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Blog / Enterprise
Holiday shopping is starting earlier, shoppers are moving across more channels than ever, and competition for attention and budget keeps getting tougher. Guessing your way through a holiday media plan isn't a great strategy this season — and you don't have to.
We built Your 2026 Holiday Guide for a Successful Media Plan from original consumer and advertiser research, plus Yahoo's own proprietary search data, so you can plan against what shoppers are actually telling us.
A few things the research turned up:
- Yahoo's own search data reveals real shopping behavior, not just stated intent. 65%¹ of holiday "gift" searches happen in December, and "gift card" searches spike to 2x² their normal November–December average in the three days before Christmas.
- Budgets are up, but deals still drive action. Consumers plan to spend $849³ on average this year, yet 79%⁴ say deals and promotions directly influence their purchases.
- CTV is playing a bigger role. 62%⁵ of consumers say their holiday purchases are often influenced by TV or streaming ads, and 58%⁶ of advertisers are already increasing CTV spend.
That's just a preview. The full guide includes deeper consumer insights, a practical checklist to sanity-check your own holiday strategy, and how Yahoo DSP can help you put it all into action.
Download Your 2026 Holiday Guide
¹⁻² Yahoo Search data, Nov 1–Dec 31, 2025.
³⁻⁵ Yahoo Consumer Holiday Shopping Survey, fielded June 22–26, 2026 among a U.S. national representative sample (n=1,000), conducted via Toluna. Significance tested at 95% confidence.
⁶ Yahoo DSP B2B Advertiser Holiday Ad Planning Omnibus, fielded July 1–10, 2026 among U.S. marketers and agencies with $1M+ annual ad spend (n=304), conducted by Advertiser Perceptions. Significance tested at 90% confidence vs. the August 2025 wave.
