Every year we watch the same pattern. Brands start thinking seriously about Q4 in late October, by which point the only lever still within reach is discount depth. So they discount deeper than last year, in the most expensive auction of the year, and call the result a plan.
What is already fixed by now
Inventory is ordered or it is not. Your best selling SKU either has cover for a demand spike or it does not, and no amount of media buying repairs a stockout in the middle of your best week. The offer itself sits in the same category. Bundles, sizes, what is actually in the box: those need to exist before the traffic arrives, not after the cost per click doubles.
What can still be changed
Creative, and only if you start now. The angles you intend to run in November should be in market during September and October at low spend, so that when costs rise you are scaling things that already earned their place. Testing in November means paying peak prices to learn what you could have learned in September for a fraction of it.
What we would do this month
Confirm inventory cover on the top two or three SKUs. Decide the offer now and stop revisiting it. Get four or five angles into market cheaply and let them sort themselves out. Agree what number defines a good Q4 before it starts, because a target set in December is just a description of what happened. And write down, in advance, what you will do if week one comes in soft, since that is the moment nobody thinks clearly.
In our experience the brands that have a calm December are the ones that made these decisions in September. The brands that have a chaotic one are still making them in November.