Blogs

Francesca Pezzoli

November 21, 2025

Every November, the entertainment industry hits its version of the Super Bowl.

Thanksgiving week is no longer just a retail battleground. It’s one of the most valuable media windows of the year, where live sports, blockbuster streaming premieres, and Black Friday subscription deals converge on the biggest screen in the home: television.

According to Samsung smart-TV viewership data, streaming activity jumps 11% during Thanksgiving week compared with average non-holiday weeks. With audiences off work, on the couch, and primed to browse, the Thanksgiving window has become a high-stakes promotional moment for streamers, studios and sports leagues.

To understand what actually worked in 2024 and what will shape a competitive advantage in 2025, Looper Insights analyzed promotional activity on major connected TV platforms, evaluating thousands of placements using its MPV (Media Placement Value) metric, which measures on-screen visibility, and $MPV (Dollar MPV), which assigns an equivalent media dollar value based on placement prominence.

Our “Thanksgiving 2025 Playbook” report reveals a new truth about streaming success during peak windows: Visibility is currency. If audiences can’t see the content title, they can’t click, stream, rent or subscribe.

The NFL Dominated the Screen

Thanksgiving has always belonged to the NFL, but on connected TVs, the league didn’t just win viewership; it won real estate.

Looper’s analysis shows that the top three NFL promotional placements across Roku, Fire TV and Vizio each achieved the maximum MPV score of 24, ranking them in the top 2% of all U.S. connected-TV promotions during the week.

Those three placements delivered a combined $536,000 in $MPV, led by Fubo TV’s “Turkey Day Football” takeover on Roku.

What made them so effective? Fubo TV’s “Turkey Day Football” on Roku used festive Thanksgiving visuals to spark excitement; Fire TV paired NFL action with other sports in a dynamic Black Friday split-screen offer; and Vizio highlighted the “Raiders vs. Chiefs” matchup with bold rivalry imagery and a strong call to action. Together, these placements show how tailored creative and premium placements drive standout visibility during one of the NFL’s biggest viewing weeks.

And the NFL didn’t stop at the games. Spin-offs such as Madden NFL, NFL Icons and NFL Slimetime carried that momentum into other formats, ranking among the week’s highest-performing secondary promotions. Even during tentpole moments, the league used its IP to stay visible before, during, and after the games.

Black Friday Becomes a Streaming Holiday

Black Friday has become just as important for streaming services as it is for retail, with major platforms using the holiday to promote subscription deals aggressively. However, the results showed a surprising trend: a longer offer duration is more effective than a deeper price discount. Both Max and Paramount+ had the same subscription price, but Max provided a longer promotional window and ultimately came out on top.

The New Rules of Holiday Streaming

Our analysis surfaced five clear strategies for Thanksgiving 2025:

• Put your marquee IP in the most premium placement and surround it with supporting content. The properties that dominated Thanksgiving didn’t just appear on the homepage; they owned the hero units, full-width banners, and the top position in rotators. When you anchor your priority title with supporting spin-off content, you extend engagement beyond the main event and multiply visibility hours.
• Control the platform, control the outcome. Streamers who control the distribution environment (device OS, app store, or app UI) can guarantee top placement when it matters most. Placement is not a creative choice; it’s a competitive advantage.
• Longer offer windows beat deeper discounts. Our data shows that the duration of a promotional offer drives more conversions than the size of the discount. Viewers are more likely to start a trial when they feel they have time to enjoy the content, not when forced to decide under time pressure.
• Match the CTA to the device for simplicity to win. On mobile and app-store environments, flexible CTAs like “Subscribe at a discounted price” outperform price-specific messaging because users are already in transaction mode. On CTV home screens, performance improves when CTAs focus on immediate action, such as “Watch Live” or “Stream Now.”
• Always-on repetition beats a one-day splash. The best-performing campaigns didn’t rely on a single takeover tile; they used multiple recurring placements across rows and carousels to stay persistently visible throughout the week. Frequency drives familiarity, and familiarity drives clicks.

The Bottom Line

Thanksgiving week is no longer just a ratings race. It’s a visibility race.

In a world where more than half of users decide what to watch from the CTV home screen, the titles that win the screen win the week. And as films and franchises such as “Stranger Things,” Wicked: For Good, and multiple NFL matchups will compete for audience attention this Thanksgiving, streamers will need every advantage they can get.

Francesca Pezzoli is VP of marketing at Looper Insights, which specializes in providing granular, real-time analytics and insights on the promotional impact of content on connected TV platforms (CTV).