Traditionally, brands plan campaigns around fixed festival dates. But is that approach correct? A new report says that festive consumer consideration in India can begin building up nearly eight weeks before the festive peak. Taboola’s performance advertising platform Realize’s festive playbook 2026, ‘Light the Right Moments’, offers a data-led view of how consumer decision-making evolves across India’s festival period. One of the playbook’s key findings is that there is no single festive decision window.The technology, automotive, home, finance, fashion, jewellery and travel segments each follow different patterns of consumer consideration across the festival season. While some categories see interest building up earlier and remain active over an extended period, others are more closely linked to specific festive occasions or shorter periods of heightened intent.AI is also reshaping the journey, making it significantly faster for consumers to move from search to a shortlist. But the playbook finds that building confidence still takes time. Consumers continue to validate important decisions through multiple sources, including reviews, comparisons, expert perspectives, brand content, retailers and trusted publishers. The path from discovering an option to feeling confident enough to choose it, therefore, remains an active process of research and validation across the open internet.For brands, the task is to identify when consideration begins within their own category and build relevance from that point, rather than waiting for the festive peak to show up.Published on September 7, 2026