Display prospecting costs on the open advertising market are running 45 percent below year-ago levels heading into the 2026 holiday season, according to AdRoll’s Q3 State of Digital Advertising Report, released Monday. The same data set, drawn from more than 20,000 online businesses between July 1 and Sept. 8, shows prospecting CPMs down 25.5 percent from the comparable Q2 window, the clearest signal in months that the pre-Black Friday window has opened wider and cheaper than usual.

Retargeting tells a similar story, if a noisier one. Those CPMs are down 29.1 percent year over year and 40.2 percent from Q2, though AdRoll cautioned that retargeting and account-based marketing price against narrower, already-engaged audiences and are a weaker read on broader market conditions than prospecting. ABM CPMs came in 4.4 percent higher than a year earlier but 15.1 percent below Q2.

“With CPMs down across prospecting and retargeting, marketers have more room to test before holiday competition intensifies,” said Vibhor Kapoor, chief executive of AdRoll.

The macro picture that sits underneath these prices is unusually mixed. U.S. inflation held at 3.4 percent in August, per figures cited in the report. The University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment fell 7.5 percent from August to September and is off 13.2 percent from a year earlier. And yet Bank of America card data shows spending per household up 4.5 percent year over year in August, with shoppers tilting toward value-oriented retailers. Cheaper media, jittery consumers, still-open wallets: the setup rewards advertisers who move now and re-engage later.

The re-engagement half of that equation is where most operators still fall short. In a joint AdRoll and eTail study of 100 senior retail and e-commerce leaders, nearly all described themselves as at least somewhat effective at bringing back site visitors. Only 13 percent said they actually recovered more than 20 percent of cart abandoners. Respondents identified the first 24 to 48 hours after abandonment as the most important follow-up window, which is precisely the window most brands miss.

The strategic read is straightforward. This is a testing quarter, not a scaling quarter. The cheap-reach dynamic being described rewards advertisers who use September to build audiences and refine creative, and who have retargeting sequences ready when the holiday CPM surge arrives. New surfaces are widening the aperture further, including OpenAI’s push into conversational ad units inside ChatGPT. What’s rare is the pricing. What’s rarer is acting on it before everyone else does.

Sources