The Video Advertising Bureau today circulated survey data in which 24 of 41 digital-native advertisers said they would lift television spending for the Thanksgiving-weekend sales above 2025 levels, nine of them substantially, while eight of 40 named large language model platforms such as ChatGPT among their priority channels for the same window.

In Short

A company that buys TV advertising for online brands asked 41 of its clients how they plan to advertise around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and a TV industry trade group shared the answers today. More than half said they will spend more on TV than last year, and one in five listed AI chatbot platforms such as ChatGPT among the places they are prioritising. TV and streaming look busier for the holidays, but the answers come from a small group of brands that already buy TV through the company that ran the survey.

A survey of Tatari's own clients

Tatari ran the survey over two weeks, from July 13 to July 24, 2026, among 41 brand marketers and direct-to-consumer advertisers from its client base, according to the report. The named participants are BYLT, MANSCAPED, Bearbottom Clothing, Lectric eBikes and Tecovas; the rest are not listed. VAB's web page for the study describes them as Tatari clients, "many of them leading DTC and e-commerce brands."

VAB packaged the results as a 15-page deck dated September 2026 in its "What Marketers Are Asking" series, with a footer restricting the material to VAB members and qualified marketers, and sent it to press contacts today in its weekly media-only newsletter.

Provenance matters for how the figures are read. VAB is the New York trade body representing premium multiscreen television providers and distributors. Tatari's business depends on advertisers buying television, and in April the company was among the platforms running LinkedIn campaigns aimed at brand marketers as rival buying platforms courted Trade Desk clients. Every respondent is a brand that already routes TV spending through Tatari. None of this makes the answers wrong, but the sample was never going to include brands that had given up on television.

Sample sizes also shift from question to question. Most charts rest on 41 responses; the channel, AI and measurement questions report 40; the sales-channel question reports 38. At those sizes a single brand moves a result by between 2.4 and 2.6 percentage points, which is worth holding onto whenever the deck treats a gap of three points as a finding.

Budgets rise for most, fall for three

Compared with 2025, 22.0% of respondents expect to raise their Black Friday and Cyber Monday television budget significantly and 36.6% slightly, according to Tatari. Another 34.2% will hold spending flat and 7.3% will cut it. Translated back into respondents, that is nine significant increases, 15 modest ones, 14 unchanged budgets and three reductions. VAB's headline rounds the two increase groups to 59% and describes respondents as "poised to boost" their budgets.

The deck gives no dollar figures and no threshold separating a slight increase from a significant one. What it captures is stated intent, recorded in late July, about four months before the sales themselves.

That intent sits beside wider forecasts pointing the same way: the Interactive Advertising Bureau raised its 2026 US advertising growth forecast to 12.3% on September 10, up from 9.5% in January, while Integral Ad Science's holiday guide of July 21 measured a 219% rise in impressions between November 2 and December 5, 2025.

A calendar that strains the four-week claim

On timing, 17.1% of respondents plan to start their holiday TV campaigns in October, 36.6% in early November, 22.0% in mid-November and 24.4% in the week of Thanksgiving, according to the report. VAB combines the first two groups into its headline: "More than half of respondents (54%) will launch their BFCM TV campaigns at least four weeks in advance of Black Friday."

This year's calendar is less accommodating than that label. Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 26, with Black Friday on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30 - the window for which Teads secured a 10-day exclusive home screen takeover on V, the smart TV operating system formerly called VIDAA, in August. Four weeks before Black Friday is October 30. A campaign starting on November 1 is therefore 26 days out, and anything later in the first week of November sits closer to three weeks. On a strict reading, only the October group, seven respondents, clears the four-week bar. The chart's axis nonetheless labels early November as "4+ weeks out."

There is a second inconsistency on the same slide. Its footnote states that respondents selected all options that apply, yet the four bars sum to 100.1% and correspond exactly to seven, 15, nine and ten respondents, a total of 41. That pattern fits a single-answer question. If brands could in fact choose several start dates, adding the October and early November shares to reach 54% would count some of them twice.

Linear, social and streaming bunched at the top

Asked which channels they are prioritising for Black Friday and Cyber Monday media buys, 76% of respondents chose linear TV and 76% paid social, followed by streaming/CTV at 73%, paid search at 60%, YouTube at 50% and LLM platforms at 20%, according to Tatari. Respondents could pick several channels. VAB reads the result as proof that "the TV landscape is truly converged as streaming/CTV has nearly reached parity with linear TV in terms of media buy prioritization."

The distance between linear and streaming is three percentage points, roughly one brand. The figures also fail to reconcile with the stated base. The chart reports 40 responses, and on a base of 40 every result must be a multiple of 2.5%: 30 brands would produce 75.0% and 31 would produce 77.5%. A figure of 76% is what 31 brands out of 41 would give. The deck does not explain the difference.

YouTube sits on its own line, 23 points below streaming. That separation fits VAB's broader argument; in February the trade body published research with TVision contending that premium video platforms outperform YouTube on every connected TV attention and engagement metric it measured. The survey does not say whether YouTube watched on television sets was counted under YouTube, under streaming, or under both.

For search marketers, one ranking stands out: paid search came fourth, behind both forms of television and paid social.

LLM platforms enter the plan

Eight of the 40 brands, or 20%, listed LLM platforms, a category the footnote defines as including ChatGPT and Perplexity. VAB's callout on the same slide goes further than the question did: "1 out of 5 are already buying on LLM platforms as AI-powered search emerges as a paid channel." The survey asked what brands are prioritising for the holiday window, not what they are buying now, so the two statements are not interchangeable.

The channel is young. OpenAI began testing ads in ChatGPT on February 9, 2026 for free and Go tier users in the United States at a $60 CPM, and cut that CPM to $25 within nine weeks. A measurement pixel followed on May 5, answering one of the most persistent complaints from early buyers. On September 16, OpenAI connected ChatGPT Ads to HubSpot and Shopify, with a Shopify App Store app that lets US merchants create and manage campaigns - a route aimed squarely at online sellers of the kind Tatari surveyed. Perplexity has offered sponsored questions since November 2024, yet eMarketer expects standalone chatbots to generate less than $1 billion in US advertising revenue in 2026.

AI tools, creative reuse and creators

AI in the TV workflow

According to the report, 34.2% of respondents use AI across a mix of functions, 17.1% for audience targeting and strategy, 17.1% for campaign optimisation and reporting, 12.2% for creative development, and 12.2% plan to use it in future. The remaining 26.8% are not using AI, a group the footnote defines as having no current or near-term plans. VAB's headline takes the complement: "AI has crossed into the mainstream for TV advertisers as nearly three out of four (73%) are either currently using it or planning to use it."

Two qualifications apply. The 73% includes brands still at the planning stage, and the base is again unclear: the footnote reports 40 responses, but every figure on the slide is a multiple of one forty-first - 14, 11, seven and five brands out of 41 - and 26.8% cannot be produced from 40 respondents at all.

Creative development is the least common use named, at five brands; AI here is pointed more at targeting and reporting than at making the spot.

Creative: half recycle

Only 19.5% of respondents are producing a new spot specific to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Another 14.6% will repurpose existing holiday creative and 36.6% existing non-holiday creative, while 29.3% had not decided when surveyed. Taken together, 21 of 41 brands plan to rerun material rather than commission new work. VAB presents that as an opening for everyone else, arguing that the reuse "could create a competitive advantage for those that create fresh, BFCM-specific TV spots." With 12 brands undecided in July, the final split may look different by November.

Creators, mostly kept apart

A majority, 58.5%, keep TV and influencer activity separate, according to Tatari. Another 24.4% are exploring integration without committing, 14.6% are repurposing creator content as TV or streaming ads, and 2.4% are co-producing TV work with creators. That last figure is a single brand. VAB's headline counts about four in ten as blending the two or considering it; the share actually blending is 17.1%, or seven brands.

The trade body adds a projection of its own: "This percentage is only likely to grow as TV and streaming platforms increase their adoption of creator-format ad units." In August, VAB reported that 52% of surveyed creator followerswould be more likely to look up a brand if a creator they follow appeared in a TV or streaming programme where that brand advertised. Supply has moved as well. PubMatic opened a programmatic CTV marketplace for independent creator media companies in June, and Spotter in April counted 6,600 US creator channels meeting its definition of creator television, with 52% of their viewing on connected TV.

Interactive formats: one in four

A quarter of respondents, 24.4% or ten brands, will add interactive ads to their holiday campaigns, a category the footnote says includes pause ads and shoppable ads. The other 75.6% will not. VAB labels the ten "a set of early adopters for these emerging formats."

Inventory for those formats has widened this year. Samsung Ads and Amazon Ads switched on remote-enabled shoppable ads on Samsung TV Plus on June 22. Evidence on effectiveness is less settled: vendor studies of interactive CTV advertising report figures that do not line up, from a 33% recall lift to brand recall at ten times industry benchmarks, and they rarely publish methodology.

Where the sales are meant to land

Of 38 respondents to the sales-channel question, 58% are directing holiday shoppers to their own website, 39% to an omni-channel combination of website, other digital channels and physical stores, and 3% to Amazon, according to the report. In-store alone drew no responses.

VAB attributes the website skew to "the performance-driven, digital-native orientation of respondents." That describes the sample as much as it describes a finding. A cohort recruited from direct-to-consumer advertisers would be expected to send buyers to owned storefronts; brands built on wholesale or marketplace distribution appear largely absent. Amazon's own Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday deal submissions run through October 20, a deadline that, in this sample, concerns one respondent.

Performance ahead of full delivery

Asked for the most important factor in their Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaign, 82.9% of respondents chose maximised performance and 17.1% chose clearance near 100%, which the deck glosses as delivering the full budget, according to Tatari. In television buying, clearance describes how much of a booked schedule actually airs. A brand optimising for performance is, in effect, prepared to leave some budget unspent rather than fill slots that do not produce sales.

VAB's framing is direct: "TV advertisers expect outcomes, not just impressions." Acting on that has limits. On September 18, Tom Discepola, senior director of programmatic at Tatari, separated show-level reporting from show-level buying, citing an industry figure that 43% of connected TV buyers have little or no confidence in the inventory they purchase.

Measurement leans on pixels

To gauge the impact of their holiday TV spend, 70.0% of respondents use pixel-based attribution, 52.5% incrementality testing, 45.0% media mix modelling and 20.0% brand lift studies, according to the report. Another 12.5% have no formal approach. Respondents could choose several methods, and here the base of 40 fits all five figures: 28, 21, 18, eight and five brands.

VAB concedes the cohort is unusual, noting that "DTC brands tend to have greater measurement sophistication," while arguing that they "do reflect a broader shift of treating TV as a performance-based channel." Its closing slide is blunter: "Accountability is the expectation, not the exception."

The dominant method carries known weaknesses. Pixel-based attribution records visits and orders on an advertiser's site and credits them to television exposure, and the link between a household that saw an ad and a later site visit often depends on IP addresses. Research from Adstra and InterMedia Advertising found in July that just 23% of residential IP addresses reached their intended geographic target. Fairing argued this month that pixel-based and modelled systems tend to credit the final touch, usually search or direct traffic. Buyer confidence is uneven as well: in a Jamloop survey of 120 senior marketers published on July 9, 62% expressed some scepticism toward platform-reported CTV results, and only 42% said the channel is held to the same accountability standards as search and social.

Incrementality testing, which compares outcomes against a group that did not see the ads, is the method built to answer that doubt. That just over half of this cohort runs such tests is notable, though it is again a figure from brands that chose to buy television through Tatari.

VAB has built a wider programme around these questions, including a measurement solutions directory that grew to 20 vendors on July 21 and, according to the deck's back page, an outcomes guide dated July 2026.

What the closing slide adds

VAB ends the deck with four takeaways, and one reaches beyond the data. It states that "most marketers are prioritizing high-quality, long-form premium video content across both linear TV and streaming." No question in the survey asked about content length, programme quality or premium status. The phrase restates the trade body's commercial position; in August, VAB headlined a 94% completion rate for long-form premium video using FreeWheel research published in 2023.

The other takeaways track the charts more closely, though each rounds in the flattering direction: AI "entered the mainstream" on a figure that folds in future intentions, while creator integration and LLM media buying "gain traction" on seven and eight brands.

What, then, is useful here? The shape of the answers more than their precision. Among brands that already treat television as a sales channel, linear TV holds its place next to paid social, streaming sits within a respondent of linear, paid search ranks below all three, and a channel whose best-known seller, ChatGPT, began carrying ads in February appears in one in five holiday plans. Measurement rests heavily on a method whose identity signals have repeatedly been shown to be weak. How far any of it extends beyond 41 of Tatari's clients, the deck cannot say.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Video Advertising Bureau, the New York trade body representing premium multiscreen television providers and distributors, published and distributed the findings. Tatari conducted the survey among 41 brand marketers and DTC advertisers from its own client base, including BYLT, MANSCAPED, Bearbottom Clothing, Lectric eBikes and Tecovas.

What: A 15-page "What Marketers Are Asking" deck on holiday TV strategies. Of 41 respondents, 22.0% plan a significant and 36.6% a slight increase in Black Friday and Cyber Monday TV budgets against 2025; linear TV and paid social tie at 76% as channel priorities, streaming/CTV reaches 73% and LLM platforms 20%; 73% use or plan to use AI; 51.2% will repurpose creative; 24.4% will run interactive ads; 58% direct shoppers to their own website; 82.9% put performance ahead of full budget delivery; and 70.0% measure with pixel-based attribution. Several slides carry base-size or labelling inconsistencies.

When: Fieldwork ran from July 13 to July 24, 2026. The deck is dated September 2026, and VAB sent it to press contacts today, September 23, 2026. The campaigns it describes run into Black Friday on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30, 2026.

Where: The respondents are digital-native brands among Tatari's clients; the deck does not specify markets, though participants and the holiday calendar point to the United States. The material is restricted to VAB members and qualified marketers.

Why: VAB is using the data to argue that digital-native advertisers treat television as a measurable performance channel and that linear and streaming TV have converged. The sample's makeup, its small size and the commercial interests of both organisations limit how far those conclusions extend beyond the brands surveyed.