Q4 media planning: Making every dollar work harder in a crowded quarter

Featuring

Kelly Hayes and Michelle Wilken

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Q4 2026 is shaping up to be one of the most competitive media quarters in years. Midterm political spend, retail media, increased CTV investments, and a focus on LLMs impacting search means higher costs and more crowded inventory for everyone. Getting results will take more than increased budgets.

Join Adswerve for a practical look at building a Q4 plan that holds up under pressure. We'll cover where streaming TV and retail media budgets are shifting, how to plan activations across multiple DSPs without losing channel-specific advantages, what AI Overviews and LLM-driven search behavior mean for search and social allocation, and how to set up measurement before flights launch so you can tell what’s actually working.

Key takeaways

  • Where retail media and streaming TV budgets are moving, including what audience overlay onto third-party inventory changes for planners.
  • How to plan across demand-side platforms so channel-specific inventory like Amazon Prime Video or YouTube TV stays available to you without locking the whole plan to one platform.
  • What AI Overviews and LLM search behavior mean for Q4 search and social allocation, and how to set expectations with stakeholders now.
  • Which measurement decisions have to happen before flights launch, including why incrementality tests on new channels need a six to 12 week runway.

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