The Christmas campaign planning window may be narrowing, but it hasn’t closed. Fergal O’Connor, CEO and Founder, Buymedia, explains why brands that missed the traditional ‘Christmas in July’ starting gun still have time to secure media, reach early festive shoppers and make the Golden Quarter count...
“Christmas in July” is synonymous with the advertising industry and a key marker for media planners and brands to start thinking about planning and booking their festive campaigns. With September upon us already, and the summer feeling like a distant memory, if you’ve missed getting ahead in July, the good news is that there is still time to plan but it stops being optional and starts being urgent.
The brands that win the Golden Quarter aren’t necessarily the ones who started earliest, they’re the ones who did the thinking before the market got crowded. The window hasn’t entirely shut but it is narrowing and the next few weeks now matter more than the last few did. So what can be done now to win at Christmas?
“Christmas in July” has been and gone. Here’s what’s still achievable:
Christmas is the largest advertising period of the year for many brands and campaigns, with months of preparation, especially for retailers, supermarkets, consumer electronics brands, toy companies, travel firms, and financial services companies.
By July, agencies are typically finalising campaign strategies, securing media inventory, producing creative assets, planning budgets, booking talent and production resources and developing promotional calendars.
Christmas planning becomes an agency’s top priority, the point at which strategy, media buying, creative and production all move into motion at once, months before consumers see a single festive ad. In practice, that work spans six connected areas:
- Campaign strategy – settling the brand’s Christmas story, target audiences and revenue targets
- Media planning and buying – targeting the ideal customer persona, tailoring the media mix, purchasing the media and planning the campaign across omnichannel media (OOH, CTV, digital, traditional, social) within available budget
- Creative development – concepts, scripts and design for TV, social, digital video and CRM
- Production scheduling – securing directors, studios, photographers and editors before the busiest production period of the year
- Promotional calendar planning – mapping how September awareness activity connects to October discovery, November’s Black Friday and December’s purchasing push
- Testing and optimisation – using the summer months to trial creative and messaging before real budget goes behind it
The reason “July” gets the credit isn’t that the work is impossible after that point but that it’s these six key areas that take time,rather than being an absolute deadline, this is a checklist. Most brands are still not through it until now, which is exactly where they should expect to be with strategy and testing largely done, media and creative moving into final gear and any production being booked in before the autumn rush makes it harder.
The point isn’t that every brand needs to have started all six of these areas in July but more to make sure that in September the work is focused on other areas. A brand finalising strategy and locking media now isn’t too late for Christmas, rather it’s early for September, which is when the customer’s Christmas shopping journey actually begins.`
Inventory and Pricing: The Christmas crunch is coming…but it’s not here yet!
UK digital ad spend is on a clear upward trajectory, with IAB UK’s Digital Adspend report putting the market at a growth of 10.3% in 2026 to £44.7bn, forecast to reach £49.1bn by 2027. Within that, 57% of advertisers expected their digital budgets to increase in 2026, with video, retail media and DOOH forecast to see the strongest gains.
That growth means more advertisers chasing the same premium CTV slots, retail media placements and out-of-home sites, and that competition intensifies sharply from October onward. Right now, in early September, there’s still inventory to secure and pricing that hasn’t yet been driven up by the rush. Brands that lock in strategy and placements over the next few weeks are still buying ahead of the Christmas crunch but that door doesn’t stay open for much longer. Wait until October, and you’re bidding against everyone else who also waited.
Budgets Are Moving: Act now before the picture changes
UK marketing budgets were revised up to the second-highest level in two years in Q2 2026, according to the IPA Bellwether Report, with 23.8% of respondents reporting an increase against 16.9% recording cuts – a net balance of +6.9%. That’s a real, available budget, sitting there right now.
But the same report found firms’ expectations for wider industry conditions actually worsened in Q2, with 36.5% of panellists expecting deterioration in industry-wide conditions, more than three times the 11.4% expecting improvement [2]. Budget available today, uncertainty about tomorrow: that combination is exactly why investment now, while there’s still runway before Q4, matters more than waiting to see how the autumn shakes out. A budget locked into a well-planned Q4 strategy this week is far more secure than one left sitting, exposed to a rockier back half of the year.
Stretched teams still have time if they use it wisely now
Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey found that 56% of CMOs say their marketing organisation lacks the budget required to deliver their 2026 strategy, and 54% report insufficient resources [3]. That gap doesn’t close in Q4, it widens, as teams juggle Black Friday, Christmas and January sales activity all at once.
The next few weeks are the last real stretch where lean teams can build scenarios, test creative and channel combinations, and refine targeting against real data rather than assumptions carried over from last year before the operational pressure of Q4 itself takes over. Start now, and the team spends November refining. Start in November, and the team spends it firefighting.
Liane Green, Customer Success Manager at Buymedia, says: “Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a clear pattern: the earlier a Q4 campaign is booked, the better the placements. Early planning also unlocks advanced booking discounts on TV and Radio, and often bonus added value from our media partners. It’s an advantage more marketing managers should be tapping into.”
Big spenders are starting their shopping now, which means so should you
Demand is shifting earlier too, but “earlier” doesn’t mean “already over.” KPMG UK’s Consumer Pulse research found that consumers remain cautious with discretionary spend, with a meaningful share cutting back and deferring big-ticket purchases as concerns about the wider economy persist [4]. Cautious, considered shoppers plan further ahead, they research earlier, compare more, and take their time before committing. That research-and-compare phase is happening right now, which means brands switching on festive messaging in September and October are still very much inside the window that shapes these decisions.
The sharpest reason the next few weeks matter comes down to early planning: 1 in 3 Christmas shoppers in Great Britain begin buying their festive gifts as early as September and October. Brands that wait until November risk missing out on a massive pool of the 40 million UK consumers preparing for the holiday season. Crucially, reaching these shoppers requires an evolving, cross-channel approach; in-store festive shopping is seeing its strongest popularity in years, yet digital channels and TV remain essential touchpoints, with 43% of UK adults actively enjoying Christmas adverts and 57% tuning into festive TV and film content.
At the same time, value-conscious habits are shaping behavior, with 40% of consumers considering options like family Secret Santas to manage budgets. The shoppers driving key seasonal spend, including 9.5 million people planning to spend over £100 on festive drinks alone are engaging with media early, and brands with campaign creative ready by mid-to-late September will secure a prime position in that conversation.
Higher spenders also shop differently. Lower spenders lean toward in-store purchases, while big spenders are more likely to shop online or blend online and in-store throughout the season, meaning reaching them requires a connected, multichannel strategy rather than a single-channel push. They’re also more reachable through channels many Q4 plans underweight: high Christmas spenders are more likely to be among the heaviest 20% of radio listeners, and more likely to find newspaper advertising useful when making purchase decisions. The consumers driving the most Christmas spend are planning earlier, buying more, and actively engaging with media most brands treat as secondary and there’s still time to be part of that conversation.
Turn the final planning window for the Golden Quarter into a competitive edge
If July (and August) came and went without a Q4 plan, that’s not a missed opportunity, it’s a deadline moving closer. Strategy, media, creative, production, calendar and testing don’t all need to be finished today, but each week that passes narrows how many of them can still be done properly. Inventory is still available, budgets are still committed, high-value shoppers are only just starting to research, and teams still have a few weeks to plan without scrambling. That combination won’t last through September.
Sleighing Q4 isn’t about outspending the competition in December, it’s about outplanning them before October arrives. The brands who use the next few weeks to secure inventory, lock in budgets against economic uncertainty, and give their teams room to plan properly will walk into the Golden Quarter with a real advantage, not a scramble.
At Buymedia, this is where our AI data-driven platform is built to help marketing teams and brands with the tools and insights to plan, buy, and optimise campaigns, across all channels from TV and radio to Out of Home, digital and traditional, all within budget. So when December arrives, the hard work is already behind them and they can really start to track their media spend against the business KPIs using data and insights.
The tinsel can still wait a little longer. The planning can’t.
