Holiday send-by cues for Alaska, Hawaii, international and military

USPS publishes different 2026 send-by dates by region, and a single "order by Dec 17" end card is wrong for a shopper in Honolulu, Berlin or an APO address. The USPS holiday shipping page, read 2026-10-05, lists Ground Advantage on Dec 17 for the contiguous US, Dec 16 for Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and territories, Dec 9 for international First-Class Package and Priority Mail International, and Nov 4 for military Ground Advantage. A $0.20 caption job per region version puts the right date on the same clip.

The dates, by region

USPS calls these recommended send-by dates, not guarantees, and the military Express date varies by ZIP code with some regions marked N/A, so link to the page rather than promising delivery.

One clip, four cue sets

The Sume video captions API burns authored cues with text, start and end onto a clip without speech recognition, at $0.20 per job for videos of 60 seconds or less. The same source video goes in each time, so you pay four caption jobs and no regeneration. The script builds the four bodies; send each to POST /v1/video-captions with an Idempotency-Key that names the ad and the region.

import json

REGIONS = {  # USPS 2026 send-by dates, read 2026-10-05
    "mainland": "Order by Dec 17 (Ground Advantage)",
    "ak-hi-pr": "Order by Dec 16 (Ground Advantage)",
    "international": "Order by Dec 9 (Priority Mail Intl)",
    "military": "Order by Nov 4 (Ground Advantage)",
}


def caption_body(video_url, region):
    cue = {"text": REGIONS[region], "start": 0.5, "end": 4.0}
    return {"video_url": video_url, "style": "punch", "cues": [cue]}


url = "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/demo/ad.mp4"
bodies = {r: caption_body(url, r) for r in REGIONS}
print(len(bodies), "jobs =", round(len(bodies) * 0.20, 2), "USD per ad")
print(json.dumps(bodies["military"]))

Cost and where to show which version

Four versions of one ad cost $0.80. For 25 ads, the total is $20.00. Show the military version only where you can target those shoppers; a store that cannot, should state the earliest date in the ad text and link to the full table. International and military dates fall in early December and early November, so build those versions first.

• Nov 4 is 30 days after this post: schedule the military version before the main Black Friday push.
• Check the page again in November; USPS can change its guidance.
• Keep the cue inside the safe zone and visible for at least 3 seconds.

For the contiguous-US countdown by service level, see one countdown clip per USPS service, and for the same idea with FedEx, see the FedEx countdown cues.