google anything and get a helpful response.
AI Overviews, for example, lets those planning their trips get both a quick overview on a travel topic and links to the web to learn more.
That means more opportunities for your brand to reach and convert consumers on Google. And you can tap the same AI that powers Search to power your ad campaigns:
- Travel Promotion Ads help you influence those still looking for a hotel by surfacing visually engaging ads of your property across Google prominently, including Search, Hotel Search, and Maps.
- Travel Feeds in Search Ads helps you drive conversions by displaying the most relevant, up-to-date information on your prices, availability, and ratings on Search. That way, customers can, with just one click, jump into the booking flow on your travel site.
If you’re looking to drive business growth before the year ends, don’t miss the export opportunity around the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Supercharge your travel marketing and app marketing strategy now with Google AI-powered campaigns for the festive season.
