-2.png?width=136&height=31&name=Tatari_Lockup_White_4x%20(1)-2.png){kind=small}
After a few years of consumers tightening their wallets, 2026 is shaping up to be the biggest holiday season on record. Retail sales are expected to top $1 trillion for the first time, growing 4.5% year over year, according to Bain & Co.
Good news? Absolutely. It also means every advertiser is planning against that same forecast, on that same deal-driven timeline, for that same finite pool of customer attention. When growth is this big, both the potential return and the cost of competing rise with it — so efficiency and scale decide the season, not budget. For many brands, TV plays a uniquely valuable role: delivering the reach and the impact to break through a crowded market, drive urgency, and capture wallet share when it matters most.
Thankfully, with advanced planning (and a little Tatari data science magic), we help countless marketers reach holiday shoppers with their BFCM-themed campaigns. And after analyzing the historical data for these brands, as well as taking their pulse on the state of this year's holiday season, we’ve pulled out a few common trends we typically see each year. This BFCM Playbook uncovers key lessons when it comes to TV ad inventory clearance, performance, and creative strategies you can use as you plan for the most important time of the year.
TV inventory in the remnant market operates on an auction-like bidding system. Advertisers who place higher bids for an ad slot (ie. paying at or above the rate card) will typically land higher clearance rates, with the same logic applying to those on the lower-priced end of the bidding spectrum. During time periods where the demand for inventory increases, maintaining high clearance rates can be difficult.
Historical clearance rates for linear and streaming TV all edge downward in the weeks prior to the holiday sales. As inventory is snatched up—oftentimes via advanced Non-preemptible (NPE) buys—the cost of the remaining inventory begins to creep upward. Brands playing in the remnant market (who did not book in advance) are forced to factor this in. If they fail to do so and in turn come up short with their bid, they will be left with lower than expected clearance rates; a critical misstep for brands looking to boost reach and awareness of a sale.
We do see clearance improve during the actual day of the sales - be it Black Friday for linear and Cyber Monday for streaming. This is likely due to inventory availability increasing as brands taper their campaigns after the sale they were advertising has concluded. So for those looking to capitalize on “day-of” BFCM advertisements, there is opportunity in the remnant space.
The key takeaway here is that successful brands employ more than one TV ad-buying strategy. Staying agile in the remnant market can be fruitful, but brands that place a high emphasis on clearance rates—especially in the weeks leading up to BFCM— should be booking placements several months in advance as well.
Advertisers should also strongly consider launching their TV campaigns at the beginning of Q4 to drive awareness and gather performance insights leading up to BFCM. This allows advertisers to optimize ahead of time and confidently scale going into the week of BFCM.
Running a BFCM campaign can be a daunting task, but brands planning a performance-focused TV campaign during this time should do so with confidence. After aggregating the last three years of data, we found that Tatari clients who run Black Friday/Cyber Monday advertisements typically see a substantial boost in conversion rates when compared to a typical week. This means that not only are valuable impressions being served to their target audience during this highly competitive time, but that the audience is significantly more likely to take action and engage!
The implications of this are that your TV budget can scale significantly while still maintaining overall efficiency. This is why premium networks, sponsorships, and NPE CPMs are more desirable (and required) during this time period.
Advertisers are behaving accordingly. Asked to choose between maximizing performance and clearing budget during BFCM, 83% picked performance; a signal that TV measurement has matured to the point where brands trust the channel to hit standard benchmarks even when media costs spike. 70% of advertisers now use pixel-based attribution to measure TV, and more than half run incrementality testing alongside it. Brands that relax their standards without understanding their true baseline tend to overpay. Brands that hold the line and trust their measurement tend to come out ahead.
-2.png?width=100&height=23&name=Tatari_Lockup_White_4x%20(3)-2.png "Tatari_Lockup_White_4x (3)-2"){kind=small}