Holiday retail planning for the fourth quarter traditionally follows the same formulas year-over-year for many brands, but as the way in which customers shop throughout the season continues to shift in unexpected ways, research from Measured provides retailers and their media and agency partners with valuable information regarding the best way to measure and manage spending.
Using data from 2025’s fourth quarter and applying it to this past holiday season, the report gives readers a dynamic view of the marketplace, detailing at length how key performance metrics, including return on ad spend, fluctuate significantly over the span of the season as channels go in and out of fashion in terms of their ability to drive ROI.
In testing the holiday period’s effectiveness, the report also verifies that spending at peak periods of demand does not guarantee the highest marginal return on media spend (MROM). In fact, though Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) remain the dominant shopping period of the season, by peak spending time, the ROI of additional media dollars actually declined into end-of-season skeletons, only to strongly recover in late December.
In looking at how brands spent in the peak shopping weeks of the season, Measured found that though many followed the playbook and ramped up spend for BFCM, in the end, 25 percent of such brands actually increased their spend after the holiday and earned 30 percent higher average order value than their peers, also seeing higher MROM.
It’s also worth noting that the vast majority of advertisers today measure the value of their online advertising by only one sales funnel (direct online sales). But Measured’s omnichannel view of retail confirms that big chunks of retail activity are driven by advertising that originated online but had the effect of driving customers to stores.
“Planning still matters,” the report’s authors said. “But Q4 conditions will inevitably shift. Demand changes. Promotions alter buying behavior. Media costs fluctuate. Channels saturate. And the economics of the next dollar can look very different in December than they did when the plan was finalized months earlier.”
To maximize fourth-quarter outcomes, the report’s authors said brands should replace their traditional fourth-quarter playbooks with an “operating system” that is designed to be agile. Brands should test different channels before peak shopping days. By using the tests in conjunction with a marketing mix model, brands can then determine the exact saturation point for their different channels and identify the maximum amount of return on investment that can be had from each individual channel.
In order to get the most out of a Q4 marketing budget, the report’s authors said retailers must understand whether they are approaching the point of diminishing returns with a particular channel or not and adjust their media spend accordingly to maximize their return on investment. The most important deadline in Q4 planning is the last day of live data and actioning.
