Why Are Retail and Brand Marketers Moving Back Toward Television?

In a summary of Modern Retail’s recent report surrounding 2026’s holiday marketing strategies, Catherine Wolf and Li Lu described a bit of a reversal in terms of previous approaches to reaching consumers, primarily in the connected TV (CTV) and traditional TV segments.

“The biggest changes are that CTV/streaming and TV ads are gaining traction in 2026, with year-over-year increases of 22 percentage points and 20 percentage points, respectively. Forty-five percent of survey respondents said they plan to use CTV/streaming ads this holiday season, in comparison to 23% of respondents who said the same in 2025. The 2026 uptick followed a 14 percentage point dip in usage from 2024 to 2025,” Wolf and Lu wrote.

“Meanwhile, marketers’ usage of TV ads remained relatively stable between 2024 and 2025, dropping by only 4 percentage points between 2024 and 2025, but grew by a whopping 20 percentage points in 2026. Thirty-three percent of brands and retailers said they plan to use TV ads this holiday season in comparison to 13% of marketers who said the same in 2025,” they added.

Conversely, it appears that brands and retailers are pulling back a bit on brand experiences (at 41% deployment this year, versus 50% of respondents saying so in 2025); gift guides (at 31% versus 50% last year); and influencer hauls and unboxing videos (19% against 33% in 2025). With that being said, gift guides and brand experiences are perennial performers, per the data, so this pullback may be something more of an A-B test in 2026 rather than a longstanding marketing budget change.

Data Points on Current Retail / Brand Marketing Agree to Disagree at Times

Other data points pulled from separate reports mostly dovetail with this data, with a few potential clashes:

• IAB data suggests linear TV may not be as strong on media lead growth as expected: IAB figures published in September of this year do show a case for very strong CTV growth (15.6% YoY at that time, versus 13.8% growth anticipated in January), while linear TV showed a downward arc (down 1.5% YoY in September’s forecast, against an anticipated 1.7% decline in January).

• The Television Bureau of Advertising begs to differ on linear TV: A GfK/NIQ study commissioned by the TVB on today’s purchase funnel indicates that 42% of its survey respondents said that linear TV was “the most important influence concerning their awareness of a product or service.”

• A third study shows a combined approach could work: Dovetailing both Modern Retail’s results suggesting a combined CTV/linear TV marketing plan could work is a Premion and Advertiser Perceptions survey. The findings suggest that roughly 80% of advertisers agree that a combined approach has a greater impact, and “more than eight in 10 CTV advertisers agree that CTV/Streaming TV drives performance across the full funnel — from awareness to conversion — and strengthens ad recall within integrated campaigns.”

The Modern Retail authors also cited two experts – Ritual’s chief growth officer Laura Brodie and A-Frame Brands founder/CEO Ari Bloom – on why commitment to streaming and linear TV was a nuanced (and often all-year-long, rather than strictly holiday) play.

“Streaming is a really valid channel to invest in during holiday because consumption of that media spikes. But participating in streaming is actually a decision for the whole year. Starting to engage just for holiday would be a risky move, especially for a smaller brand,” Brodie said.

“If you have the data to back it up over the course of the year showing this is a channel that’s proven and the ROI metrics associated, it can make a lot of sense to spike it during holiday,” she added.

“Streaming and television is an effective audience conversion mechanism, especially with women over 30 years old. We’ve done a lot of work on daytime TV and on QVC. We see significantly bigger segments in the holiday time period from November through mid-December, and we always put attention on those times,” Bloom stated.

Questions for further discussion:

• Do you agree with the report’s assessment that retailers and brands are apt to lean more heavily into CTV and traditional TV ads in 2026’s holiday season versus years past? Why or why not?

• What are your thoughts in terms of the data suggesting a measured pullback on influencer hauls and unboxings as well as on gift guides and brand experiences? Are there missed opportunities here, and if so, where might you identify them?

• Does the argument that there is simply more time spent watching linear TV and CTV during the holiday stretch hold water, in your opinion? If so, which retailers or brands should consider making a bigger move against competitors to gain attention?