Where the $43 billion actually goes
The National Retail Federation released its 2026 back-to-school spending forecast this week. Total K-12 spending is projected at $43.3 billion, a new record. The breakdown tells a different story than most brands expect.
Electronics leads at $14.7 billion. Clothing and accessories come in at $12.5 billion. Footwear adds $8.7 billion. School supplies — notebooks, pencils, folders, the thing everyone pictures when they hear "back to school" — comes last at $7.3 billion.
Electronics outspends school supplies by roughly two to one. If your product is a laptop, a pair of wireless earbuds, a tablet, or a phone case, you're in the largest single category of back-to-school spending. If you sell sneakers, you're in a bigger market right now than the brands running ads with chalkboards and backpacks.
The 10-week spending window is already happening
NRF data shows that 62% of back-to-school shoppers had already started buying by early July. eMarketer puts 70% of total back-to-school purchases in the July–August window, with the peak falling in early to mid-August.
That means the season is not coming. It is here. If you sell into electronics, clothing, or footwear and your August campaigns are running without any seasonal framing, you are already inside the spending window without acknowledging it.
You don't need to say "back to school" explicitly. A laptop campaign that runs copy about starting fresh, a sneaker ad that mentions new arrivals, a headphone campaign that talks about studying — all of those work. The framing is what connects your product to where the buyer's head already is. Neutral August creative leaves that connection on the table.
What this means for brands outside these categories
If your product has nothing to do with electronics, apparel, or footwear, back-to-school spending is not a direct opportunity. But the CPM environment still applies to you.
According to Meta's Advantage+ benchmark data, CPMs run approximately 12% above summer baseline during the back-to-school window. That's the cost of running alongside brands in the spending categories that are actively competing for purchase-intent audiences. It's real pressure, but it's manageable — and it's substantially lower than what comes next. The same benchmark data shows November CPMs at 41% above baseline and December at 35% above baseline.
The practical implication: if you're planning to pause in August to save budget for Q4, you're saving in one of the cheaper months to give up reach, then re-entering at the most expensive point of the year with audiences you haven't been building.
The gap between B2S and Q4 is your cheapest testing window
Back-to-school spending peaks in early to mid-August, then eases through late August. Q4 demand doesn't start building in earnest until early October. That leaves a five-to-six-week gap in late August and September where CPMs are typically at their lowest point of H2.
This is the window to test Q4 creative. Not to run the creative you know will work — to run the creative you're not sure about. An underperforming test in September costs you less than an underperforming test in November. Brands that arrive in Q4 having already found their best-performing hooks, audiences, and formats spend Q4 differently than brands that show up cold.
If you sell into back-to-school categories, the question right now is whether your August creative is seasonally framed. If you don't, the question is whether you're treating this window as dead air or as a testing environment that's cheaper than anything you'll have access to for the next four months.
What to do this week
If you sell electronics, apparel, or footwear: audit your August creative and see if any of it acknowledges where consumers' heads are right now. A single creative test with seasonal framing against your control creative costs almost nothing to run.
If you're outside those categories: don't pause. Use the next four weeks to build retargeting pools, test new audiences, and iterate on Q4 hooks before the window closes. The cost of testing in August is substantially lower than the cost of testing in November.
The free audit at Gromerce shows channel-level performance across your active accounts and flags whether your current creative mix has seasonal gaps.
The biggest category in back-to-school spending is electronics. The second biggest is clothing. Act accordingly.
Sources: National Retail Federation, eMarketer, Meta, August 2026
