Advertisers used to call the weeks following Halloween heading into Christmas the “hard eight”. Today, the commercial calendar is morphing in the face of altered shopping habits and brands that refuse to wait a month to capture market demand.
More than one-fourth (28%) of U.S. consumers (and 37% of millennial consumers) said they had begun their holiday shopping before October; only 11% said they planned to start shopping from Black Friday onwards, per a McKinsey survey. An Experian study also found that 45% of shoppers started purchasing before November. Principally that’s driven by cost-of-living worries; 39% of U.S. consumers say their day-to-day spending was the most stressful element of their lives, up 9% on last year per a survey of 24,000 people by the Kearney Consumer Institute.
If shoppers are buying before advertisers’ holiday campaigns kick in, that’s an issue for brands. “Now, the holiday shopping season starts in October. If your brand isn’t there competing during this time, you can be behind the eight ball,” said Phil Carney, manager of account management at Adroll, a digital marketing platform that’s often used by e-commerce businesses to place media buys.
The holidays are already a peak spending period for brands; globally, retailers spent $46 billion on advertising in the fourth quarter of 2024, per WARC projections. According to media agencies, so-called “holiday creep” led to some sending upper-funnel spending into flight earlier in the season in an effort to influence shoppers farther in advance of the season’s peak.
“We’ve definitely seen clients planning ahead for earlier holiday shopping,” said Ashley Terpstra, media director at Collective Measures. Upper-funnel spending — she highlighted channels such as TV, podcasts, out-of-home, YouTube, and paid social — had kicked in earlier, Terpstra said.
“We’re seeing a bigger or much bigger uptick in October, especially in the last two weeks, compared to the last handful of years,” said David Dweck, general manager at Go Fish Digital. Dweck estimated client spending in October was 2.5 times higher than in previous years but he didn’t provide a specific dollar amount. “We went into the cycle basically telling our advertisers to be prepared with multiple promo offers and to be ready to deploy them pretty quickly. We’re seeing very value-conscious consumers right now.”
Just how early brands are pushing their spend differs from vertical to vertical. Dan Rolli, chief investment officer of OMD U.S., told Digiday that in the main, advertisers are stretching budgets over a longer duration rather than adding incremental dollars. “We’re starting a lead-in to those brand-focused moments a little bit earlier… extending that flight,” said Rolli.
Programmatic and media companies have also picked up on ad spend migrating earlier in the year. John Campbell, svp entertainment and streaming solutions at Disney, said brand partners began booking holiday-related brand messaging as early as August this year, a full month earlier than usual.
“People are thinking about it way earlier, and we’re seeing brands want to get their message out much earlier,” he said.
Oscar Rondon, vp of data and measurement solutions at Nexxen, also told Digiday that advertisers began planning for the fourth quarter earlier than usual, a sign that spending was also being spread over a longer period of time. “Anecdotally, in July and August we had several key partners starting to reach out,” he said. (Neither Campbell nor Rondon shared specific dollar projections.)
Spending on lower-funnel channels like search — heavily relied upon by brands during this key sales period — remain focused on Thanksgiving and November, the media execs suggested, indicating that Black Friday remains a powerful sales opportunity.
Liz Cooney, group director, media strategy at Wpromote, told Digiday that 40% of the media agency’s clients had shifted more investment into September and October. “Most of the budget shift is in upper-funnel media to drive awareness and consideration as shoppers begin browsing,” she said, adding that “Conversion budgets remain focused on peak shopping periods such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.”
But pushing campaigns to earlier in the season isn’t the only option available. While more shoppers are spending more in advance of the season, buyers warn against “leaving demand on the table” November through December. “Not being present can mean losing out on incremental purchases,” said Terpstra.
Rolli also warned against consulting consumer polls too closely. “We’ve heard early survey data that says they will be more budget-conscious… [but] even with the sales potentially starting earlier, that does not always translate to buying earlier,” he cautioned.
After all, consumer sentiment surveys have marked a gloomy tone throughout 2025, with tariffs and political strife looking large on the news agenda. Actual consumer spending data shows a more positive picture, however. “What someone says and what they do are sometimes two different things,” said Rolli.