The quiet number in this year's holiday marketing strategy survey
Digiday+ Research asked 90 brand and retailer professionals to describe their holiday marketing strategy for this peak. Everybody read the connected TV line. Almost nobody read the line sitting underneath it.
What ninety people actually said they would do#
A fox does not chase the loudest rabbit in the field, it reads which way the whole field leans. That patient prowl is precisely the posture peak planning needs this month, because a holiday marketing strategy built on a single headline number is a plan built on borrowed nerve.
On 5 August, Digiday+ Research published its 2026 guide to holiday marketing strategies, drawn from a survey of 90 brand and retailer professionals alongside interviews with executives at A-Frame Brands, Mastercard and Ritual. One figure did the travelling. 45% of respondents said they plan to use CTV or streaming ads this holiday season, against 23% of respondents who said the same in 2025.
Hold that number at arm's length for a second. Ninety respondents is a small sample, the answers are stated intentions rather than measured money, and the year-on-year comparison runs across two separate waves of a ninety-person panel. The margin around a twenty-two point move like that is wide. The work is stronger for saying so, because a plan that pretends otherwise will spend real budget on the strength of a rounding error. A holiday marketing strategy can absorb a soft number. It cannot absorb a soft number treated as a hard one.
Two more measured items sat in the same set, and both matter more than the one that got quoted. 41% of marketers said they expect to use brand experiences during the 2026 holiday season, in comparison to 50% who said the same in 2025. And 21% of respondents said their company plans to use TikTok Shop as a sales channel, compared with just 6% who plan to use another social commerce platform. Digiday+ Research tracked TikTok Shop as a standalone channel for the first time this year.
Read those bars the way a fox reads a hedgerow. The traffic has not left the field, it has changed the path it takes across it. Something shrank so something else could swell, and the swelling side is the one that looks most like television.
What "plan to use" does not mean#
Intent surveys measure comfort, not commitment. A marketer ticking the CTV box in August has not signed an insertion order, agreed a floor price, or met the November auction. Treat the 45% as a mood reading: useful for anticipating competition, useless as a market share figure, and hazardous as the spine of a holiday marketing strategy.
If nearly half your competitive set intends to bid on streaming inventory this quarter, the sensible response is to expect firmer pricing there, not to assume the format has suddenly started converting better than the channels you already measure.
Why CTV advertising doubled on paper#
Every holiday marketing strategy in the market this year has a streaming conversation buried in it, and the pull is not irrational. Viewing genuinely moved. Nielsen's The Gauge put streaming at 48.6% of total TV watch-time in May 2026, with broadcast at 19.2% and cable at 20.4%. That is a measurement of behaviour, taken monthly, by a panel-based measurement firm, and it is the strongest evidence in this whole piece.
Ad money has followed, though more slowly than the viewing did. The IAB projects US digital video ad spend to surpass $80bn in 2026, growing 11% year on year, with CTV up 11% and social video up 13%. That is a projection, produced with Advertiser Perceptions and Guideline for the 2026 Digital Video Ad Spend and Strategy Report, so read it as a forecast from a trade body rather than a count of invoices.
Streaming share of TV
Total US TV watch-time, May 2026, measured by Nielsen's The Gauge.
Ad-supported streaming
Record share of ad-supported TV viewing in Q1 2026, per Nielsen.
YouTube share of TV
Largest share of television among all distributors, May 2026.
CTV spend growth
Projected 2026 growth, IAB forecast, not a measurement.
Nielsen also publishes an ad-supported cut of the same data, and its Q1 2026 Ad Supported Gauge found streaming took a record 46.6% share of ad-supported TV, with ad-supported viewing holding at nearly 73% of all TV. Nielsen is careful about the caveat, and so should you be: The Gauge reflects total viewing, and does not reflect the currency ratings that inform advertising sales.
CTV advertising examples worth naming#
Because "CTV" is a container, not a channel, useful ctv advertising examples are named platforms with published numbers behind them. Four are worth knowing before a single euro moves.
YouTube is the largest single slice, at 13.8% of US TV watch-time in May. Netflix took 8.0%, Prime Video reached 4.5%, and The Roku Channel recorded a platform best at 3.1%, all per Nielsen's May reports. On the buying side, Amazon Ads used its May upfront to launch Dynamic TV Creative, which varies the creative on Prime Video by where a viewer sits in the purchase journey, and said Prime Video ad-supported customers now watch 17% more hours every month than a year ago.
Availability is widening too: Prime Video advertising reaches Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Turkey during 2026, on a claimed average monthly ad-supported reach of more than 315 million global customers. That is a seller quoting its own inventory, and deserves the scepticism that implies.
Where marketers actually place the money is narrower than the enthusiasm suggests. A separate Digiday+ Research survey of 125 brand and agency professionals, published on 3 August, found 75% place ads on YouTube, 47% on Prime Video with ads, and 43% each on Hulu and Paramount+. Half of respondents said YouTube consumed the largest portion of their 2025 ad budget. If a holiday marketing strategy says CTV and means YouTube, say so out loud, because the buying, the creative and the measurement are all different animals.
The quiet number nobody quoted#
Now the line underneath. Brand experiences fell from 50% to 41% of stated intentions. Nine points of enthusiasm walked out of one room and arrived next door. Budget does not materialise from moonlight in August. It moves, out of the line item hardest to measure and into the one that photographs best in a board deck.
That is not a story about CTV being better. It is a story about attribution comfort. A streaming buy produces impressions, frequency curves and a reach figure that slots neatly into a slide. A brand experience produces a queue, a smell and a stack of anecdotes. Most of the movement in this holiday marketing strategy data is movement in what teams feel able to defend.
Budget did not appear this year. It moved, out of the line nobody could defend and into the one that fits on a slide.
The uncomfortable part is that CTV's measurement is not as tidy as the slide implies. Digiday's own reporting on the CTV ad market found buyers who cannot see which programmes their ads ran against, cannot run their own verification, and receive device data they do not trust.
a pervasive lack of trust for all of us
90% of U.S. households
suspend or permanently disable access to your Seller Center account
So the swap is not measured for unmeasured. It is unmeasured for differently unmeasured, with better packaging. eMarketer frames the fix as retail media partnerships that connect streaming impressions to purchase data, which is genuine progress and also an admission that the closed loop was missing in the first place.
The test to run before you sign#
Ask one question of any channel taking budget from another: what would have to be true for me to stop? If the answer is a number you can pull next February, proceed. If the answer is a feeling in a quarterly review, you have swapped one unfalsifiable line for another and paid a premium for the privilege.
This is the point where a guide earns its keep. Our brand strategy work exists precisely because the hardest-to-measure line is often the one doing the most durable work, and cutting it in August because a survey looked exciting is how brands quietly hollow out. A holiday marketing strategy that trades durable demand for a tidier slide has bought comfort, not performance.
A holiday marketing strategy calendar, August to peak#
Here is the honest position, stated plainly: folkfox sells paid search and paid social, not CTV. So take the following with that scent in the air. The useful advice is not "buy CTV". The useful advice is to understand why your team wants to, and to make certain the channel that actually converts is not being quietly defunded by a format that photographs well in a board deck.
The calendar is arithmetic, not sentiment. Gupta Media's Social Media CPM Tracker, built from tens of billions of tracked impressions, recorded Cyber Monday 2024 as the most expensive day of the year on Meta at a $17.70 CPM, 138% above Meta's annualised average, with Black Friday week averaging $13.42. For 2023 it put TikTok's Q4 premium at 30% and Meta's at 17%. That is a media buyer publishing its own dataset, so treat it as directional.
The cost base was already moving before seasonality touched it, which is why we wrote up Meta's North American price rise earlier this year. Layer a 20% structural increase under a Q4 premium and your November efficiency target needs setting now, not discovering in week 48.
What folkfox would actually do#
Write down which line funds the new format. Unnamed funding comes from the channel with the least political defence, which is usually the one carrying conversion.
Agree in writing the February number that would end the test. A test with no exit condition is a subscription.
Protect the paid social advertising and paid search budgets carrying revenue through peak. Fund experiments from growth, never from the floor.
Lock talent, exclusivity windows and paid usage rights now. Every week of delay raises the rate and shrinks the roster.
Stand up geo holdouts ahead of the first streaming impression. Measurement retrofitted in December measures nothing except your optimism.
Platform guidance agrees on the timing even when it disagrees on everything else. TikTok's own 2026 marketing calendars, published in January, exist to get brands planning around cultural moments months ahead rather than weeks. The platforms want that lead time because the auction rewards it.
A good holiday marketing strategy this year is therefore mostly a sequencing problem, not a channel problem. Decide what you are protecting, decide what you are testing, and make certain the second is never funded by cutting the first. If you want that sequencing built rather than described, that is what folkfox paid social services does, and it is the same discipline we bring to every brand we work with.
The fox does not test the depth of a stream with both feet. Neither should your holiday marketing strategy.
Frequently asked questions#
Should I move budget into CTV for this holiday season?
Only if you can name the line funding it and the number that would make you stop. The Digiday survey shows stated intent, not proven returns, and half your competitive set intending to bid means firmer pricing, not easier wins. Fund the test from growth and keep the rest of the holiday marketing strategy intact.
Is 45% of marketers using CTV a reliable number?
It is a reliable report of what 90 people said they plan to do, not a measure of spend, share or outcome. A ninety-person panel compared across two separate waves carries a wide margin, so treat the direction as informative and the precise figure as soft.
Why did brand experiences fall from 50% to 41%?
The survey does not say why, so anything beyond the number is inference. The plausible reading is attribution comfort: in a cost-pressured year, the line producing a clean reach figure survives a finance review more easily than the line producing anecdotes, whichever built more durable demand.
Is TikTok Shop safe to build a Q4 sales plan on?
It is safe to sell there and risky to depend on it. The seller terms let TikTok suspend an account, act on listings without notice, and terminate without cause on written notice. Keep an owned checkout, an email list and a search presence running alongside it.
When should I lock creator contracts for peak trading?
August, and September at the latest. Talent worth having is booked early, rates rise with the auction, and paid usage rights are far cheaper to agree in the original contract than to renegotiate in November when you have no alternative.
Does CTV replace paid social advertising at Christmas?
No. They do different jobs. Streaming buys reach and framing, paid social advertising buys measurable response at the point of intent. Defunding the second for the first turns a holiday marketing strategy into a strong reach report attached to a disappointing revenue line.
Read more on this topic#
Meta put its prices up 20 per cent in North America and nobody blinked
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Read the pieceThe platforms just made AI slop a distribution problem
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Read the pieceYour ad accounts just learned to talk to an agent
What changes when the buying interface is a conversation.
Read the pieceB2B contact data: the ruling that ended the bought list
A €2m fine and a 60-day erasure order, aimed at the whole category.
Read the piece
Want the peak plan built, not just debated?
folkfox builds a holiday marketing strategy that names the funding line, sets the stopping rule, and keeps the converting channel funded through the tightest auction of the year.
Social commerce narrowed to one platform#
The second finding is starker than the first, and it has had almost no attention. 21% of respondents plan to use TikTok Shop as a sales channel this peak. 6% plan to use any other social commerce platform. That is not a channel mix. That is a dependency with a bar chart drawn round it, and any holiday marketing strategy resting on it is resting on one company's policy and availability.
The commercial logic is easy to follow. Momentum Works, working with Tabcut, estimates TikTok Shop US gross merchandise value at $15.1bn in 2025, up 68% year on year, inside a global figure of $64.3bn across 16 markets. Those are third-party estimates, not TikTok disclosures, and the distinction matters when you are sizing a bet.
The dependency nobody priced#
Serious tiktok shop marketing now runs through one automated buying surface. TikTok's own documentation describes GMV Max as an automated campaign type that works towards total channel return for a shop, selecting products, creative and placements on the advertiser's behalf. Less manual control, more machine, and a single primary ad account per shop.
Then read the paperwork. The TikTok Shop Seller Terms of Service reserve the right to suspend or permanently disable a Seller Center account, to act on listings without notice, and to terminate the seller terms at any time without cause on written notice. Every marketplace has clauses like these. The risk is not the clause, it is putting your peak trading period inside one set of them.
The survey now tracks TikTok Shop separately for the first time, and brand-side commentary corroborates the findings.
None of this argues against selling on TikTok. It argues for a second route to the same revenue: an owned checkout, an email list you control, and a search presence that depends on nobody's discretion. The same survey found 46% plan to sell through their own e-commerce sites this season, down from 69% last year, which is the concentration risk arriving from the other direction.
If your peak plan leans on one platform, the hedge is boring and it works: keep paid search live on your product terms, keep content marketing feeding the pages you own, and treat the shop as a shopfront rather than the whole shop. A holiday marketing strategy with one route to revenue is a trapline with one snare in it.