Who Won Black November on Social Video?

November stopped being a shopping month a while ago. Somewhere between the early-access drops, the flash sales, the influencer hauls, and the “get ready with me” gift guides, it turned into a cultural flashpoint, a month-long stretch where social video quietly decides which brands break through and which ones just discount into the void. You feel it if you spend any time on TikTok in late November. Every scroll is a vote. Every share is momentum. Every video is a storyline a brand either rides or gets dragged by.

And underneath all of it sits one pattern that holds every single year. People watch before they buy, they scroll before they trust, and they talk before they transact. Brands that get talked about grow, and brands that stay silent get left behind. That’s the whole battleground, and it’s why we built the Black November Social Influence Index. Over a continuous 30-day window, October 31 to December 1, 2025, dig analyzed social video activity across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to rank not who spent the most, but who actually owned the conversation when it mattered. Here’s what the data says.

What you’ll learn

• How to measure brand momentum on social video beyond reach and spend
• Why smaller, high-affinity brands often out-engage the giants
• Which retail categories converted attention into interaction, and which didn’t
• What separated the brands that owned November from the ones that just showed up
• How real-time social video signal predicts what ends up in carts

How we measured social influence momentum

Discounts are easy to copy. Momentum isn’t, and momentum is what we set out to measure. Across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, the three platforms that generate the highest-impact video moments in retail, dig looked at every video that cleared a minimum of 5,000 views over the 30-day window. That floor matters, because it filters out the noise and keeps the analysis on content that actually reached people.

The scale of what we saw:

• 69,403 posts
• 3,071,949,657 views
• 99,745,275 likes
• 7,833,591 shares
• 6,731,124 comments

Those aren’t just tallies. They’re signals of what people cared about enough to repeat, circulate, and pull into culture. We built the ranking on three of them. Mentions, how often a brand appeared inside social video. Views, how much attention that content earned. And engagement, what audiences actually validated, spread, or acted on. Reach tells you who showed up. Engagement tells you who connected, and in November those are very different lists.

Why engagement quality beat scale

If there’s one finding to take from the whole index, it’s this: cultural affinity beats scale. The brands that generated the highest-quality engagement weren’t always the ones with the most views, and that gap is where the real story lives.

Retailers owned the discovery layer with 475 million views, setting the stage for what consumers noticed, saved, and eventually bought. But volume and resonance parted ways fast. Amazon behaved like the transactional default, the place you go when you already know what you want, while beauty specialty stores like Sephora (8.89% engagement) and Ulta (7.96%) drove far higher engagement quality on smaller footprints. Target behaved less like a retailer and more like a lifestyle brand with an emotionally engaged community. And mid-sized players like Costco showed that a trust-driven audience can out-respond much larger competitors.

The lesson repeats in every category below. Being big gets you views. Being loved gets you engagement, and engagement is the thing that moves product in a feed.

The category breakdown

Break the index down by industry and each category tells its own story about how attention converts into interaction.

Fashion apparel reached 398 million views and posted the highest engagement rate of any major industry at 7.5%, fueled by teen brands, micro-aesthetics, and celebrity influence. American Eagle (21.0%) and Victoria’s Secret (17.3%) proved that youth culture drives real category depth, and while SHEIN owned raw reach, the brands with emotional narratives like Hollister, Aerie, and SKIMS generated more meaningful interaction. In fashion, fame accelerates adoption, but story is what holds it.

Skincare generated 113 million views at a strong 5.2% engagement, driven by ingredient storytelling and celebrity momentum. Rhode paired volume with a 7.07% engagement rate, but the standout signal was that premium ritual brands out-engaged mass ones. Tatcha (9.78%) and Glow Recipe (8%) show audiences leaning into sensorial, elevated routines, while drugstore brands under-indexed, because November is about experimentation, not replenishment.

Makeup and beauty delivered 85 million views at one of the month’s highest engagement averages, 5.8%, driven by transformation storytelling and expressive creators. Identity-driven brands like Fenty and Rare Beauty pulled deeper cultural resonance than heritage players, and mid-tier prestige names like Saie, Tower 28, and Hourglass showed that modern aesthetic appeal beats legacy marketing. MAC still leads on scale, but the new wave commands the emotional connection.

FMCG and CPG generated 53 million views at a surprisingly strong 4.5% engagement, powered by daily rituals and creator integrations that feel personal. Wellness-forward brands like Always and Simply signaled relevance beyond pure function, Starbucks behaved like a cultural micro-ecosystem rather than a beverage brand, and routine-based names like Celsius and Crest proved habit-driven storytelling drives above-average engagement.

Now the categories where attention didn’t convert.

Home goods and appliances pulled 117 million views on transformation content and creator-led “upgrade season,” but engagement lagged at 3.1%. Mass appliance brands favored reach over resonance, while Home Depot and Lowe’s outperformed on engagement thanks to DIY credibility, and niche players like Article and IKEA punched above their scale with loyal, high-intent audiences.

Electronics and tech hit 113 million views but struggled to convert at 3.2%, the classic November paradox where high interest doesn’t translate into interaction. Apple fueled the volume, but practical brands like HP, Dell, and Microsoft out-engaged the hype-led names. The most interesting signal was NordVPN’s 9.04% engagement rate, a sign that safety and caution are becoming core shopping narratives.

Entertainment and streaming matched makeup on volume at 85 million views but posted one of the lowest engagement rates, 2.8%, a widening gap between consumption and interaction. Gaming outperformed streaming, with Steam anchoring the category and interactive fandom beating passive viewing, while major platforms struggled to convert huge user bases, a possible signal of streaming fatigue. High-engagement niche IP players like Ubisoft and HBO Max showed specificity and prestige beat broad catalogues.

What the winners had in common

Step back from the category tables and the brands that owned November share a profile. They didn’t win on discount depth or ad spend. They won because a community showed up for them on camera and did the amplification for free.

The engagement leaders across every category, American Eagle, Rhode, Fenty, Sephora, Tatcha, tend to have three things in common. They have an audience that identifies with the brand rather than just buying from it. They give creators something worth filming, whether that’s a transformation, a ritual, or an aesthetic. And they show up inside the content people were already making, instead of interrupting it with a spot. That’s what social influence momentum actually is. Not the loudest campaign, but the brand the culture chose to talk about.

The flip side is just as clear. Volume without resonance, the tech and entertainment pattern, is a warning sign, not a win. Millions of views at a 3% engagement rate means people are watching and walking, and in a shopping month that’s the difference between being seen and being bought.

Key takeaways

• November is decided on social video, not on discount. People watch, scroll, and talk before they transact, and the brands that get talked about grow.
• Affinity beats scale. Beauty specialty and identity-driven brands out-engaged far larger players, proving cultural connection converts better than raw reach.
• Fashion led engagement at 7.5%, driven by teen brands and emotional narratives, while story held attention that fame alone could not.
• Tech and entertainment hit the November paradox, high views (113M and 85M) at low engagement (3.2% and 2.8%), attention that didn’t convert to interaction.
• The winners gave communities something to make. Rituals, transformations, and identity, filmed by creators, beat interruptive spend every time.

The scoreboard for shopping season is changing. Count views and you’ll congratulate the brands that were merely seen. Count engagement and you’ll find the brands the culture actually chose, and those are the ones filling carts.

FAQs

What is social influence momentum?

Social influence momentum is the rate at which a brand captures attention and drives behavior through social video, measured by mentions, views, and engagement rather than ad spend or discount depth. It reflects how much a community chooses to talk about, share, and act on a brand’s presence in video content, which in a shopping month is a stronger predictor of purchase than reach alone.

How was the Black November Social Influence Index measured?

dig analyzed social video activity across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube over a continuous 30-day window, October 31 to December 1, 2025, including only videos that reached a minimum of 5,000 views. The dataset covered 69,403 posts and more than 3.07 billion views, ranked on three signals: mentions (frequency), views (attention), and engagement (validation and action).

Why did smaller brands out-engage larger retailers?

Smaller, high-affinity brands out-engaged larger retailers because engagement measures connection, not size. Beauty specialty stores like Sephora and Ulta, and identity-driven brands like Fenty and Rhode, have audiences that identify with the brand and create content around it, which drives higher engagement rates than the massive but transactional reach of players like Amazon.

Which retail category performed best on social video in November?

Fashion apparel performed best, reaching 398 million views at a 7.5% engagement rate, the highest of any major industry. It was driven by teen brands, micro-aesthetics, and celebrity influence, with American Eagle (21.0%) and Victoria’s Secret (17.3%) leading engagement. Skincare and makeup also posted strong engagement at 5.2% and 5.8%.

What is the November paradox?

The November paradox is when a category earns high views but low engagement, meaning strong interest doesn’t translate into interaction. Electronics and tech (113M views, 3.2% engagement) and entertainment and streaming (85M views, 2.8% engagement) both showed this pattern, where audiences consumed content passively without validating, sharing, or acting on it.