Holiday 2026: Brands Bet Big on CTV as Gift Guides Fade

CTV and streaming ad usage will nearly double this holiday season: 45% of brands and retailers plan to run CTV/streaming ads in 2026, up from 23% in 2025. The finding comes from Modern Retail+ Research's report, "The 2026 guide to holiday marketing strategies," based on a survey of 90 brand and retailer professionals plus interviews with marketing executives at companies including A-Frame Brands, Mastercard and Ritual.

The shift reverses last year's retreat. CTV/streaming usage had dropped 14 percentage points from 2024 to 2025 before rebounding 22 points for 2026. TV ads show the same pattern: usage slipped only 4 points between 2024 and 2025, then jumped 20 points. Thirty-three percent of brands and retailers plan TV ads this season, versus 13% in 2025.

Why are marketers returning to TV screens?

Ritual's chief growth officer, Laura Brodie, frames streaming as a year-round commitment, not a seasonal bet. "Streaming is a really valid channel to invest in during holiday because consumption of that media spikes," Brodie said. "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."

She added: "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."

Ari Bloom, founder and CEO of brand incubator A-Frame Brands, points to demographics. "Streaming and television is an effective audience conversion mechanism, especially with women over 30 years old," Bloom said. "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."

Which tactics are losing budget?

Brand experiences, the most-used tactic in 2025, fell to second place. Forty-one percent of marketers plan brand experiences this season, down 9 points from 50% last year.

Two legacy formats are shedding users faster:

• Gift guide usage dropped 19 percentage points in 2026 versus 2025.
• Influencer hauls and unboxing videos fell 14 percentage points year over year.

Yet the historical performance data complicates the retreat. Gift guides rank No. 1 all-time, cited by 31% of marketers as their best-performing holiday tactic. Brand experiences rank No. 2 at 28%. Pop-up shops take No. 3, while CTV/streaming ads and TV ads tie at No. 4. Influencer hauls/unboxing videos are the only tactic declining in both historical performance and planned 2026 usage.

Do gift guides still matter in AI search?

Brodie argues they matter more, not less. "Gift guides are very interesting in the world of AEO and thinking about LLM optimization," she said. "Overall, best of lists and gift guides are a close sister to [AI search results]. Gift guides can play an important role in holiday and especially bridging LLM research and AI overviews. So, I'm bullish about gift guides."

Her reasoning: AI-powered search tools lean on curated best-of lists to answer consumer queries, giving well-structured gift guides a second life as machine-readable recommendations.

Bloom, for his part, backs an older format: print. "Catalogs have always been very successful, and they're heavily conversion-focused," Bloom said. "When they're discount-driven and when people's attention is on buying, you can do offers that you can only get via physical paper, and it does drive people into stores."

The takeaway in plain terms: money is moving to screens this holiday season, but the formats marketers are cutting still deliver the strongest measured returns — and AI search may revive one of them.