Published August 25
It’s (still) August, the hottest and biggest vacation month of the year. Some cities close down entirely during this time, while everyone and their dog seems to be on a beach somewhere … or has at least turned on the OOO reply. Sun, ocean, the works is all that matters.
That’s reality until you walk into a store and find autumn sweaters, dark colors, fabrics you can’t imagine touching and you’re nowhere near ready for. It’s not just that the shelves have moved on from what you actually want to buy right now though. You’re also being told that now would be the ideal time to sort out your down jacket. And while it’s burning hot outside and the idea of lying in snow might sound somewhat attractive, the colder season reminders could have waited a bit longer, no? Apparently not. No time like August to think about winter — before in September, Christmas starts elbowing in.
Yes, we get it. Retailers don’t necessarily care that you don’t want a sweater in 35°C — 95°F — heat. They have inventory to move, a seasonal calendar to hit and a promotional machine that decides August equals autumn. And marketers have already started planning for Q4 and the holidays, as if we’re all in some kind of rush to get through the year. But are consumers actually moving that fast, or are marketers simply getting better at making them think about things earlier?
Of course, everything is backed by data and reports confirming consumers “need” and “want” thick wool sweaters in August. And if the data says so, what are marketers supposed to do? After all, if people start searching for holiday gifts earlier, buying coats earlier or responding to seasonal promotions earlier, why wouldn’t a brand follow the signals … earlier. Besides, isn’t that exactly advertising’s job to create consumer desire, not just respond to it?
The Trade Desk Intelligence and Appinio released a holiday shopping report telling brands exactly when to show up: “It’s never too early to influence holiday shoppers.” The data backs the confidence: 2 in 5 people in the U.S. start researching holiday purchases before Black Friday, and over a third go on to buy during that early window. The report frames this as evidence that shoppers are simply looking earlier than they used to, something advertising noticed rather than caused. Reasonable enough, so far. Follow the shopper, don’t make them wait for you.
Except the industry isn’t just following anymore. A recent tvScientific by Pinterest report found rising media costs are one of the top stressors heading into this holiday season, and the practical result is campaigns launching earlier specifically to prove return before budgets get scrutinized. Campaigns around Labor Day, fall football and October Prime Day are increasingly launching well ahead of the event themselves. Or, in the report’s own words: “The pressure is not just to show up in these peak moments. It’s to show up early enough, clearly enough, and convincingly enough to shape the decision before intent gets crowded.”
So the goal isn’t simply to convert existing intent but to help create it. That’s not advertising’s oldest trick, creating desire for a product. It’s a tweaked, slightly twisted version: help determine when that desire is supposed to start. And once campaigns begin moving earlier, it becomes harder to tell whether the data is simply capturing changing consumer behavior or whether advertising itself is helping move the calendar forward.
Retail media makes that feedback loop particularly easy to close. EMarketer forecasts the category will hit $71 billion in U.S. spend this year, up from $60 billion in 2025. Built on first-party purchase data, it can carry what happened in this year’s campaign straight into next year’s brief. Enough people search for coats in September; marketers start talking about coats in September. Enough of them buy; the data confirms September works. Next year, the campaign might start a little earlier. Why wait? Why not now, while consumers are still floating in the swimming pool? Until, at some point, it’s no longer clear whether shoppers moved Christmas forward or advertising did.
There’s nothing wrong with anticipating demand. Advertising would be useless if it only showed up once someone had already decided to buy. But there is a difference between helping someone discover what they will need and filling their August with reminders that winter is coming. One is anticipation; the other is just being early.
Marketers have spent such a great deal of effort getting good at prediction. We have signals for intent, behavior, context, location, purchase history and increasingly sophisticated models telling us what someone is likely to do. But “not yet” is a signal too.
It’s the one sitting in every inbox right now: out of office. The actual state of half the industry’s own workforce, on annual leave, unreachable, replying automatically that they’ll deal with it later. A fairly unambiguous signal that, for now, people have other things on their minds…
Greetings from a summer person currently OOO, floating in a pool in Lisbon, absolutely not interested (yet) in anything related to winter.
This op-ed represents the views and opinions of the author and not of The Current, a division of The Trade Desk, or The Trade Desk. The appearance of the op-ed on The Current does not constitute an endorsement by The Current or The Trade Desk.