Fall football is a shopping moment, too

For marketers, Labor Day has traditionally marked the unofficial end of summer. But it is increasingly useful to think of it as the beginning of the holiday shopping season.

Consumers are already researching gifts before October, and the calendar quickly fills with moments that command their attention, from fall football to October Prime Day and eventually Black Friday Cyber Monday.² The opportunity for advertisers is to stop thinking about these moments as isolated awareness opportunities and start treating them as chances to influence what consumers actually buy.

Fall football is a particularly interesting example. It combines the scale and attention of live sports with a period when consumers are beginning to make decisions about what they will buy in the months ahead. We know people are watching, but advertisers must think about doing enough with that attention to move someone closer to a purchase.

Football has become part of the seasonal performance calendar

Fall football is already getting meaningful attention from performance marketers. In tvScientific by Pinterest’s 2026 Holiday & Seasonal Shopping Trends Report, 42% of marketers say they plan to use Performance TV during fall football season, making it one of the more significant seasonal windows in the calendar.¹ At the same time, 16% say fall football will receive the largest share of their Performance TV budget across seasonal shopping moments, ahead of Labor Day at 9%.¹

That investment makes sense because sports create something advertisers increasingly struggle to find elsewhere: concentrated attention around a shared moment.

But attention is only the starting point. The mistake is assuming that because an audience is engaged with the game, the advertising around it should be designed primarily to build awareness and wait for demand to materialize later.

The better question is: what can a brand ask that viewer to do next? A football campaign can introduce a product, but it can also give someone a reason to visit a site, explore an offer, search for the brand, or take advantage of something that is relevant to the moment. The distinction matters because the same high-attention environment can support both demand creation and demand capture when the campaign is designed for action.

Build the ad for the moment

The seasonal calendar is not one continuous shopping event. A consumer watching a game in September is in a different mindset from someone comparing products on Black Friday. The creative should reflect that difference.

Marketers already recognize the need for this kind of adaptation. More than half say they tailor seasonal Performance TV campaigns through audience targeting (54%), offers or promotions (53%), and creative assets or visuals (51%).¹ Another 34% adjust timing or flighting, while 33% adapt copy and messaging.¹

That gives advertisers a useful framework for football. Start with the audience, but don’t stop there. Consider what the viewer is likely doing at that point in the season, what the brand can credibly offer them, and what action makes sense immediately after the ad. A football campaign might use the environment to create urgency around a timely promotion, introduce a product that fits the season, or give viewers a simple reason to continue the interaction on another screen.

The creative itself should make that next step easy. In our own consumer research, 52% of consumers say a clear offer or discount is what makes a TV ad drive action, while 41% value ads that are short and to the point and 36% respond to creative personalized to their interests.² Football does not need to turn every commercial into a direct-response ad, but advertisers should stop assuming that performance and entertainment are mutually exclusive. A compelling spot can still give the viewer a clear reason to act.

Design for what happens after the commercial

One of the most important changes in TV behavior is that the viewer is rarely limited to the TV screen. They are watching the game while searching, scrolling, texting, and shopping on another device.

That creates an unusually direct bridge between attention and action. In fact, 74% of consumers search for something related to what they are watching while watching TV, 69% browse online shopping, and 68% look up a product they saw in an ad.² In other words, the moment immediately after a TV impression can be a very active part of the customer journey.

Advertisers should plan for that behavior rather than treating it as incidental. Make sure the offer is easy to find, the landing experience matches the promise in the ad, and the rest of the media mix reinforces the same message.

This also changes how we should think about the role of sports advertising. The game does not need to generate a purchase before the next play. Rather, it needs to create the right response for the consumer, whether that response happens on their phone five minutes later or in a purchase days afterward. Performance means connecting that chain of behavior to the business outcome.

Measure the outcome

This is where the distinction between a sports awareness play and a performance campaign becomes especially important. If the only measurement is reach, impressions, or frequency, then we have no way to know whether the attention we bought actually changed consumer behavior.

Marketers are increasingly signaling that they want something different. Sales and revenue are now the top outcome marketers care about when evaluating Performance TV during holiday and seasonal shopping moments, with 63% ranking it first.¹ Reach, which ranked first in 2025, has fallen to 29%.¹ That is a meaningful shift in what marketers expect TV to prove.

Fall football is an ideal environment to apply that standard. Instead of asking only how many people watched the ad, advertisers can ask what happened after exposure: Did site traffic increase? Did searches rise? Did purchases increase? Did the campaign generate incremental customers? Did one audience or creative treatment produce stronger business results than another?

The answers make the next seasonal moment smarter. A football campaign can become more than a September media buy; it can become a source of learning that informs October Prime Day, the broader holiday season, and Black Friday Cyber Monday. The marketers who treat these moments as connected will have an advantage over those who plan each one from scratch.

The opportunity is bigger than the game

Fall football matters because it sits at the intersection of two things marketers increasingly need: high-quality attention and measurable action. The audience is engaged, the seasonal calendar is accelerating, and consumers are already moving between TV, search, social, and commerce. That creates an opportunity to use the environment for more than brand exposure.

The playbook is straightforward. Enter the season early, identify the audiences most likely to matter, build creative and offers around the specific moment, make the next action easy, and measure what happens after the impression. Then take those learnings into the next shopping window rather than starting over.

The holiday season is no longer a single event that begins on Black Friday. It is a sequence of moments, and fall football is one of them. The brands that understand that will do more than win attention during the game. They will use that attention to influence what happens after it.

Sources:

• tvScientific by Pinterest, 2026 Holiday & Seasonal Shopping Trends Report, (N=487) United States, July 2026.
• tvScientific by Pinterest, 2026 Consumer Trends Report, US, February 2026, n=600 people that watch tv