The 2026 holiday season is moving earlier and faster than the ones before it, and shoppers are behaving differently as they get there. They cross between devices, start buying sooner, and increasingly turn to AI to decide what to buy and where. For eCommerce brands, that shifts the question away from who discounts hardest and toward who gets found when a shopper is discovering, comparing, and deciding.

NetElixir has published its Holiday Forecast every year since 2008 to help eCommerce brands plan for the most important stretch of the year. In this session, Udayan Bose, Founder and CEO of NetElixir, and Aaron Conant, Co-Founder and Chief Digital Strategist at BWG Connect, present the 19th edition and walk through what brands should expect this season. The conversation covers where category-level growth is landing, how GenAI is reshaping discovery and loyalty, and where the brands winning this season are shifting their campaign spend. It also includes NetElixir's 2026 Holiday Marketing Calendar, a day-by-day planner of the key shopping dates across November and December.

BWG Connect & NetElixir invite you to join an interactive event with industry peers to review & discuss practical insights across the digital space.

As always, there will be no sales pitch and all attendees are welcome to listen and learn.

• Where category-level eCommerce growth is landing this holiday season, and how brands are benchmarking their own expectations against it
• How GenAI is changing the way shoppers discover products and decide what to buy, and what that means for brands competing on visibility rather than price
• What earlier, cross-device buying behavior is doing to campaign timing and budget pacing across November and December
• Where winning brands are shifting spend this season, and the tactics separating the brands that get found from the ones that don't
• How loyalty holds up when an AI layer sits between the shopper and the brand during discovery