Advertizers delay holiday spending decisions

For the end-of-year holidays, advertisers may be holding back, according to agency executives interviewed by JDN. Budgets planned for the end of this year remain at 2025 levels, according to French advertisers.

2026 budgets unchanged from 2025

Emmanuel Crego, general director of the Values group, which manages media buying for 65 advertisers in sectors such as banking and insurance, personal services, travel, and consumer goods, stated that the 2026 budgets remain the same as in 2025, which represents a year of growth compared to 2024.

More advertisers reduce budgets than increase them

Eric Boyer, general director of CoSpirit Groupe, which serves large brands in the retail and consumer goods sectors, noted that more advertisers are reducing their budgets than those increasing them, resulting in a slight downward trend. Advertisers are waiting for more clarity and favoring short-term tactics, with no visibility for 2027 at this stage.

French economy lags behind neighbors

The context of a French economy that "is falling behind" compared to its neighbors, as stated by INSEE, has not caused panic or led to budget cuts. Crego explained that clients need to communicate due to intense competition in their sectors.

Adaptation to uncertainty and crises

Boyer summarized that advertisers have become accustomed to managing uncertainty and crises, investing quarter by quarter instead of committing to the entire year. Performance at all costs, at the expense of awareness, is a trend observed in French companies facing a tough test with the return of inflation and the decline in household purchasing power in an uncertain international context.

GDP growth forecast revised downward

INSEE has revised downward its forecast for GDP growth in 2026 to 0.4%, despite a slight recovery in activity in the second half of the year. This reality is reflected in the strategies of brands, with Benjamin Poly, co-founder of AllMatik (Ceetadel group), noting that brands are not reducing their budgets for the last quarter, which remains very important for many of them, but they tend to focus on the short term with a requirement for direct ROI.

Marketing managers favor performance over awareness

Marketing managers struggle to convince their management to release more budgets for awareness campaigns, forcing them to focus on performance, which alone cannot be sustained in the long term. A brand that does not allocate at least 25% of its budget to awareness does not exist, according to Boyer.

E-commerce boosts holiday budgets with AI

At Webloom, a search agency bringing together about fifty SMEs, two trends are emerging. On one hand, e-commerce businesses are strengthening their budgets for the holiday period compared to the same period in 2025, especially to integrate AI engines into their media mix.

Lead generation budgets temper as customer journeys change

On the other hand, companies prioritizing lead generation are tempering. There is a seasonality effect that explains why lead generation is less dynamic at the end of the year, but that's not all. This sector first wants to better understand how to adapt to the new customer journeys, disrupted by the emergence of conversational engines: they are redirecting more of their budgets towards tracking and analysis tools at the expense of pure media buying, according to Clément Bourdon, co-founder of Webloom.

Fourth quarter holds significant advertising weight

The end-of-year holidays, and more generally the second half of the year, traditionally mark the peak period for advertising, with the fourth quarter potentially accounting for even 40% of annual budgets, depending on the sector.