If your holiday marketing strategy starts with Black Friday, you’re already late.
And while we know that sounds dramatic in September as you’re sipping your pumpkin spice latte, holiday shopping has stretched well beyond the traditional Thanksgiving-to-Christmas window. Amazon Ads reports that 42% of shoppers expect to shop before Thanksgiving, while another 31% plan to continue shopping between Cyber Monday and New Year’s. In other words, there’s meaningful demand on both sides of Cyber Week.
And that longer shopping window matters even more this year. Consumers are researching earlier, comparing more, using AI to help make purchase decisions and moving between channels throughout the process. Some are shopping for gifts. Plenty are shopping for themselves. And increasingly, they aren't necessarily waiting around to see whether a better deal appears tomorrow.
The brands best positioned for holiday growth won’t simply spend more during the biggest shopping days. They understand how consumer intent changes throughout the season and recognize that a lot of the decisions that determine what gets purchased in November and December happen well before then.
What Should Brands Expect from the 2026 Holiday Shopping Season?
The overall outlook is positive. Deloitte forecasts U.S. holiday retail sales will grow 4.0% to 4.8% year over year in 2026, reaching between $1.70 trillion and $1.71 trillion. Ecommerce is expected to grow even faster, increasing 7.5% to 8.4% to as much as $318.9 billion. But topline growth doesn't mean consumers are suddenly feeling flush, or that brands should assume more revenue automatically means significantly more products being purchased.
Industry forecasts suggest some of this year's growth may come from higher prices rather than pure demand growth. At the same time, value-seeking behavior remains important across income levels, with shoppers willing to switch between brands and retailers and use promotions to make their budgets work harder.
For marketers, that creates an important distinction: a growing holiday market doesn't automatically mean an easier one. Brands still need a compelling reason to earn the purchase.
And brands that haven't seen significant growth throughout the rest of the year shouldn't assume November and December will suddenly change the trajectory. Holiday remains a major commercial moment, but increasingly, it amplifies the demand brands have already built rather than creating that demand from scratch.
When Should Brands Start Holiday Marketing in 2026?
Earlier than Black Friday, absolutely, but that doesn't mean treating September like Cyber Monday.
Amazon describes today's holiday purchase window as stretching across nearly three months. Its research found that:
- 14% of U.S. shoppers begin as early as summer
- 42% expect to shop before Thanksgiving
- 31% plan to continue shopping from Cyber Monday through New Year's
Other industry research points in the same direction: holiday shopping is increasingly creeping into October as consumers spread purchases across a longer period, watch for earlier promotions and start making decisions before the traditional peak season arrives.
That's happening alongside a broader shift in shopping behavior. Amazon's Beyond the Buy research, conducted with 14,000 consumers across 11 countries, found that 75% of surveyed consumers think about shopping multiple times per week.
What does this mean for marketers? Consumers aren't waiting for an official shopping season to start discovering products. They're finding them while scrolling, watching, searching, reading reviews, consuming creator content and, increasingly, asking AI.
September and October aren't just the warm-up to holiday anymore. They're when products get discovered, researched, compared and in plenty of cases added to the proverbial holiday shopping list.
So the question isn't simply, when does our holiday campaign launch? It's: What needs to happen before a customer is ready to buy from us?
Holiday Marketing Should Follow Consumer Intent, Not Just the Calendar
Not every week of Q4 has the same job.
Early in the season, consumers may still be looking for inspiration, discovering brands and figuring out what they or the people they're shopping for actually want.
By October, that behavior becomes more active. Consumers start researching products, comparing options, reading reviews, searching social platforms and asking AI assistants more specific questions.
As November progresses, the equation changes again. Shoppers have a better idea of what they want and become increasingly focused on promotions, price and where they'll ultimately make the purchase. By Black Friday and Cyber Monday, deal-seeking and conversion intent are at their highest.
Then December introduces a different kind of motivation: urgency. Shipping deadlines, availability and last-minute gifting increasingly shape purchase decisions.
And the season doesn't suddenly end on Cyber Monday. Amazon's finding that 31% of shoppers plan to shop between Cyber Monday and New Year's is a good reminder that there is still significant demand to capture after the biggest promotional weekend.
Rather than treating holiday as one long campaign, brands should think about the role their marketing needs to play as consumer intent changes.
Holiday Isn't One Consumer Mindset; Your Strategy Shouldn't Be Either
One of the easiest mistakes marketers can make is expecting every phase of holiday marketing to produce the same immediate return.
Spoiler alert: it won't.
Marketing earlier in the season may be doing the work of creating awareness, building consideration or introducing a product to someone who won't purchase for another several weeks. That's a fundamentally different job than reaching a high-intent shopper comparing prices during Cyber Week.
That doesn't mean performance stops mattering, it means performance needs context. The more useful question is whether each phase of your holiday strategy is doing the job it was designed to do, and whether those phases are working together to create demand that can ultimately be converted.
Holiday Shopping Isn't Only About Gifting
There’s another wrinkle brands shouldn't overlook: consumers aren't exclusively shopping for other people.
Holiday has always created plenty of one for you, one for me behavior, and 2026 doesn't appear to be any different. Industry research found that 51% of consumers plan to make purchases for themselves during the season. That matters particularly for categories like fashion, beauty, wellness, electronics and home, where holiday promotions can give consumers an excuse to finally buy something they've already been considering.
So while giftability matters, not every holiday message needs to involve a bow, a gift guide or someone else's wish list. Sometimes the shopper and the recipient are the same person.
Value Will Matter, but “Cheapest” Isn't the Only Way to Win
Consumers are still paying close attention to price. Amazon Ads reports that 59% of consumers globally are looking for ways to save money on everyday expenses, and its holiday guidance points brands toward clear value propositions, bundles and multipacks.
The environment also makes comparison easier than ever. Search engines, retail marketplaces and AI assistants can increasingly surface multiple products, prices, reviews and alternatives within seconds. Consumers don't need to open 15 browser tabs themselves anymore.
And as promotional events stretch further across October and November, shoppers are becoming accustomed to seeing some kind of deal well before Black Friday arrives.
But competing on value doesn't necessarily mean racing to the lowest possible price. Exclusive products, bundles, differentiated assortments, loyalty benefits, gifts with purchase and messaging that makes it clear why a product is worth buying can all strengthen the value equation.
That's an important distinction. Consumers may be price-sensitive, but they're still making judgments about quality, convenience and what they're actually getting for their money.
….which brings us to AI.
AI Is Becoming Part of the Holiday Shopping Journey
AI shopping isn't a future trend marketers can file away for later.
Salesforce predicts that 20% of all 2026 holiday ecommerce traffic will originate from AI chat agents. It also reports that 50% of shoppers already use an AI assistant at some point in their buying journey, up 67% year over year.
We saw that shift accelerate dramatically during the 2025 holiday season. Adobe measured a 693.4% year-over-year increase in traffic from generative AI tools to U.S. retail sites between November 1 and December 31. More importantly: that traffic isn't just browsing. Adobe found that AI referrals converted 31% better than non-AI traffic sources during the 2025 holiday season.
AI also fits naturally into the research-heavy portion of the holiday journey. A shopper who once searched “best skincare gift under $100,” opened five articles and compared another handful of product pages can now ask an AI assistant to help narrow the field.
For brands, the takeaway goes beyond adding "AI" to the holiday strategy deck.
Product information needs to be clear, detailed and easy to understand. Specifications, use cases, pricing, availability, reviews and answers to common consumer questions all give shoppers (and the systems helping those shoppers make decisions!) better information to work with. This isn't about writing product pages for robots. It's about making them genuinely useful for people, wherever those people happen to be searching.
Mobile Isn't a Secondary Holiday Shopping Experience
Adobe found that mobile accounted for a record 56.4% of U.S. online holiday revenue in 2025, the first full year mobile represented more than half of online spend, and that share is expected to continue climbing.
At this point, "mobile-friendly" should be the floor, not the goal. A consumer may discover a product on TikTok, research it through Google or an AI assistant, click through to a retailer and complete the purchase without ever leaving their phone.
Brands should pressure-test the entire experience accordingly: landing-page speed, product information, promotional messaging, checkout, payment options and everything in between.
You can have the best media strategy in the world, but if a shopper lands on a frustrating mobile experience, your ad did its job just to hand the sale away.
Creators Are Becoming the New Holiday Gift Guides
Holiday discovery has changed, too.
Traditional gift guides aren't gone, but they're now competing with an endless stream of creator recommendations, wish lists, hauls, “what I'm asking for” videos and product roundups across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms. In many ways, creators have become the modern version of the holiday gift guide.
That's particularly important earlier in the season, when shoppers aren't necessarily searching for one specific product yet. They're looking for ideas. They're trying to figure out what's popular, what's worth buying and what someone on their list might actually want.
It also reinforces the growing importance of social search. Consumers don't only scroll past recommendations anymore; they actively search social platforms for them. For brands, holiday discovery increasingly means showing up where inspiration is happening, not just where the transaction eventually takes place.
Holiday Creative Needs to Work Harder, Too
Holiday creative has a lot of jobs: it needs to introduce products early, make the case for gifting, communicate value, showcase promotions and eventually create enough urgency to drive a purchase.
Trying to make one hero asset carry that entire load is asking a lot.
Instead, brands should think about creative as a system that evolves with the season. Earlier creative can help establish products, use cases and gifting relevance. As intent increases, product-forward messaging, clear value propositions, creator content, bundles and promotional creative can take a larger role.
And peak holiday isn't necessarily the moment to throw out everything you've learned all year in favor of something completely new. Holiday is a pretty expensive time to suddenly discover that your big new creative concept doesn't resonate. The strongest holiday creative strategies build on what a brand already knows about the products, messages, formats and audiences that perform, then adapt those learnings to the moment.
That doesn't mean creative should all look the same. Quite the opposite. Consumers will encounter brands across short-form video, social feeds, search, marketplaces, product pages and larger-screen formats throughout the season. Having a variety of useful creative gives the brand more ways to meet those different moments without expecting one expensive asset to do everything.
And one more thing: looking human still matters. As AI-generated creative becomes easier to produce, consumers are getting better at recognizing when something feels artificial. Holiday is a particularly emotional, human shopping season: creative should feel like it.
Cyber Monday Isn't the Finish Line
It's easy to treat Cyber Monday like the culmination of holiday marketing. And sure, some consumers might be moving onto gift wrapping by Tuesday, but plenty aren't. Nearly a third of consumers in Amazon's holiday research plan to continue shopping between Cyber Monday and New Year's.
December still brings gifting demand, last-minute purchases and shoppers who simply weren't ready to buy during Cyber Week. Shipping deadlines create urgency of their own, and once Christmas passes, the mindset begins shifting again toward self-purchasing and New Year's priorities.
Brands that disappear the moment Cyber Monday ends risk walking away while customers are still shopping.
The Biggest Holiday Opportunity May Be Everything Around the Big Days
Black Friday and Cyber Monday still matter. A lot. But they're part of a much bigger holiday demand curve.
Consumers are discovering products earlier. They're building lists before November arrives. They're thinking about purchases throughout their everyday lives. They're comparing value more carefully. They're shopping for themselves as well as everyone else. They're turning to creators for ideas, shopping on mobile, asking AI for recommendations and continuing to buy after the industry's biggest promotional weekend.
The job for marketers in 2026 is to connect those behaviors rather than treating each holiday moment as an isolated campaign.
Build demand before intent peaks. Give each phase of the season a clear role. Make value easy to understand. Give your creative room to evolve. Remove friction from the mobile experience. Make your product information useful wherever discovery happens. And don't pack up the holiday strategy while consumers are still shopping.
The brands that win holiday won't just show up for the biggest days. They'll make the biggest days work harder because of everything they did before—and everything they're ready to do after.