How to Plan, Pace, and Win Q4, with TV as Your Cheat Code

Holiday 2025 isn’t shaping up to be a season that marketers can sleepwalk through. Consumers are spending — but they’re spending differently. They’re anxious, value-obsessed, price-aware, and more digitally complex than at any point in the last decade. Yet they’re also deeply motivated by connection, tradition, and the emotional “vibes” of the season.

In other words, the holiday shopper is both stressed and sentimental, pulling marketers into one of the trickiest dualities of modern advertising.

If you work at an agency or lead marketing strategy for clients, you know the stakes. Q4 still accounts for a disproportionate share of annual revenue across retail, e-commerce, wellness, services, and specialty verticals. And while the season is starting earlier every year, it’s also more compressed in terms of attention — consumers are everywhere and nowhere at once.

2025 Holiday Marketing Trends: “Value & Vibes” in a Fragmented Season

Mastercard calls the 2025 landscape “value and vibes,” which is probably the best two-word summation of the modern holiday mindset. Here’s what that means for real media planning:

Consumers are value-hunting by default — across every income bracket.

Deloitte’s annual holiday survey shows U.S. shoppers intend to spend 10% less this year, averaging $1,595 per household.

• 77% expect higher prices

• 57% believe the economy will weaken

• And yet… 82% plan to participate in BFCM anyway

Mastercard’s economic forecast reinforces the duality:

• Holiday retail sales expected to grow 3.6% YoY

• E-commerce up 7.9% vs. +2.3% in-store

• Gift cards are surging (bookstores, toys, spas, medical supply categories hold ~35%+ of yearly gift card spend in Dec–Jan)

Consumers want deals — but they don’t want to feel cheap. They want meaning, simplicity, and emotional resonance from the brands they trust.

Experiences and wellness will outpace “stuff.”

Mastercard notes a dramatic rise in tech-enabled wellness: new wellness and boutique fitness brands grew 30% YoY (vs. +5% for traditional clubs).

That spillover into holiday gifting creates an opening for:

• Spas & med spas

• Cosmetic and medical services

• Wellness memberships

• Beauty categories

• Travel & leisure

Experience-led products and services carry emotional weight — and emotional weight wins Q4.

Social discovery, creators, and AI are now core to how people shop.

Deloitte found that 33% of shoppers plan to use generative AI as part of their shopping journey — double last year.

Gen Z is already relying on:

• Influencers for recommendations (74%)

• AI for gift ideas and price checks (43%)

This changes the upper funnel entirely: your awareness channels must create a world for your brand, not just ads.

BFCM is still the gravitational center — even in an extended season.

Yes, holiday starts early now. But peak spend still compresses around:

• Black Friday / Cyber Monday

• Shipping cutoff week

• Gift card weekend (Dec 21–24)

Your Q4 media plan must behave like a marathon with two sprints inside it.

How to Build a Holiday Marketing Strategy That Actually Works

Holiday marketing breaks when teams treat Q4 like a performance-only sprint. The brands that win — year after year — treat it like a strategic season with phases, pacing, and layered storytelling.

Here’s the approach agencies should use with clients.

Start earlier than feels comfortable.

You’re too late if you’re thinking about launching in mid-November.

Early shoppers (the ones Deloitte calls “value planners”) start:

• Browsing in September

• Buying in October

• Comparing prices constantly through November

Launch brand and emotional creative in early October.

This is where TV, CTV, and online video are not just nice to have — they’re essential.

Establish the role of brand vs. performance before anything else.

Borrowing from Binet & Field (and every smart media planner you know):

• Brand = trust, emotion, memory, preference

• Performance = capture demand, convert, remind, close

Holiday requires both — but brand must lead.

Clients often want to back-load their budgets into BFCM performance campaigns.

That’s how you create expensive CPAs and weak Q1 pipelines.

Help them understand the compounding effect:

Brand creates the conditions in which performance becomes cheaper and more effective.

Pace the season — don’t burn everything in one week.

A healthy pacing model looks like:

Early Oct – Early Nov:

• Big emotional storytelling

• TV/CTV for reach

• Broad video + social

• E-commerce prep

• Early gift guides

• Email warm-up sequences

Nov 10–28 (the BFCM zone):

• Performance-heavy

• Retargeting

• Search

• Social promos

• Cart and browse abandonment

• Promo-driven CTV cutdowns

Nov 29 – Dec 24:

• Urgency messages

• Gift card campaigns

• Local store/experience pushes

• Last-minute “still time to deliver” offers

• High-frequency TV/CTV reminders

Post-holiday (Dec 26 – Jan 10):

• Gift card redemption pushes

• Service-based upsells

• Wellness/new year programs

• Re-engagement

• Q1 demand-building

This phased approach ensures your clients don’t miss the early window OR the late one.

The Secret Weapon: TV Ads as Your Holiday Cheat Code

Let’s be plain: TV is the cheat code for holiday marketing.

Not because it’s “traditional,” but because it works on the brain in ways digital simply cannot.

TV builds memory — and memory drives choice.

Neuroscience research (FOX + Wharton + ANA) consistently shows:

• TV ads generate stronger memory encoding

• Viewers experience sustained attention and emotional engagement

• Positive memory bias persists when consumers later encounter digital ads

When people see your client’s TV/CTV ad, then see a social or search ad later, the digital ad performs better because of the emotional groundwork TV laid.

This is why agencies see:

• Lower CPAs

• Higher branded search volume

• Better conversion rates

• Higher email open rates

• Lower cart abandonment

…in markets where TV + digital run together.

CTV adds precision that makes TV irresistible in Q4.

Connected TV gives you:

• Household-level targeting

• CRM matching

• Behavioral + interest segmentation

• Retargeting

• QR code measurement

• High completion rates (~90–98%)

This is TV built for the chaotic, fragmented attention of holiday shoppers.

How Different Industries Should Approach Holiday 2025

Not every client behaves the same in Q4 — but most fall into three broad patterns.

E-commerce: Trust is the new conversion booster

With e-commerce expected to grow 7.9% this holiday season, competition is fierce.

What e-commerce brands need most isn’t “more performance.”

It’s more trust + more memory.

What to emphasize in your plans:

• TV/CTV to create familiarity, legitimacy, desirability

• Search + shopping campaigns to capture in-the-moment demand

• Email to move shoppers through:

  • Gift guides

  • Bundles

  • BFCM promos

  • Shipping cutoffs

• Heavy gift card promotion (Mastercard shows huge late-season volume)

Trust + timing = revenue.

Spas, Med Spas & Wellness: Sell experiences, not transactions

Wellness is a holiday-growth rocket right now.

Consumers crave self-care, aesthetic upgrades, and experiences that feel calming and restorative.

Pitch your medspa/spa clients on:

• TV/CTV spots focused on the feeling: relaxation, transformation, confidence

• Experience-oriented bundles (holiday glow-up, new year reset)

• Giftable services + digital gift cards

• Local creator partnerships

• Holiday landing pages featuring reviews + gift card CTAs

• Email segmentation for “for me” vs “for them” audience clusters

These brands win by tapping into emotional relief in a stressful season.

Premium Services (financial, insurance, clinics): Anchor the brand in trust

Consumers don’t typically buy high-consideration services during the holidays — but they absolutely form impressions that determine Q1 decisions.

Agencies should frame holiday as:

• Brand reinforcement season

• Trust-building season

• Familiarity-building season

TV is invaluable here: it signals stability, permanence, and professionalism — especially for local clinics, financial services, and insurance brands.

Use email and social to extend TV creative into valuable educational content (“Planning for 2026? Start here.”).

Holiday Email Marketing: The Quiet MVP

For all the talk of AI, social, and creators, email is still the channel that closes the sale.

In 2025, it plays five key roles:

1. Expectation setter (Oct)

2. Story extender (support TV with behind-the-scenes, product stories, staff picks)

3. Offer explainer (why this promo exists, why it matters)

4. Urgency activator (countdowns, shipping reminders)

5. Gift card conversion machine (Dec 18–24)

Holiday 2025 is also the year to let AI personalize subject lines, content blocks, and product mixes — because 33% of shoppers say they now expect AI-informed personalization.

Tie email to your TV creative visually and tonally. Let memory do the heavy lifting.

What Sets Winning Holiday Campaigns Apart

Here’s the truth seasoned agency strategists know:

Holiday isn’t just about selling. It’s about being remembered.

The brands that win Q4 2025 will:

• Stay present consistently, not just during BFCM

• Build emotional familiarity before asking for the sale

• Use TV/CTV to lock in memory and trust

• Let email, search, and social convert

• Adapt in real time

• Speak to the value-seeking mindset without cheapening themselves

• Connect emotionally, because emotions are still the best marketing technology we have

When your brand shows up with meaning (the “vibes”) and clear value (the “price-smarts”), consumers reward you — even in an anxious economic year.

Holiday 2025 is your chance to help clients rise above the noise, stabilize their revenue, and create the momentum that carries into 2026.

And TV?

That’s your cheat code. Use it well.