Booking closer to the date: agile Q4 media planning for smaller advertisers

Part of our series on growing your brand without a giant budget.

Our last post made the case for booking your Q4 media in the summer, and for many companies that is genuinely the right call. But we know that is not realistic for every brand. If you are a smaller advertiser, you may not have the cash flow to commit budget in July for a campaign that runs in November, or you simply will not know how strong summer trading has been until much closer to the time. That does not mean Q4 is out of reach. It means your plan needs to be built differently.

Booking early is not the only way to win Q4

The advice to book months ahead assumes a budget that can be committed early and a media mix, mainly premium out-of-home and broadcast, where the best inventory genuinely does sell out first. Plenty of smaller advertisers do not have that luxury, and trying to force an early commitment you cannot really afford is worse than waiting. The good news is that a meaningful part of the media mix has become far more agile than it used to be.

The channels built for shorter lead times

Digital out-of-home, digital radio and connected or addressable TV can all be planned and turned around in days rather than months, because the inventory is bought and traded far more flexibly than traditional static posters or fixed broadcast slots. That gives smaller advertisers a genuine route into the Q4 conversation without needing to commit budget before they know what they can afford to spend. The trade-off is that these channels reward speed and good buying relationships. Without both, you end up paying peak-week prices for whatever is left, rather than the well-placed, well-timed slots that actually work hard for your budget.

The channels this approach leans on are not a consolation prize. In Q4 2025, out-of-home advertising spend grew 4.5% year on year and radio grew 2.1%, while addressable and connected TV grew a striking 26.9%, according to the same AA/WARC Advertising Expenditure Report. Advertisers are not just tolerating these more flexible formats, they are actively shifting more of their Q4 budget towards them. For a smaller advertiser booking closer to the date, that is good news: the channels built for agility are also the ones with real momentum behind them.

Both figures come from the same AA/WARC Q4 2025 Expenditure Report, so they sit together nicely without needing separate sourcing. Happy to tweak the wording or pull in the Christmas retail spend figures too (£91.12bn across the six-week festive window, up 3.2%) if you’d like a consumer-side stat as well as the ad-spend one.

Why this is where Hurst Media Agency earns its keep

This is exactly the gap we exist to close. Because we buy across digital out-of-home, radio, digital and TV every single day, we have the relationships and the standing inventory access to move fast when a smaller advertiser is ready to commit, often within days, not weeks. We know which sites and slots are genuinely still available in the peak period, which ones are worth paying a premium for, and which are not. As channel-neutral specialists, our job is to make a shorter lead time work as hard as possible for your budget, not to sell you whatever is easiest for us to place.

What to have ready now, even if you are not booking yet

You do not need a locked budget in July to be ready for Q4, but a small amount of preparation now will make the moment you are ready to commit far more effective. Agree the key dates you want to be visible for, whether that is Black Friday week, the run-up to Christmas, or both. Have creative ready in flexible formats that can flex across digital out-of-home, radio and digital TV at short notice. And talk to your media partner early about what a realistic budget could achieve, even before you are ready to spend it, so that when you are, there is no time lost getting up to speed.

The risk of leaving it too late

Agile does not mean unplanned. Advertisers who wait until the last fortnight of November with no groundwork in place tend to find the same thing: less choice, higher prices, and a scramble that eats into the campaign’s own results. The advertisers who do well booking closer to the date are the ones who have already done the thinking, so that when they are ready to spend, the placements are agreed within days, not left to chance.

Ready to plan a Q4 campaign that fits how your budget actually works?

If Q4 feels like a bit of a scary thought right now, we are here to help. Drop us a line and we can talk about how to build you an agile Q4 plan across digital out-of-home, radio and TV that can move as fast as you need it to. Drop us an email at sales@hurstmediaagency.co.uk and we will be happy to chat about what would work for your brand.

Sources:
AA/WARC Q4 2025 Expenditure Report – Advertising Association, Nationwide Black Friday spending data,
Retail Gazette – UK festive retail spend 2025