It’s almost time for pumpkin spice lattes and Halloween candy. We’re not quite there yet, but 41% of shoppers have already started buying holiday gifts.
According to Salsify's “2026 Holiday Pulse Report,” the majority of shoppers start holiday shopping before a single Black Friday doorbuster goes live.
September and October used to be the calm before the storm, but now they are the storm. Showing up early is a must, but it’s not the only thing on the festive menu at this time of year. The big, brave question to ask yourself is whether your product data is ready for the early stampede of shoppers.
Here, we dive into who's shopping this early by generation and market, what they're looking for when they get there, and where AI fits in. Then we'll turn the data back on you: Is your product content actually holiday-ready, or still stuck in back-to-school mode?
Many marketing calendars still treat Black Friday as the opening event of the holiday shopping season, but the data says otherwise.
According to Salsify’s “2026 Holiday Pulse Report,” 58% of shoppers fall into the "peak season" window of September through December. But that window isn't evenly spread out. Within it, 16% of shoppers start in October and 25% start in November, meaning the two months before Black Friday already account for the bulk of peak-season shopping.
Compare that to December, where just 9% of shoppers wait that long. The so-called “last-minute holiday rush” has morphed into something that’s only really celebrated by a small, shrinking minority.
By the time Black Friday arrives, most of the shoppers who were going to buy early already have.
This doesn't leave brands much runway. Singles Day is November 11, Black Friday is November 27, and Cyber Monday is just three days later on November 30. That’s three major shopping moments squeezed into a single month.
So if your team is treating Black Friday as “go time,” you're not early. In fact, there’s a very high chance you’re trailing behind your own shoppers by a month, maybe even two.
Which raises the obvious next question: Who exactly is shopping this early, and what are they expecting to find on a product page?
If one generation is driving this year's early shopping surge, it's millennials. A third of them (33%) say they'll spend more this year, up sharply from 25% last year. Generation Z isn't far behind, with 28% planning to spend more too.
Baby boomers are moving in the opposite direction: Just 10% plan to spend more this year.
Millennials and Generation Z aren't just spending more, though; they're also finding their gift ideas in different places:
Both lean heavily on social media for gift discovery (41% of Gen Zers, 35% of millennials); and
Both are notably more likely to turn to AI chatbots and shopping assistants for inspiration (23% of millennials, 18% of Gen Zers).
Boomers, by comparison, barely touch AI for this at all, with just 5% saying they use it to discover gift ideas.
More than half of shoppers (51%) say they'd be comfortable handing gift shopping over to an AI agent entirely, letting it discover, research, and even purchase products on their behalf.
Among millennials, that number jumps to 66%.
But there's a catch: trust hasn't caught up to appetite.
Only 14% of shoppers trust an AI recommendation enough to act on it alone. A third (33%) don't trust AI recommendations at all. The rest fall somewhere in between.
So what tips shoppers from skeptical to convinced? Product data.
Detailed descriptions and specs are the single biggest trust factor (31%);
Followed by brand recognition (27%); and
A personalized explanation of why a product fits their needs (25%).
Zoom out, and 54% of shoppers say AI tools like chatbots and gift guides would improve their holiday shopping overall. The appetite is there, but there’s still a lack of confidence in what AI is serving up.
This is a good opportunity for brands. Ask yourself if your product data is structured well enough for an AI agent to recommend it. Sparse titles, missing specs, or specs that don’t match across retailers are a surefire way to miss out.
The report calls this the "agentic shelf," aka a third shelf brands now have to stock, right alongside the physical and digital shelves.
Generation isn't the only line splitting holiday shoppers this year. Geography is too.
U.K. shoppers are the most likely to spend more this year (26%), just ahead of U.S. shoppers (25%). Canadian shoppers are the most cautious of the three, with only 18% planning to spend more.
It's not just how much they're spending, either; it's what they're spending it on:
U.S. shoppers lean hard into electronics (56%) and fashion (61%).
U.K. shoppers, meanwhile, over-index on food and beverage (47%) and alcohol (39%), which are gifts that lean more toward comfort and togetherness.
Canadian shoppers spread their spending more evenly across fashion, electronics, and personal care.
Nearly a third of shoppers now factor in where a product is made when making gift choices. Thirty percent say they prefer domestically made products, and 29% are actively trying to buy more of them this year. U.S. shoppers (35%) and millennials (34%) are leading that trend, which could be a response to the ongoing volatility of, well, everything.
So what does this mean for you if you’re a brand trying to target multiple markets? On a base level, it means that a single holiday gift guide, translated word-for-word into three languages, will no longer cut it.
Real localization means understanding why someone in each market is buying (whether that's value, comfort, or where a product came from) and building content around that particular motivation.
To make sure you’re ready to go before those Black Friday countdown timers start ticking, ask yourself these questions.
Can your product content answer an AI agent's questions as well as search engine queries? A search engine can work with a decent title and a few keywords, but an AI agent needs correct content and real substance (e.g., specs, use cases, context) to confidently recommend your products.
Does your content strategy reach Generation Z and millennial shoppers where they discover gifts? If your discovery strategy hinges entirely on paid search or in-store displays, you could be bypassing the shoppers who spend the most and start the earliest.
Is your gifting content localized by what motivates each market, or just translated into each market's language? A gift guide that says the same thing in three languages doesn’t speak to the three different mindsets that are driving the purchase.
If a shopper starts browsing in September, is your product content already live everywhere they might find you? And that doesn’t mean it’ll be ready by Black Friday, but that it’s live now on every channel.
If we drill down into the underlying sentiment of this piece, it’s that holiday shoppers who may have shown up in November in the past are starting their sprees much, much earlier.
Which means waiting until October to kick off your holiday season strategy could leave a fair bit of money on the table.