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What Advertisers Should Buy Now—and What Can Wait in Q4
Media Monitor
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When should advertisers lock in Q4 media—and where could waiting actually pay off?
In Episode 28 of Media Monitor, Kelly Sweeney and Sean Wright use Guideline’s forward-booking, ad spend, and pricing data to look ahead at the Q4 advertising market and assess where demand is building, where prices are rising, and where buyers may still have room to wait.
Sean frames the discussion as a media version of buy, sell, or hold.
Retail media is one area where the data points toward buying earlier. After six consecutive quarters of price growth, demand remains strong heading toward the holiday period, when retailers face some of their heaviest advertising activity of the year.
Programmatic CTV is showing similar pressure, with demand and pricing moving higher. Direct-buy CTV, however, tells a somewhat different story, with flatter conditions and some indications that buyers could find opportunities later.
Traditional television presents another contrast. Scatter pricing is declining, spend is softening heading into Q4, and—with the exception of major properties such as the NFL—advertisers may have more flexibility around when they commit.
Then there’s social. Spend continues to grow while pricing has been declining, creating a different buying dynamic in a channel where inventory is far less constrained.
Kelly and Sean also discuss digital out-of-home, the potential effect of U.S. midterm election spending on local media and CTV inventory, and what these shifts could mean for planners building Q4 media strategies now.
Before getting into the data, they cover several media and technology headlines, including OpenAI’s agreement with Yelp, the decline in referral traffic as AI increasingly answers searches directly, machine-readable web content, Google’s regulatory pressure in Europe—and Jimothy, the unusually round raccoon that somehow made its way into the conversation.
In this episode:
• What Guideline’s forward-booking data indicates about Q4 advertising
• Why retail media may become more expensive as the holidays approach
• Rising demand and pricing for programmatic CTV
• Why direct-buy CTV is showing a different pattern
• Falling TV scatter pricing and what it could mean for buyers
• How U.S. midterm election spending could affect local advertising inventory
• Why social ad spend can rise while pricing falls
• Continued momentum in out-of-home advertising
• OpenAI’s agreement with Yelp and the changing economics of web traffic
• How AI-generated search answers are affecting publisher referral traffic
• Google, European regulation, and the growing pressure on big tech
• What the rise of bot traffic could mean for the future of the open web
Media Monitor breaks down what’s happening across media and advertising and explains what the data may mean for brands, agencies, publishers, and the wider industry.
Form to be filled:
Referenced articles:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/bot-web-traffic-overtaken-human-web-traffic-data-shows-rcna348522
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/21/style/jimothy-raccoon-seattle-videos.html
If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to press@guideline.ai.
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