Austin Gilliland
As we head into H2’26, Kargo's data and external market signals are pointing to a landscape that looks familiar on the surface but is fundamentally more complex underneath. Here is what the data revealed from H2’25, and what it means for how brands should approach the months ahead.
Prioritize Underinvested Moments During the Holiday Season
According to Kargo’s Advertiser Data, last year made one thing clear: the demand curve moved, but advertiser budgets did not move with it. Demand began its upward trend in early November, weeks before BFCM while CPMs remained stable, a window most advertisers left on the table. The mid-December shipping cutoff was equally underutilized, with ROAS closely resembling BFCM performance at a significantly lower CPM. Brands that treat the season as a Black Friday sprint are consistently leaving return on the table. Scale earlier, stay present through the cutoff, and treat the full season as the opportunity.
The Research Phase Is Where Purchase Decisions Are Made
The holiday purchase journey is no longer a straight line from ad impression to checkout. Shoppers today spend more time comparing retailers, researching products, and evaluating whether a purchase is genuinely worth making. Data from similarweb reported 42% of consumers are more price-sensitive than they were 2-3 years ago, while roughly 30% are comparing more retailers and researching more carefully before buying. Per eMarketer, over half of US online shoppers used AI during the research phase of their holiday shopping in Q4 2025, with nearly half using it to find prices and deals. AI-assisted shopping is no longer an emerging behavior. It is a mainstream one that both brands and consumers can’t ignore.
Brands that show up persistently across the research phase, not just at peak promotional moments, will be better positioned when shoppers ultimately decide where to buy. A study conducted by We Are Talker found that customer reviews (72%) and independent research (68%) are now the top signals Gen Z uses to evaluate whether a brand is credible, making it essential to layer trust cues alongside promotional messaging. For AI to surface the right products in these moments, having a foundation of product data that is clear, consistent, and easy to interpret isn’t an option, it’s a necessity. Kargo's AdKit and Kera solutions help brands lower the barrier to establishing presence in these environments by turning product feeds and campaign inputs into AI-ready assets, reducing execution complexity across creation, feed adaptation, launch, and testing.
Online and In-Store Are One Journey, Not Two
Shoppers are moving fluidly between online and in-store, and the data reflects it. McKinsey & Company and ICSC claim that consumers across most product categories still prefer a blended shopping model over a purely digital one. Yet many brands continue to optimize exclusively to ecommerce signals, which means the influence media has on store sales often goes uncounted. Without a connected view of omnichannel performance, brands risk undervaluing the media that is actually driving total sales. Closing that gap requires connected measurement and creative that communicates store-relevant value, including local inventory cues and convenience messaging. In partnership with Kargo, advertisers can bring store-connected value props directly into performance creative through catalog overlays and product video powered by local inventory signals.
Each Social Platform Deserves Its Own Strategy
User behavior across platforms has become distinct enough that treating social as a single channel is now a strategic liability. TikTok drives discovery. Meta delivers scale. Pinterest supports visual exploration. Reddit builds purchase confidence. Each platform has developed its own creative rules and audience expectations, and a one-size-fits-all approach leaves specialized strengths untapped. In order to expand into new platforms, your measurement strategy has to evolve alongside the media mix. In the Haus 2026 Marketing Decision Confidence Index, incrementality testing is now the most trusted method among senior decision-makers, yet most brands still rely on a single model. A blended approach across last-click, MTA, MMM, and incrementality gives a far more accurate picture of what is actually working.
Creative Concept Diversity Drives Reach, Not Creative Volume
Creative is now the primary signal platforms use to find the right buyers, and more assets do not automatically mean better results. Small swaps in copy or color increase volume without generating meaningfully distinct signals. The implication is counterintuitive for many teams: more assets are not automatically better. What matters is concept diversity: new angles, different audience-specific messaging, and varied reasons to care, not just refreshed versions of the same idea. Diversified concepts reach diversified customer bases, and intentional concept variation is what drives incremental reach. Refreshing assets helps fight fatigue, but intentionally varying concepts by audience is what drives incremental reach and finds new customer bases.
Choose Creators Like You Choose Audiences
That same logic applies directly to creator selection. If the goal is for creative concepts to find distinct audiences, then the creators carrying those concepts need audiences that actually match. HypeAuditor's State of Influencer Marketing 2026 found Instagram engagement drops from 1.78% for nano-influencers to 0.33% for mega-influencers, showing that follower count and audience fit are not the same thing. The best creator partnerships feel less like advertising and more like a natural recommendation. When a creator's audience genuinely maps to your product, the creative does not need to overcome skepticism, and relevance at the audience level is what makes it work harder without spending more to get there.
Final Takeaway: Advertisers Will Succeed When They Commit to the Full Playbook
The brands that outperform in H2 2026 will be the ones that commit now: scaling budgets ahead of demand, diversifying across platforms, building creative that earns trust throughout the research phase, and measuring across the full path to purchase, not just the last click. The holiday season does not start when everyone else turns on spend. Every signal across the industry points to the same truth. Checking one of these boxes will not be enough. The brands that pair timing with creative and measurement with platform diversification are the ones that turn H2 into a real growth moment.
