TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest and Reddit have all published reports this year about the benefits of advertising during Q5 — that hazy, liminal period between Christmas and the new year.
None of them can agree on the exact dates that this ‘invisible quarter’ spans*, but they are all united in the belief that advertisers should be spending with them during this time.
The platforms cite multiple benefits for advertisers, from low media costs and high consumer engagement, to reduced competition after Christmas. Their research also suggests that consumers are more likely to spend on themselves after Christmas, with 68% of TikTok users saying they plan to shop for themselves during Q5.
Chris Beer, senior data journalist at consumer research company GWI, said their data shows that ‘there is a decent amount of activity during this period’, with a quarter of Americans taking part in post-Christmas and post-New Year sales.
This, he added, puts the Q5 period ‘below Black Friday (42%), Prime Day (36%), and Christmas itself (75%), but ahead of back-to-school shopping (11%).’
New Year’s resolutions also drive spending at this time, according to the platforms. Ninety-four percent of TikTok users said they have at least one personal goal for the new year, and 82% of Snapchat users aged 13-44 said they had set resolutions for 2025.
One-in-three Pinterest users also set goals for the new year, often about budgeting and home organising.
‘[Q5] is a little like the Monday to the week,’ strategist Emily Fairhead-Keen told MediaCat. ‘There’s a period of organisation for the year ahead. And whilst New Year’s resolutions and “new year, new you” have kind of been done to death — what is interesting is how people are behaving and feeling at that time of the year in terms of organisational behaviour. It’s taking stock and getting yourself prepared to hit the ground running again.’
Brands — particularly those in financial services, professional development and productivity software, and groceries — can benefit from helping consumers during this ‘life organising period’, Fairhead-Keen said.
But people do more than just plan ahead during the holiday season, according to Fairhead-Keen: ‘People’s behaviour fundamentally changes — routines are disrupted — they are not doing their usual thing, whether that’s travelling on the train they always travel on for work or brushing their teeth with Oral-B versus Colgate, if they’re staying at their mother-in-law’s house.’
This, she added, means that FMCG brands — or the ‘Colgates and the Alpros of this world’ — should look at Q5 as a moment to ‘intercept a break in habit’ and get people to switch products.
With families and friends coming together, brands should also reconsider the demographics they target and how they speak to them. For example, Fairhead-Keen said that the term ‘family’ changes during this time of the year: ‘family definitions go out the window — the stereotype of two adults, two kids becomes two sixty-year-olds, two forty-year-olds and a load of grandchildren.’
As such, she advises marketers to focus on creating content that is useful, entertaining and provides for ‘cross-generational collaboration’.
Another thing to consider when targeting consumers, Fairhead-Keen said, is the way media consumption habits shift as ‘cities spill out into the countryside’. Brands, she advised, should think about advertising close to local pubs and leveraging corner shop placements outside newsagents.
Still, it is worth questioning whether ‘Q5’ is just a marketing ploy by the platforms to get more marketing spend.
‘It’s certainly a construct used to sell,’ Fairhead-Keen said. ‘But when you think about it in terms of real people at this time, I do think it is an interesting area to look at […] It’s definitely important for different categories in different ways, but it’s not a social construct that people are talking about.’
Andre van Niekerk, global head of digital operations at Carat, also said that ‘Q5 isn’t purely a sales gimmick’ but that its loose definition can create confusion for advertisers. Still, he said that clients are showing a growing interest in this period: ‘we’re increasingly seeing clients plan intentionally for the post-Christmas period, though with far more selectivity than in Q4’.
‘Budgets are typically rebalanced rather than simply reduced, with investment shifting toward platforms and formats that perform well for discovery, consideration and lower-funnel outcomes,’ he added.
Van Niekerk further said that Q5 can be a ‘highly effective and efficient window’, particularly for CPG brands with ‘winter-relevant products’, but he warned that spend needs to be ‘driven by genuine relevance’ rather than a ‘continuation of Q4 by default’.
* TikTok claims that Q5 — which it also refers to as ‘the invisible quarter’ — runs from early December to mid-January. For Snapchat, Q5 is between Christmas and the end of January. For Reddit, it’s from Boxing Day until the end of the year or mid-to-late January. Pinterest, meanwhile, says the ‘quarter’ lasts just a week, from 26 December to 31 December.
Featured image: Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels
