LATAM doesn’t do festive app shopping halfway. It goes all in.
The lights of São Paulo buzzing with Black Friday offers, Mexico City overflowing with Cyber Monday deals, and Christmas shopping lists stretching longer than WhatsApp groups before New Year’s Eve. For app marketers, this festive trifecta is a three-act play of app growth opportunities.
However, app marketers can’t simply “spend more” and hope for an increase in app downloads. LATAM’s festive trifecta demands smarter keyword plays, sharper bidding strategies, and regionally localized engagement. Let’s break it down.
In LATAM, Black Friday is the spark but it’s not the whole fire. Most mobile app marketers pour budgets into Black Friday app marketing and burn out early, leaving the field wide open for competitors to increase app installs, conversions, and engagement that carries through Cyber Monday and the peaks of Christmas shopping.
The key is to treat this as one continuous app marketing strategy instead of three isolated pushes. By planning your Apple Ads keyword strategy, bidding, creatives, and App Store Optimization (ASO) across the entire festive cycle, you unlock compounding growth:
Black Friday Marketing in LATAM isn’t just Brazil anymore, though Brazil still drives the loudest buzz. From Argentina to Mexico, this is LATAM’s biggest app market moment, where discount and deals-first intent fuels record surges in app downloads like no other time of year.
Build your app marketing strategy around discount-driven, urgency-packed keywords (“descuentos app,” “ofertas relámpago,” “promo exclusiva”) and local-language twists. Portuguese search terms dominate in Brazil, while Spanish variants split across Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina.
Expect Cost-per-taps (CPTs) and Cost-per-Installs (CPIs) to spike. Outbid competitors by loading budgets two weeks before Black Friday when users are researching apps but not yet downloading. By the time Black Friday weekend arrives, your app ranking is already higher, so every incremental bid goes further. For example, a retail app in Mexico might boost its Apple Ads spend around “ofertas Black Friday” 10-14 days before the Black Friday sale, driving visibility at lower costs.
Black Friday users don’t search for app categories in silos, they hunt for deals across fashion, tech, food, and finance in the same session. Optimize your Apple Ads campaigns to bid on cross-category, intent-driven keywords and capture overlapping demand outside your immediate app category. A Buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) finance app on the App Store can win traffic from food delivery queries tied to “Black Friday ofertas restaurante” or retail search terms like “compras online descuentos”. Bundling keyword strategies across categories during Black Friday helps unlock greater app installs and positions your app ranking where users are making multi-category decisions.
LATAM’s Cyber Monday is much less chaotic and more strategic. Users who didn’t convert on Black Friday are still hungry and more savvy. This is a critical window for app marketing teams to push app growth beyond the weekend.
Searches flip from “fastest discount” to “best value” and “extended deals.” This is where App Store Optimization (ASO) updates matter: optimize creatives to emphasize extended offers, exclusivity, and limited inventory. At the same time, align Apple Ads keywords with longer-tail regional queries like “promoções Cyber Monday,” “descontos aplicativos,” and “ofertas estendidas apps” to capture late-stage users who are still comparing options.
Competition cools slightly after the Black Friday spike, opening space for efficient app marketing strategies. Optimize your Apple Ads campaign bids on category-specific long-tail search terms. For example, target Portuguese terms like “promoções Cyber Monday apps,” “aplicativo de compras desconto,” “ofertas moda Cyber Monday,” or “apps tecnologia em promoção.” This helps increase app installs and improves App Store app ranking, since installs during this quieter phase contribute greatly towards visibility.
Cyber Monday shoppers often have too many choices. Go beyond ASO screenshots: use in-app events with “sem taxas ocultas,” “cashback imediato,” or “frete grátis” badges and highlight them further via multiple ad placements on the App Store.
If Black Friday is about adrenaline and Cyber Monday about rational deals, Christmas in LATAM is all about emotion, generosity, and… the 13th salary. The special extra pay check (aguinaldo / décimo tercero) lands just in time for December, supercharging both gift-giving intent and app spend.
Christmas is less about “cheap deals” and more about family, giving, and tradition. Adjust ad copy, creatives, and keyword sets in your Apple Ads campaigns to reflect this, eg. “compras de Natal,” “presentes digitais,” and “entregas rápidas.” Use custom product pages to test creatives that highlight generosity, family sharing, and festive value bundles. Apple Ads campaigns that emotionally resonate with users, will boost impressions and app downloads on the App Store during the crowded holiday period of Christmas.
Gifting-related user-intent peaks in LATAM during December. Utilize ad messaging and creatives to frame the app download as a memorable experience. To make the app feel more “giftable”, promote features like instant delivery, digital gift cards, or family packages. Optimize metadata around keywords such as “regalo app,” “tarjeta digital,” “última hora.”
When the bonus finally lands mid-December, users become more open to premium upgrades, bundles, and high-ticket digital purchases. Localize creatives and copy to reference the décimo terceiro or aguinaldo, and time campaigns for the first two weeks of December when the payout hits. Highlight keywords like “ofertas 13º salário,” “aguinaldo digital,” or “presentes premium” to capture high-intent users ready to splurge.
The LATAM festive journey isn’t linear. It’s a roller coaster: Black Friday’s adrenaline → Cyber Monday’s strategy → Christmas’s emotion.
Here’s Newton’s own festive playbook for app marketers:
As LATAM gears up for its biggest shopping moments, make sure your app is ready to capture intent when it peaks. Let Newton help you optimize every tap, view, and conversion this festive season.