August 28, 2025
Pumpkin spice latte season is officially in session — and seasonal campaigns are a lot like your favorite PSL. They pop up once a year, they are in high demand, and when you get the “recipe” right, they can create an incredible amount of buzz.
Halloween is an especially lucrative time to kick off the season with interactive holiday campaigns.
From candy brackets to costume contests and so much more, this spooky holiday serves up tons of ways to creatively tap into many types of audiences.
Here’s why Halloween can be a treat for media companies and sales teams who want to engage clients and sponsors — plus all the tricks to make Halloween marketing campaign ideas work for you and your ROI.
Halloween is a scary-big deal — and for good reason. According to the National Retail Foundation, U.S. consumers are anticipated to spend about $11.7 billion on the Halloween season in 2025 alone.
And consumers are not wasting any time, either, with 47% beginning their shopping before October, compared to just 32% a decade ago, according to a recent survey. That also means they’re primed for fun, engaging campaigns and promotions that start earlier rather than later.
For media and sales teams, Halloween and seasonal campaign ideas for advertisers and sponsors (across many categories!) offer up fresh, click-worthy content that feels perfectly tuned to the time of year. These thematic promotions not only engage target audiences, but they also provide compelling ways to generate leads, capture high-value first-party and zero-party data, and drive incremental revenue.
If you want this spooky season to work for you but aren’t sure where to start, check out this list of Halloween marketing campaign ideas. Audience.io makes it easy to implement these — and any other seasonal campaigns — with countless plug-and-play templates that are ready for a hauntingly good time.
Everyone loves showing off their costume of the year. This photo contest invites audiences to show off their best Halloween looks and encourages participation with a visually appealing and interactive user experience.
In this promotion, the photos serve as UGC (user-generated content), which amplifies reach, engagement, and shareability. The campaign also provides a seamless way to gather data and valuable insights about consumer preferences — all of which can lead to retargeting campaigns and enhance personalized communication strategies after the contest is over.
Trick-and-Treat Tip: Consider selling a presenting sponsorship to a local retailer, party supply store, or even a pet shop for a dedicated Pet Costume Contest promotion.
Everyone loves a giveaway — especially if it’s an irresistible prize package that everyone wants. From tickets to a local haunted house, an exclusive Halloween event, or high-dollar gift cards to party stores to create your own experience at home, many Halloween sweepstakes ideas can provide an enticing way to engage consumers.
Trick-and-Treat Tip: Include entry form fields that help you collect valuable first-party data and zero-party data.
This is the kind of candy crush you want this season. Tap into candy lovers’ strong opinions about the most elite sweet treats out there with a March Madness–style bracket. Participants vote their way to a “Sweet 16,” “Edible 8,” and so on — leading to the ultimate candy champion. (Even the candy corn can be in on this one!)
Trick-and-Treat Tip: Each round of results can be shared on social media to drive return visits — and increased engagement. And think outside of the Nerds box when it comes to sponsors here. It doesn’t have to be a candy company; any brand that wants to make a sweet impact on audiences can easily be integrated.
Invite audiences to share their most creative and spook-tacular pumpkin carvings — from spooky to silly to the all-time “fails” — to stir up excitement. This campaign naturally facilitates sharing, expanding reach organically through participants' networks — especially with a voting component added in.
Trick-and-Treat Tip: Partner with a local institution to sponsor the gallery for added brand visibility and affinity.
Test your audience’s knowledge of the most iconic scary flicks, monster movies, and more with a trivia quiz. For an added layer of thrills and chills, you can incentivize participation by offering bonus entries in a giveaway. It will keep participants on the edge of their seats.
Trick-and-Treat Tip: Make sure to require an email to see the quiz results for increased list growth.
Launching seasonal campaigns and promotions can be time-consuming — unless you have a platform that does all the heavy lifting. That’s where Audience.io enters the chat.
With the Audience platform, you have everything you need to activate Halloween marketing campaign ideas — or any other seasonal promotion — in the most engaging, creative, and captivating way. Ready-to-use and customizable templates for contests, sweepstakes, quizzes, and more make it easy to collect high-quality leads while providing sponsors and advertisers with the crucial insights they need. And all data collection tools are secure, compliant, and accessible to protect both brand and audience.
Halloween will be here and gone before you know it — so if these Halloween contest ideas for publishers and media companies sound like a sweet deal, don’t let this opportunity ghost you.
Learn more about how you can increase revenue, generate measurable ROI, and collect clean data you can use long after the last piece of Halloween candy is consumed here.