Oct 31, 2023

2023 Holiday Season Monetization Playbook: Key Dates, Tools, and Guidance For Developers

October is officially wrapping up, and you know what that means: The busiest shopping season of the year is almost here! Now’s the time to get ready for all of the holiday sales opportunities at your doorstep and take advantage of people looking to explore immersive experiences on their brand-new Meta Quest 3.

To help you drive growth and find success during this crucial time of the year for your business, the Meta Launch Management team has created a comprehensive guide on holiday monetization.

Whether you’re a seasoned app marketer or new to the world of selling games during the holidays, below you can find essential topics to help you make the most of the 2023 holiday season, like updating your app metadata, key black-out dates to be aware of, monetization tools like Meta Quest Store pre-orders, and much more.

Be Aware of Key Dates

Planning ahead is key for effective execution. Be aware of deadlines for submitting metadata updates to your app’s product detail page (PDP) so you can capitalize on upcoming merchandisable moments. Here are some key dates you can plan around this holiday season:

First Wave of Store Blackout Dates (November 17 – 27, 2023)

Diwali (November 12, 2023)

Thanksgiving (November 23, 2023)

Black Friday (November 24, 2023)

Hanukkah (December 7 – 15, 2023)

Second Wave of Store Blackout Dates (December 16, 2023 – January 2, 2024

Christmas Eve (December 24, 2023)

Christmas (December 25, 2023)

New Year’s Eve (December 31, 2023)

New Year’s Day (January 1, 2024)

You may experience delays for metadata submission review during the above blackout dates. As always, you’re welcome to submit metadata updates during these times, but they may not be reviewed until the blackout period ends.

Now that you have a timeline of key dates to plan around, read on to learn how you can amplify your presence on the Meta Quest Store using your app’s creative assets and monetization tools.

Amplify Your Store Presence This Holiday Season

Do you have planned updates for your app around the holidays? Have you optimized app features for Quest 3 headsets? Consider an asset refresh to drive attention to the new experiences you’re bringing to the world.

As noted above, creative assets should be submitted from the Developer Dashboard as early as possible to ensure that our teams have time to process your work. Review teams receive an influx of holiday submissions from now through the new year, and we want to help ensure that you have a successful holiday season and beyond. If you have specific details on how your updates should be processed, please feel free to include detailed notes to help us support you.

You may also want to leverage A/B testing for your next asset refresh to gauge what messaging or design elements resonate best with your audiences. Check out the downloadable case study to see potential gains from these lightweight tests.

Many developers have used the A/B Testing Tool to drive conversions in the Meta Quest Store.

Don’t forget to use your new assets to promote your seasonal updates on the Meta Quest Store as well as your own managed social channels. You can create Developer Posts and send User Notifications to get people excited about the latest and greatest content from your app.

With all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, it can be easy to deprioritize the next phase of your marketing plans. Be sure to prepare assets for the post-holiday season to keep your assets current and timely. It’s an extremely busy time, but if you plan ahead, you can revert to your normal assets after your holiday assets have served their purpose. Submitting these ahead of time will also ensure that we can review, process, and approve them so they’re ready, rather than sitting in the queue during a blackout window.

Get Ahead with Marketing and Monetization Resources from Meta Connect 2023

Our app ecosystem continues to grow, which means developers are making more revenue faster than ever. Over $2 billion USD has been spent on games and apps in the Meta Quest Store, with roughly one in three titles making revenue in the millions. As more apps are published on our platform, knowing how to leverage our suite of engagement and monetization tools can help your app stand out within a library of great experiences.

This year at Meta Connect, there was a palpable focus on developer monetization strategies in our panel lineup, including the developer session “Growing Your VR Business on Meta Quest⁠” and our 2023 Developer State of the Union⁠.

A key highlight was the recently added, self-serve Pre-Order tool in the Developer Dashboard. Now, developers with approval to publish on the Meta Quest Store can request Pre-Order and Coming Soon listings months ahead of your target release date to drive awareness and pre-launch sales.

Pre-Order and Coming Soon listings can help drive awareness and sales ahead of launch.

To give you a comprehensive look at all of the tools you have at your disposal to drive revenue and engagement, we also launched a new Developer Success resource page during Connect. Now you have a central hub to learn about ways to optimize your pricing, take advantage of pre-launch listings, incentivize purchases, and more.

Prepare Your Servers for a Boost in Traffic

With a holiday influx of new users ready to experience your app for the first time—especially if your title has some multiplayer or social components—please be prepared to handle the additional number of users jumping into your experience. You’ll want to prepare for spikes in engagement and possibly a larger number of concurrent users over the next few months. Planning for a boost in traffic can help you create the best possible experience for users’ first time in your app.

Stay Up to Date with the Latest News

Since the last holiday season, we’ve launched many new updates, features, and tools to help you grow your audience and drive success on our platform. To stay informed about news and updates that impact your organization, be sure to follow us on Facebook⁠ and X⁠.

Marketing

Quest

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