Weekly Newsletter December 1, 2025

Weekly Newsletter for December 8, 2025

Fuel your week with these can’t-miss co-op deals!
• The Genesis Signature Event! — Step into luxury and style with Genesis and enjoy special offers during this signature sales event.
• E-Z-GO Merry Markdown Sales Event! — Get moving this season with E-Z-GO and take advantage of festive markdowns on golf carts and utility vehicles.
• Simmons Beautyrest New Year Sale! — Sleep better in 2026! Enjoy amazing deals on Simmons Beautyrest mattresses and start your year refreshed.
• Chevy Red Tag Sales Event! — Drive into the New Year with Chevy and save big during the Red Tag event.
• Start Your Year With a New John Deere! — Power through your projects and adventures with John Deere equipment and seasonal savings.
• Lincoln Year End Service Event! — Keep your Lincoln running like new with exclusive year-end service offers.
• The Nissan Year End Sales Event! — Don’t miss out—get behind the wheel of a Nissan and enjoy limited-time year-end deals.

Physical retail maintains strong pull despite e-commerce growth, offering local media and agencies key targeting opportunities. Despite e-commerce growth, 76% of consumers consider in-store shopping a holiday ritual, with three-quarters saying it's essential to feeling festive and connected. Physical stores drive higher-value purchases, as 70% of shoppers feel more comfortable buying premium items in-store versus 30% online, while 72% trust in-store quality more than online options. The research challenges Black Friday's effectiveness, with 84% of consumers preferring deals spread throughout November and December rather than concentrated one-day events. For local media sales reps and agencies, the data suggests opportunities in sustained promotional campaigns, experiential retail messaging, and targeting Gen Z shoppers who show the strongest affinity for in-store discovery.

This year's Black Friday performance highlighted a critical lesson for local media advertisers: simple, benefit-driven value messaging is far more effective at driving traffic and sales than purpose-driven brand positioning. While Walmart achieved record sales by focusing maniacally on its "Save Money. Live Better" promise, Target struggled, suggesting its focus on socio-cultural initiatives came at the expense of core retail value. For local retailers, the takeaway is clear: marketing budgets should prioritize consistent, clear communication of price, product, service, and availability to motivate the middle-class consumer. Media sales professionals should advise clients to shift the conversation from corporate virtue to tangible customer benefits to maximize transactional performance.

The shift to AI-driven search is inevitable and shows rapid consumer adoption, but its immediate dominance is hindered by severe economic and infrastructural constraints, meaning the revolution will likely manifest closer to 2028-2030, not the projected 2026. The core friction is the astronomical operational cost, as a single AI query consumes ten times the electricity of a traditional search, preventing mass rollout and necessitating selective feature integration by major platforms. Although AI-driven referrals currently account for less than 1% of total web traffic, these users convert 23 times higher than traditional organic search traffic, signaling a profound shift in consumer intent that is projected to drive $750 billion in spending by 2028. For advertisers, the immediate strategic imperative is adapting to the "zero-click" economy by prioritizing authoritative content for AI citation and dedicating greater resources to paid search, as its premium placement above AI Overviews has become critically important for visibility.

Fuel your week with these can’t-miss co-op deals!
• Serta New Year’s Sale! — Start the year feeling refreshed with cozy comfort and big savings on Serta mattresses.
• Browning Holiday Rebates! — Gear up for your next adventure with Browning firearms and take advantage of seasonal rebate offers.
• Kawasaki Good Times Holiday Event! — Kick off the holidays with Kawasaki powersports and ride into the season with special savings.
• BCS America Year End Sale! — Power through your projects with BCS America equipment and enjoy year-end deals you won’t want to miss.

Agentic AI is turning chat-based assistants like ChatGPT into active shopping gateways that can recommend products, adjust prices, and even complete transactions—quietly reshaping how consumers discover retailers. To be visible in this new environment, retailers must own and optimize their product feeds into AI platforms, treating “agentic commerce” much like SEO or paid search. For local media reps and agencies, the opportunity is to position their outlets as the story layer above the algorithms—using radio, TV, print, and digital to build brand preference so AI recommendations land on familiar names. The winners will be those who help clients bridge clean AI integrations with emotionally compelling local campaigns, proving a distinctly human value in a machine-driven buying journey.

Consumers plan to spend the same or more this holiday season despite financial pressures, but many feel overwhelmed by promotional noise and are abandoning purchases out of frustration. Generative AI is emerging as a “holiday helper,” giving shoppers curated recommendations and clearer choices—if retailers feed it structured, consistent content. At the same time, physical stores are reclaiming center stage as experiential hubs and omnichannel switchboards, from community-driven formats to BOPIS, returns and in-store events that build confidence and connection. For local media sellers and agencies, the opportunity is to help retailers simplify decisions, turn stores into local events, align AI and in-store promises, and ultimately sell confidence rather than just more clutter.

A record 186.9 million Americans plan to shop from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, creating unprecedented opportunities for local media sales and advertising agencies as retailers compete during the industry's most critical period. While Black Friday remains dominant with 130.4 million expected shoppers, Saturday's local business focus and 59% of shoppers using digital wallets demand multi-platform strategies spanning the entire weekend. With 58% of consumers already shopping by early November and total spending forecast to exceed $1 trillion, advertisers must launch campaigns earlier with value-driven messaging across search, mobile, and geo-targeted channels.

Fuel your week with these can’t-miss co-op deals!
• Polaris Gift the Outdoors Holiday Sales Event! — Adventure awaits with Polaris powersports and festive holiday savings.
• Brother Merry Bright Holiday Sales Event! — Upgrade your office or home with Brother products and enjoy cheerful seasonal deals.
• Winchester Holiday Rebate! — Stock up and save with Winchester firearms and ammo during the holiday rebate event.
• Subaru Share the Love Event! — Drive into the season with Subaru and take advantage of holiday offers.
• John Deere Is Turning Black Friday Green! — Power through projects with John Deere equipment and Black Friday savings.
• Enjoy Yuletide Savings From Suzuki! — Celebrate the season with Suzuki powersports and special holiday pricing.
• Ford Year End Sales Event! — Finish the year strong with Ford vehicles and limited-time year-end deals.

Gen Z is reshaping how news is consumed, with 40% getting most of their information from TikTok or X. Influencers like Kelsey Russell, known as The Print Princess, are turning print stories into personality-driven videos that resonate with younger audiences. This trend reflects a deeper need for cohesive narratives in a fragmented media landscape and offers local media sales teams a unique opportunity: integrate TikTok strategies to connect advertisers with Gen Z. Practical steps include turning newsroom talent into creators, partnering with influencers for behind-the-scenes content, and bundling TikTok with traditional media to deliver authenticity and measurable ROI. The Media Audit provides the data to target fast-growing categories and position radio as a relevant solution in this evolving market.

Home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) are surging again in 2025–2026 as homeowners sitting on record equity and ultra-low first-mortgage rates look for smarter ways to fund renovations and consolidate high-interest debt. HELOCs growth is a great opportunity for local media. Unlike the pre-2008 era, today’s growth is driven by more disciplined, prime borrowers and stricter underwriting, making HELOCs a strategic tool rather than a reckless ATM. Banks, credit unions, and fintechs are all racing to capture this demand, but local media are uniquely positioned to help them win by combining trusted storytelling with data-driven targeting of equity-rich homeowners. For local media sellers and agencies, this creates a timely opportunity to build HELOC campaigns around real-life use cases—“don’t move, improve,” credit-card cleanup, and life events—while pairing brand messaging with performance channels. Ultimately, the HELOC revival reveals a middle class trying to regain control in an anxious economy, using their homes not to splurge, but to stabilize their financial lives.

Thanksgiving weekend remains a cultural and commercial powerhouse, with 88% of U.S. adults planning to spend $127 billion despite economic uncertainty. Millennials and Gen Z lead the charge, driving omnichannel shopping behaviors that blend online convenience with in-store experiences. Consumers are highly motivated by deals, with nearly three-quarters using the weekend to stock up on essentials and 63% leveraging AI tools to find the best offers. For local media sellers and ad agencies, this is a prime opportunity to position radio as the holiday companion—trusted, local, and omnipresent—while bundling it with digital extensions for maximum reach. The big takeaway: Thanksgiving weekend isn’t just about transactions; it’s about rituals, meaning, and community—making local media the perfect bridge between brands and consumers.

Most media sellers show up to renewal meetings eager to talk schedules and impressions, while their clients are preoccupied with upstream issues like market share, competition, and sales performance. This article introduces the “Marketing Continuum” — Product, Brand, Sales, Message, Media — to explain why advertisers live upstream while radio and other media live at the far end. Because of this gap, many renewal conversations are misaligned, with sellers pushing media solutions while clients are still wrestling with deeper business questions. Sellers who deliberately “walk upstream” by asking thoughtful questions about the client’s current challenges shift the dialogue from “Do you need a Q1 schedule?” to “What are you trying to achieve right now?”. Over time, this upstream posture transforms them from vendors into trusted thought partners, earning earlier visibility into plans and larger, more strategic opportunities.