Black Friday Isn't Where Holiday Shopping Starts Anymore. It's Where Brands Find Out if They Already Won

Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) still commands enormous attention from retailers and shoppers. But increasingly, it's less the start of the holiday shopping season and more the moment when months of earlier marketing are put to the test.

The 2026 Holiday & Seasonal Shopping Trends Report from tvScientific by Pinterest surveyed 400-plus marketers and found that 76 percent of them believe it's extremely or very critical to reach shoppers before they begin actively searching or comparing products.

That makes sense when you look at how early consumers now start shopping: 53 percent begin researching gifts in October or earlier, and 40 percent begin purchasing before November. Only 15 percent wait until BFCM to start buying.

By Thanksgiving weekend, many consumers are already choosing from a shortlist. This holiday season, marketing needs to influence how that shortlist gets built.

October Has Become One of the Most Important Months of the Holiday Season

Like many marketers, I remember well the days when October could be treated as preparation for the main event. Campaigns were finalized and budgets were set for the big holiday push in November.

Today, that model is out of sync with how consumers actually plan and shop for the holidays.

One-third of consumers now begin researching gifts before October, with another 20 percent starting during October. Purchasing follows a similar pattern: 21 percent begin before October and another 19% start buying during October.

At the same time, October Prime Day has evolved into a major shopping moment in its own right. In 2025, performance TV spend during October Prime Day ran 250 percent above average daily spend, far exceeding the lift around BFCM. It now makes sense to use the October Prime Day event as an early signal of holiday demand.

The question every retailer should be asking this October is, “What can we learn now that will make the rest of the season stronger?”

Use October to Learn Before the Stakes Get Higher

The weeks leading into BFCM offer marketers valuable time to test their strategy. Try different creative. See which messages resonate. Refine audience strategies. Learn which offers generate action. Understand how different channels contribute to performance. Then, carry those lessons forward.

Many marketers are already working this way. Fifty percent say they intentionally carry campaign themes from one shopping moment into the next. Forty-nine percent carry forward audience strategies or audience learnings, while 45 percent adapt their messaging framework for the next seasonal moment.

That's a much smarter way to approach a holiday season that now stretches across multiple tentpoles.

Instead of launching one campaign for October Prime Day, closing it out, and starting from scratch for BFCM, marketers can create a learning system. Each moment generates information that can be used to iterate on the next one.

Measurement becomes especially important here. Sales and revenue are now the top outcomes marketers care about when evaluating performance TV during holiday and seasonal moments, cited by 63 percent of respondents and rising from the fourth-ranked priority in 2025. Reach, by comparison, fell from the top priority last year to fourth place.

That change reflects a broader shift in mindset. Marketers want to know what actually drove the business forward so they can act on it quickly.

Holiday Marketing Needs to Adapt as Quickly as Shoppers Do

The challenge, of course, is that shopper behavior can change rapidly between October and the end of November.

An offer that works during an early promotional window may not work when consumers are comparing BFCM deals. An audience that responds in October may behave differently several weeks later.

That's one reason artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly useful during the holiday season.

Marketers are already using AI across the campaign process: 48 percent for creative ideation, 43 percent for audience targeting, 39 percent for creative versioning and personalization, 35 percent for campaign optimization, and 29 percent for budget allocation and pacing.

AI's key value here is its ability to shorten the time between learning something and doing something about it. And speed matters when the calendar is compressed and every week brings a different consumer mindset.

The brands best positioned for BFCM will be the ones that arrive knowing which audiences are responding, which creative is working, where demand is forming, and where to put the next dollar.

Emily Robinson is vice president of marketing at tvScientific by Pinterest, a performance TV advertising platform.