The 2026 holiday season is closer than it seems. And while another year seems to have moved remarkably fast, the U.S. consumer heading into this holiday season looks a little different from the one brands planned for last year.

The 2025 season gives us a good indication of where things are heading. U.S. consumers spent a record $257.8 billion online between November and December, up 6.8% year over year. But behind that growth, shopping behavior was changing. Consumers spread their purchases across more high-spending days, mobile accounted for the majority of online holiday revenue, and AI became a much bigger part of product discovery.

For paid media, those shifts matter. Growing holiday spending does not automatically make the next advertising dollar more productive. Brands are competing for consumers who have more ways to discover products, compare options and decide when and where to buy.

For brands, these shifts provide a useful starting point for planning the 2026 holiday season.

2025 U.S. Holiday Shopping Trends: What Consumers Actually Did

U.S. consumers spent a record $257.8 billion online between November 1 and December 31, 2025, according to Adobe Analytics, up 6.8% year over year.

The growth also became less concentrated around a handful of shopping days. Consumers spent more than $4 billion online on 25 separate days, compared with 18 in 2024. Black Friday spending increased 9.1% year over year, faster than Cyber Monday's 7.1% growth.

This distribution matters for media planning. Holiday demand increasingly builds across weeks rather than appearing during a single promotional window. Brands that reserve disproportionate budgets for Cyber Week can miss consumers who begin researching and buying earlier.

For 2026, budget allocation should therefore follow changes in demand and marginal returns throughout the season rather than relying solely on fixed historical flight dates.

2026 U.S. Holiday Retail Forecast: Spending Will Grow as Consumers Stay Selective

There is no major dedicated 2026 U.S. holiday spending forecast yet as of August 2026. However, broader retail forecasts provide a useful indication of the environment brands are entering.

While a dedicated 2026 U.S. holiday spending forecast has not yet been released, the broader retail outlook provides context for the season. NRF expects U.S. retail sales to grow 4.4% in 2026 to $5.6 trillion, above its 3.6% average annual growth rate over the past decade when pandemic years are excluded.

Consumer conditions add another dimension. The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index stood at 90.8 in July, while its Expectations Index remained at 74.7.

Recent retail behavior also points toward greater selectivity. Consumers continue to spend, but major U.S. retailers have reported shoppers prioritizing essentials, promotions and smaller discretionary purchases while showing greater caution around some expensive items.

For holiday strategy, this creates a market where value communication becomes as important as demand generation.

Paid media should therefore connect promotional strategy with product economics. Rather than applying the same discount logic across an entire catalogue, brands can identify where promotions genuinely change purchase probability and where existing demand can convert without additional margin sacrifice.

AI Is Reshaping Product Discovery for Holiday Shopping

One of the largest behavioral shifts of the 2025 season happened before consumers reached retailers.

Traffic from generative AI services to U.S. retail websites increased 693.4% year over year during the holidays, according to Adobe. Consumers used AI particularly heavily for categories including electronics, toys, appliances, video games and personal care.

The scale of AI referrals remains smaller than established channels, but the direction matters.

AI allows consumers to ask increasingly specific shopping questions. Instead of searching broadly for "best headphones," a shopper can request recommendations based on budget, use case, product characteristics and reviews before visiting a retailer.

That changes the role of paid media.

Paid search can increasingly capture consumers who arrive with a narrower consideration set because research has already happened elsewhere. A branded search conversion may therefore reflect demand influenced by AI, social, creator content or other earlier interactions.

For 2026, leadership teams should monitor how paid search demand changes alongside AI referral traffic and branded search behavior, rather than evaluating these channels independently.

Product data also becomes part of media readiness. Clear specifications, pricing, availability, reviews and structured product information help search engines, shopping platforms and AI systems understand which products match consumer needs.

Paid Search Trends for the 2026 Holiday Shopping Season

Paid search remains one of the strongest commercial channels during the holiday period.

Adobe's 2024 holiday analysis found that paid search generated 29.7% of online retail revenue, making it the largest measured revenue-driving channel. Adobe continued to describe paid search and email as reliable drivers of traffic and sales during the 2025 season.

The strategic question for 2026 is therefore less about whether paid search remains important and more about what type of demand it captures.

As AI, social and creator content contribute more heavily to discovery, paid search can increasingly sit later in the journey. Consumers may discover a product elsewhere and subsequently search for the brand, category or exact product.

That creates a measurement risk. Search can receive conversion credit for demand another interaction helped create.

Brands should separate demand capture from demand creation when evaluating holiday performance. Incrementality testing, branded versus non-branded analysis and cross-channel measurement can help determine whether additional search investment generates new demand or primarily captures demand already moving toward conversion.

Social and Retail Media Spending Will Rise in 2026

Paid media investment itself is expanding.

IAB forecasts U.S. ad spending to grow 9.5% in 2026, compared with 5.7% growth in 2025. Social media spending is expected to rise 14.6%, while commerce media is forecast to grow 12.1% and CTV 13.8%.

Retail media provides an especially important holiday signal. EMARKETER expects U.S. retail media advertising to reach $69.33 billion in 2026, up from $58.79 billion in 2025.

This growth reflects where brands increasingly want to reach consumers: closer to product discovery and transaction.

Social is moving in the same direction. On Cyber Monday 2025, social media accounted for 3.6% of online retail revenue, up from 2.3% a year earlier. Affiliates and partners, including influencers, generated 21.8%.

For 2026, brands should therefore evaluate social, retail media and search as connected parts of the shopping journey. Social can introduce products, retail media can influence consumers close to the digital shelf, and search can capture subsequent intent.

Optimizing each channel against its own attributed ROAS can obscure those relationships.

Mobile Shopping Will Shape 2026 Holiday Paid Media Performance

Mobile accounted for 56.4% of U.S. online holiday revenue in 2025, making it the first full year in which mobile represented more than half of online holiday spending.

That has a direct implication for paid media economics.

Every dollar spent acquiring mobile traffic depends on the experience after the click. Slow pages, unclear product information or unnecessary checkout friction reduce the amount a brand can profitably pay for acquisition.

The relationship becomes even clearer with flexible payments. Consumers spent $20 billion through Buy Now Pay Later during the 2025 holidays, up 9.8%, and 82.2% of that spending occurred on mobile.

For 2026, mobile conversion rate should therefore sit alongside CPC, CPM and ROAS when leadership teams evaluate holiday media performance.

How Brands Can Prepare Their Paid Media Strategy for the 2026 Holiday Season

The available evidence points toward a 2026 U.S. holiday season with continued retail growth, greater media competition and a more fragmented discovery journey.

Brands should prepare for five shifts:

1. Scale earlier when demand supports it. Holiday purchases are spreading across more days, reducing the value of treating Cyber Week as an isolated event.

2. Plan paid search around its changing role. Search remains commercially important, but AI and social can influence the demand that search ultimately captures.

3. Connect retail media with inventory and margin. As commerce media investment grows, revenue alone becomes an incomplete measure of whether additional spend creates profitable incremental sales.

4. Treat AI visibility as part of acquisition strategy. Consumers increasingly use AI to research products before entering traditional paid channels.

5. Measure the journey across channels. Holiday shoppers can move between AI, social, search, retail media and direct traffic before converting. Attribution should reflect that complexity.

Preparing Paid Media for the 2026 Holiday Season

U.S. consumers demonstrated in 2025 that they remain willing to spend. The 2026 retail outlook suggests that demand can continue growing.

The harder question for brands is where to invest to capture that growth profitably.

Paid media budgets will enter a market with more social investment, rapidly expanding commerce media, established paid search demand and a new AI discovery layer. That makes allocation increasingly consequential.

For senior leaders, the priority should be connecting these signals. Consumer demand, media cost, margin, inventory and incrementality provide a stronger basis for holiday investment decisions than channel-level ROAS alone.

The 2026 holiday season will give brands more ways to reach consumers. The commercial opportunity comes from understanding which of those interactions actually creates additional value.

Key Takeaways for the 2026 U.S. Holiday Season

· U.S. retail demand is expected to remain resilient. NRF forecasts retail sales to reach $5.6 trillion in 2026, up 4.4%, but continued affordability pressures mean consumers are likely to remain selective about where and when they spend.  

· The holiday shopping window is getting longer. In 2025, U.S. consumers spent more than $4 billion online on 25 separate days, compared with 18 in 2024, giving brands more opportunities to capture demand beyond Cyber Week.  

· AI is becoming part of product discovery. Generative AI referrals to U.S. retail websites increased 693.4% during the 2025 holiday season, creating another influence point before consumers reach paid search or retailer websites.  

· Paid search remains commercially important, but attribution needs more context. AI, social and creator content can influence consumers before they search, making it increasingly important to distinguish between demand creation and demand capture.  

· Paid media competition is expected to increase. IAB forecasts U.S. ad spending to grow 9.5% in 2026, including 14.6% growth in social and 12.1% in commerce media, putting greater pressure on efficient budget allocation.  

· Mobile performance directly affects media efficiency. Smartphones generated 56.4% of U.S. online holiday revenue in 2025, making the post-click mobile experience an important part of paid media performance.  

· 2026 holiday planning should connect media with commercial outcomes. Media cost, margin, inventory, incrementality and consumer demand provide a more complete basis for allocating holiday budgets than channel-level ROAS alone.

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Planning your paid media strategy for the 2026 holiday season? Reach out to us.

Relevant Insights

· Article: From Awareness to Conversion: The Formula Behind Viral, High-Performing Holiday Campaigns

· Article: How to Craft a Brand Narrative That Drives Emotional Connection and Customer Loyalty

· Report: The Executive Guide to Festive Storytelling: Turning Emotion into Measurable Growth

About Crealytics

Crealytics is an award-winning full-funnel digital marketing agency fueling the profitable growth of over 100 well-known B2C and B2B businesses, including ASOS, The Hut Group, Staples and Urban Outfitters. A global company with an inclusive team of 100+ international employees, we operate from our hubs in Berlin, New York, Chicago, London, and Mumbai.

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