Winning the golden quarter

Is your digital strategy primed for peak performance?

It’s October, and the golden quarter is already in full flow for retailers.

A recent study by Epsilon suggests UK consumers plan to spend an average of £334 each between Black Friday and the January sales. With 53.6 million adults in the UK, that’s a potential total spend of £17.9bn.

Shoppers are also starting earlier

YouGov’s Big Survey on Christmas present shopping and giving found that last year, 24% of UK consumers had begun their Christmas shopping by the start of October. They were researching gifts, comparing prices and buying earlier than ever. We can expect the same this year, although YouGov’s pre-Black Friday research for 2026 suggests shoppers are approaching the season with caution as well as intent.

Either way, there is plenty of opportunity for brands to capture Q4 spend

This year’s Q4 includes three full weekends between Black Friday and Christmas, plus another before New Year, giving UK consumers plenty of time to secure their purchases. But they also have more choice than ever, brands are making more noise across more channels, and competition for attention is at an all-time high.

Marketers appear to have seen this coming

The latest IPA Bellwether Report (Q3 2026) revealed the strongest upward revision to marketing budgets in nine quarters. This is a sign that brands laid solid foundations in Q3 for the golden quarter, when e-commerce spend reaches its highest levels.

The best-prepared teams will have signed off their peak strategies before the summer break. And because Singles Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns can’t wait until November to go live, their activations have already begun.

Even so, simply pressing play and hoping for the best won’t secure a brand’s share of Q4 spenD

Brands need to be more intentional, running an ongoing golden quarter strategy that adapts to the changing needs and behaviours of their target consumer. With this in mind, there are six key areas for brands to consider:

1. Stop camping at the bottom of the funnel

Many brands are weighting their peak strategies towards the bottom of the funnel, focusing platform spend on harvesting customers who are already primed to buy. It’s a flawed approach, because it only captures existing demand.

Paid search has a ceiling, campaigns hit a performance plateau, and costs can start to spiral. With rival brands chasing the same high-intent shoppers at the same time, it’s a finite pool that can run dry quickly.

Additionally, customers aren’t sitting around with their credit cards out, waiting to panic buy because a brand slapped a 20% sticker on a Google Shopping ad in November. 

Purchases are heavily considered – shoppers are taking longer to browse, compare, and build wishlists. Winning peak means getting into a customer’s shortlist long before the sales land, and brands don’t earn that spot by switching on paid search three days before Black Friday. They need to use ads to prime audiences early from October as campaigns ramp up with discounting from early November.

2. Don’t get caught in the performance trap

The Epsilon report shows 79% of marketers are pushing heavily into performance and direct response for Q4, yet 71% of consumers are actively cutting back on non-essentials. 

Most brands will end up in an expensive bidding war at the bottom of the funnel for a cautious consumer. But shoppers aren’t stopping spending entirely. They’re deferring purchases, editing their baskets, and looking for brands they trust.

Putting 80%+ of  budget into pure conversion during the golden quarter is a trap. The brands that win will maintain brand salience, make use of trusted retail environments (retail media), and stay consistent across channels rather than just pushing out short-term ads at the point of checkout.

3. The trust and multi-touch reality

82% of marketers are consolidating budget into just Google, Meta and Amazon, but consumers discover products across a much wider mix, including in-store, search and retail networks. And 56% of consumers trust new brands more when they’re endorsed by a retailer they shop with.

Modern peak planning requires true cross-channel synergy rather than reliance on walled gardens. 

Our St Eval case study shows how multi-channel consistency and smart audience targeting deliver sustainable growth during competitive windows, including the golden quarter.

4. Remember: discovery is shifting, but checkout is not

Planned AI tool usage has jumped from 19% to 34% year on year, with Gemini (26%) rapidly closing in on ChatGPT (38%). But only 5% of shoppers trust AI to buy for them.

Consumers are using LLMs, Google’s price comparison graph and tools like CamelCamelCamel as real-time spin detectors, verifying prices and weeding out fake discounts. That means a brand’s feeds and product data must be clean, structured and transparent. AI is crawling them for discovery, but their site still has to close the sale.

5. Test audiences and creative hooks in October, not during peak

Mid-November is the most expensive time of year to find out an ad concept is a dud. 

It’s essential that creative and proposition testing begin across Meta, TikTok and Pinterest in October to measure best performers ahead of peak, stress-test creative hooks and find out whether campaigns can scale profitably to reach more of the right customers.

A word to the wise; the winning hook this year isn’t “HUGE SALE”. It’s commercial honesty. Nearly half of shoppers (47%) find it difficult to know whether a discount is genuine, and in YouGov’s 2025 research, 35% of UK shoppers said they were less interested in mega-sale events than two or three years earlier, with misleading discounts the most common reason.

Removing the fear of a post-purchase price drop also captures revenue weeks ahead of the auction spikes. Take a page from Currys’ playbook: “This is our best price. It will not be cheaper on Black Friday. Buy it now before stock sells out.”

6. Warm the funnel before platform CPMs double

A brand’s website carries the burden of conversion, but paid media has to feed that engine early. Use YouTube Demand Gen, TikTok and programmatic DOOH in October to build real brand equity. Trying to convert completely cold traffic on Google PMax or Meta ASC during Cyber Week is just setting margin on fire.

The golden quarter rewards brands that show up early, build trust, and give shoppers a reason to believe their price.

The money is there to be won, but the groundwork has to be laid before the sales begin. For most brands, that means right now – October –  is when peak really starts.

Are your campaigns built to scale or just spend? Complete the Seven Levers Scorecard at launchonline.co.uk/grow to identify your biggest growth blockers before the shopping surge begins.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Danny has 10+ years experience helping brands drive growth from their performance marketing.  After a significant time working for Google, he joined Launch and heads up our Paid Media expertise.  He oversees the planning, build, and execution of client’s global paid strategies to help our clients reach their north star objectives.   

Connect with Danny on LinkedIn.