Retailers and brands may be missing out on sales by concentrating holiday advertising around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as consumers increasingly begin their festive shopping weeks earlier.

Almost half (46%) of shoppers start their holiday purchases before November, according to research by marketing platform Attentive, while Adobe forecasts that Cyber Week will account for just 17.3% of the $275.1bn shoppers are expected to spend online during November and December.

The trend mirrors changing behaviour seen around Halloween – an increasingly lucrative event in the retail calendar, with research by retail and shopper marketing agency Savvy estimating that Halloween 2025 added to £705 million to retail coffers. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Prosper Insights & Analytics, nearly half of consumers planned their Halloween shopping in September or earlier this year. A decade ago, just 34% started shopping before October.

For retailers, the shift raises questions about how media budgets are allocated across the holiday season.

“Many brands spend most of their ad budget in the last weeks of a holiday,” says Donatas Smailys, co-founder and chief executive of creator advertising platform Billo. “Halloween showed what that costs: by late October, a lot of shoppers have already bought their costumes.

“The holidays give brands a second shot, and the ones that roll out their ads in stages will catch shoppers while they’re still deciding what to buy.”

8bn in October alone, up 8% year-on-year, suggesting many consumers are already in buying mode before the traditional Black Friday push begins.

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