For most PPC marketers, the weeks leading up to Black Friday aren’t just doing busy work. They’re loaded with decisions, deadlines, and last-minute requests.
If you’re managing Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or any ad platform in between, this time of year can either be a strong finish or a missed opportunity.
The difference usually comes down to planning.
If you’re looking to approach Black Friday with a more structured and thoughtful strategy, keep reading. This article focuses on what you can control (like budgets, campaign builds, and feed readiness) and includes specific examples across platforms to help you avoid common pitfalls.
Let’s start with what to revisit from last year.
Take The Time To Audit Last Year’s Wins And Pitfalls
Before building anything new, it’s worth taking a closer look at last year’s performance.
The strategy here isn’t about copying old campaigns; it’s about understanding where they overdelivered, where they stalled out, and how the landscape might have changed since then.
In Google Ads, start with the attribution reports. Look beyond just last-click conversions and examine how various campaign types contributed throughout the funnel.
If Performance Max campaigns played more of an assist role, that should inform how you structure them this year.
If Standard Shopping capped out early or certain product categories were underrepresented, those are fixable issues.
You can also use auction insights to see when competitors ramped up spend, or whether you lost impression share due to budget or rank. These reports offer useful context if you’re planning to scale this year but didn’t last year.
If you’re using Microsoft Ads, review audience and device performance to see where volume shifted.
Holiday behavior isn’t always the same across platforms. What worked well on Google may not have translated to Bing or Meta, and vice versa.
The goal is to identify specific opportunities, not just assume last year’s playbook will hold up.
Build Early, Even If You’re Not Launching Yet
There’s value in building out your campaigns well in advance of Black Friday, even if you don’t plan to activate them until closer to the sale.
Whether you’re launching new campaigns or just updating ads in existing ones, getting ahead on structure gives you time to QA creative, troubleshoot disapprovals, and coordinate across teams.
If you’re planning to reuse existing campaigns, you can still stay organized using labels. For example:
- Apply labels to new Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) that include holiday-specific copy or promotions.
- Label sitelinks, callouts, or promo assets that reference Black Friday offers.
- Tag ad groups or asset groups that are tied to limited-time sale messaging.
Using a clear naming convention makes it easier to filter, review, and schedule changes across campaigns without confusion.
If you want to automate this even further, you can create automated rules based on labels.
For example, you can set a rule to enable all ads with your Black Friday label at 12:01 a.m. on November 28. You can also set up rules to pause those same ads at the end of the promotion, reducing the chance that outdated messaging stays live.
You’d also want to create an automated rule to run to pause all non-Black Friday ads at the same time. This ensures that only your promo ads are running during Black Friday season.
If you end up creating Black Friday-specific campaigns, you can easily set start and end dates on them to ensure they only run during the allotted time.
While you don’t have complete scheduling control at the ad or asset level across platforms, you can use a combination of labels, automated rules, or campaign/ad group start and end dates. These give you enough flexibility to manage most scenarios without scrambling the morning of your launch.
If you’re running Meta Ads, be sure to upload your Black Friday creative and audience setups well in advance. Platforms are slower to review and approve ads during peak periods, and early delivery data will help the algorithm optimize once you start increasing budgets.
Give Smart Bidding Better Direction
Most advertisers are using some sort of Smart Bidding for their campaigns, especially around Black Friday. That doesn’t mean you should take a hands-off approach, though.
If you’re using Google Ads, consider seasonality adjustments if you’re planning for a short-term sale or expect a sudden fluctuation in conversion rates. These adjustments tell Google to expect better-than-usual performance during a specific window, and can help avoid underspending during flash sales.
Seasonality adjustments are currently available for these campaign types that use either a Target ROAS or Target CPA bid strategy:
- Search.
- Shopping.
- Display.
If you’re using seasonality adjustments for conversion rates, then you can choose between these campaign types:
- Search.
- Display.
- Shopping.
- Performance Max.
- App (in beta).
That said, they’re not suited for every situation. If you’re running a longer sale or have limited historical volume, the adjustment could cause more volatility than good.
For broader holiday performance, make sure your campaigns have enough data to support Smart Bidding decisions. Review the “Bid Strategy Report” and watch for signs of limited learning or constrained budgets.
Pushing into a critical promo window without stabilized bidding can lead to inefficient spend, especially with newer campaigns.
Check Your Product Feed Before It Becomes A Problem
It’s easy to focus on campaign settings and forget that your product feed is powering everything from standard Shopping campaigns to Performance Max. If it’s not accurate or timely, your best offers might not show up correctly.
In Google Merchant Center, navigate to the Diagnostics tab and resolve any disapprovals or mismatched pricing issues. These often spike around holidays when sale prices don’t sync correctly or out-of-stock products remain active.
Make sure your feed includes items like:
- Up-to-date GTINs and product identifiers.
- Attributes like ‘sale_price’ and ‘sale_price_effective_date’ for promotions.
- High-quality images that meet platform guidelines.
- Clear shipping and availability details.
If you’re running Performance Max campaigns, review the Listing Groups report to ensure your most valuable products are getting served. Many advertisers find that certain SKUs get minimal impressions due to budget spread or structural issues.
This is also a good time to upload holiday-themed creative assets, including lifestyle images and product videos. These can improve performance in placements like YouTube and Discover, which tend to ramp during PMax campaigns in Q4.
The more you control the feed and asset side, the less you have to worry about automation making subpar choices when competition is highest.
Expect Things To Break, And Plan Around That
Black Friday campaigns don’t always go according to plan.
Promo pages fail to update. Budgets cap out early. Tracking drops off mid-day. It’s worth thinking through what could go wrong now, while you still have time to build a backup plan.
Start with some of the basics in campaign planning:
- Double-check conversion actions in Google Ads and Google Analytics 4. Make sure no duplicate events are being counted, and key actions like purchases, add-to-cart, and email sign-ups are being tracked.
- Test final URLs on mobile and desktop. If you’re using promo pages, confirm they’re live and loading quickly. A slow checkout experience during Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) will almost always tank performance.
- Pre-schedule creative updates where possible. You don’t want to be manually swapping sitelinks or headlines in the middle of a surge.
- Double-check your automated rules. If you’re using rules to enable sale ads and pausing evergreen ads, make sure to have the platform(s) email you with any changes so you can confirm with confidence the right ads are being shown at the right time.
- Set up alerts for unusual activities. If campaigns showcase a sudden ROAS drop, zero conversions, or unusual spend, you’ll want to be alerted in real-time. Even something as simple as a budget cap hitting before 10 a.m. can throw off the day if it goes unnoticed.
The more you can troubleshoot before launch week, the fewer fires you’ll need to put out when things are moving fast.
Don’t Shut Down Campaigns The Minute Cyber Monday Ends
It’s common for brands to ramp hard through Cyber Monday, then pause everything until January. But, many shoppers are still active well into December, especially those looking for last-minute gifts or deals that weren’t available earlier.
Based on previous personal experience, Google Ads auction data may show that competition could dip after Cyber Monday and shopping intent doesn’t disappear. Conversion rates often stay steady through the first two weeks of December, particularly for brands with fast shipping or digital products.
Rather than winding down completely, consider updating your messaging to reflect the urgency. Swap out “Black Friday” language for “Still Time to Save” or “Guaranteed Delivery Before Christmas.” Countdown ads and shipping deadline assets work well here.
If you’re running remarketing campaigns, exclude recent purchasers and focus on users who visited key pages but didn’t convert. These audiences tend to convert at lower cost-per-acquisition (CPA) during post-Cyber sales, especially if you’ve got gift cards or bundled offers to promote.
December also gives you a chance to build audience pools for Q1. Visitors from BFCM campaigns can be remarketed to in January for loyalty or cross-sell efforts. Just make sure your campaign structure allows for clean audience segmentation.
Planning Ahead Is Still Your Best Defense
Black Friday doesn’t reward last-minute execution. It rewards structure, preparation, and proactive troubleshooting.
The platforms are going to do what they do. Smart Bidding will make the best decisions based on your inputs. Asset groups will mix and match in ways you can’t fully control.
But, what you can control, like budgets, tracking, and product feed health, still has a major impact on your campaign performance.
Getting your campaigns in order early gives you the breathing room to monitor performance, scale what’s working, and catch issues before they snowball.
And when something inevitably breaks or shifts unexpectedly, you’ll already have a plan in place.
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Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock
