I'm brave enough to say it: If your holiday plan still looks like "coast through fall, spend hard Thanksgiving week, ride it into December," you're already behind. The data says so, and honestly, the consumers already told us this a while ago.
We just released tvScientific by Pinterest's 2026 Holiday & Seasonal Shopping Trends Report, which covers the whole run of the season: Labor Day, October Prime Day, fall football, Black Friday Cyber Monday, the December rush, and New Year's. What came back confirms something I've been arguing for a while: The holidays are a sequence, but most plans are still built for individual moments.
Performance TV stopped being a "nice to have" for the holidays
One stat really jumped out on my initial read: 81% of marketers now plan to run Performance TV during the 2026 holiday season. Last year that number was 52%. The year before, 35%.1 That's an industry deciding, in real time, that this channel actually works.
And they're not just testing it. 71% say their Performance TV budget for the season went up year over year.1 I've talked to enough people in the industry to know why: 94% of marketers now expect Performance TV to drive real revenue growth this season.1 That's the bar people are holding this channel to now. It's about time.
What I'd push back on is the instinct to pour all of that into one week in November. Black Friday Cyber Monday still pulls the biggest single slice of budget at 35%, sure.1 But our own platform data shows October Prime Day running 250% above average daily spend, with Black Friday Cyber Monday around 87-88% above baseline.2 The tentpoles multiplied. Your plan should too.
You're already late if you're waiting for November.
Our report shows Labor Day campaigns launching in September (48%), fall football in September too (37%), even October Prime Day campaigns going live in September ahead of the event (30%).1 Meanwhile Black Friday Cyber Monday and the broader holiday season are still launching in November.1 The problem is that a third of consumers say they start researching gifts before October even starts. Millennials are already buying in October. Gen X and Boomers move in November. Gen Z's the one holding out for Black Friday Cyber Monday.3 So if your first touch is a November launch, you missed a major chunk of your audience before you even started running.
This doesn’t mean panic-launch all your holiday campaigns in August, but the earlier moments (Labor Day, fall football, October Prime Day) aren't optional anymore. They're your actual shot at shaping the decision before six other brands are doing the same thing in the same three-week window.
Dual-screen behavior is turning every TV moment into a shopping moment
This stat kills the last excuse for treating TV as passive: 78% of people are scrolling social while the TV's on, 69% are shopping online, 68% are looking up something they just saw in an ad.3 That's active decision-making happening in the same fifteen seconds as your spot.
Marketers clearly feel this. 76% say it's critical to reach shoppers before they start actively comparing products, and 54% specifically prioritize high-intent audiences on Performance TV.1 That's exactly why we've leaned so hard into pairing Pinterest's planning signal with Performance TV. You're seeing who's already saving and searching, and you get to them before the comparison shopping starts and everything gets more expensive.
Stop starting over every single moment
One of my personal favorite findings in the report is that marketers are carrying lessons forward. Half carry the campaign theme forward moment to moment, and close to that carry audience learnings (49%), adapted messaging (45%), and budget insights (45%).1
They are using Labor Day to learn something that makes October Prime Day campaigns smarter, and using October Prime Day to sharpen Black Friday Cyber Monday. That’s lines up with how TV's becoming more coordinated with everything else: 74% of marketers are pairing it with social, 44% with influencer/creator, mid-30s with email, search, and display.1 At the same time, consumers are basically confirming this works: 46% say they're more likely to buy after seeing a brand on social before TV, same number for search before TV.3 This is just how people actually move.
And look at what marketers are prioritizing when they measure success now: sales and revenue jumped to #1, up from #4 last year. Reach, the #1 priority in 2025, dropped to #4.1 That's the whole industry finally asking the channel to prove something real.
As for AI, I don’t love it as a buzzword, so I'll say this: nobody in this data is excited about AI for its own sake. They're using it because the season demands more moments, audiences, and creative versions in less time. Top uses right now include creative ideation (48%), audience targeting (43%), and creative versioning (39%).1 The payoff marketers actually report is faster creative, faster launches, more variation without more headcount.1
Marketers want the pieces talking to each other. Audience insight, creative, and optimization working as one system instead of three tools that only sync up after the campaign's already live.
What actually separates the brands that win this season
The brands that win this holiday season will be the ones already moving in September, treating Performance TV as a year-round bet instead of a November tactic, building creative for each moment instead of recycling one, and getting smarter with every tentpole instead of starting from zero each time.
By the time Black Friday Cyber Monday actually shows up, most of the decisions are already made. The move is shaping the moment before it happens.
Get the full 2026 Holiday & Seasonal Shopping Trends Report — the data behind all of this, in one place.
Sources:
- tvScientific by Pinterest, 2026 Holiday & Seasonal Shopping Trends Report, (N=487) United States, July 2026.
- tvScientific by Pinterest Internal Data, December US, 2025.
- tvScientific by Pinterest, 2026 Consumer Trends Report, US, February 2026, n=600 people that watch tv
Inside Performance Advertising with Jason Fairchild delivers unfiltered insights, strategic perspective, and hard truths from inside the evolving world of adtech—cutting through the noise to focus on what really drives outcomes. Subscribe here.
