Prep Your Ad Campaigns for Black Friday Now

Getting your advertising campaigns ready for Black Friday requires careful planning and strategic execution to maximize returns during this critical sales period. For marketers handling Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or other platforms, the weeks before the holiday rush are anything but quiet. This window is packed with important choices, tight deadlines, and urgent requests. How you handle this time can determine whether you finish the year strong or let valuable opportunities slip away.

A solid plan often makes all the difference. If you want a more organized and deliberate approach to Black Friday, focusing on elements within your control, such as budgets, campaign structure, and product feed accuracy, will help you steer clear of common mistakes. Let’s begin by looking back at last year’s efforts.

Review Last Year’s Performance Thoroughly

Before launching anything new, invest time in analyzing what happened during the previous holiday season. The objective isn’t to duplicate old campaigns, but to identify what succeeded, what fell short, and how the advertising environment may have evolved.

In Google Ads, start with attribution reports. Move beyond last-click conversions and examine how different campaign types contributed at each stage of the customer journey. If Performance Max campaigns primarily served as assists, use that insight to adjust their role this year. If Standard Shopping campaigns maxed out early or certain product categories were underrepresented, you now have a clear path for improvement.

Auction insights reports can reveal when competitors increased spending or whether you lost impression share due to budget or rank limitations. This information is especially useful if you plan to scale up this year but held back previously.

For Microsoft Ads, review audience and device performance to see where user activity shifted. Keep in mind that holiday behaviors can vary by platform, what worked on Google may not have performed as well on Bing or Meta. The aim is to pinpoint specific opportunities rather than assuming last year’s strategy will automatically succeed again.

Build Campaigns Ahead of Time

There’s a clear advantage to constructing your campaigns well before Black Friday, even if you don’t activate them until the sale approaches. Whether you’re launching new campaigns or updating existing ones, preparing early allows time for quality assurance, resolving ad disapprovals, and coordinating with other teams.

If you’re reusing current campaigns, stay organized by applying labels. For instance, label new Responsive Search Ads that include holiday-specific language or promotions. Use labels for sitelinks, callouts, or promotional assets tied to Black Friday offers. Tag ad groups or asset groups associated with time-limited sale messaging. A clear naming system makes it simpler to filter, review, and schedule updates across multiple campaigns.

To streamline this further, set up automated rules based on labels. You could create a rule to enable all ads with a Black Friday label at 12:01 a.m. on November 28, and another to pause them when the promotion ends. This reduces the risk of outdated ads remaining active. You might also pause all non-promotional ads during the sale period to ensure only Black Friday messaging runs.

If you create campaigns specifically for the event, use start and end dates to control their runtime. While not all platforms allow scheduling at the ad or asset level, combining labels, automated rules, and campaign dates gives you enough flexibility to handle most situations smoothly.

For Meta Ads, upload Black Friday creative and audience configurations early. Platforms often experience slower ad review times during peak seasons, and early performance data helps the algorithm optimize once you increase budgets.

Guide Smart Bidding Strategies

Many advertisers rely on Smart Bidding during Black Friday, but that doesn’t mean you should set it and forget it. In Google Ads, consider using seasonality adjustments if you’re running a short-term sale or anticipate a sudden shift in conversion rates. These adjustments inform Google to expect stronger performance during a specific period, helping prevent underspending during flash promotions.

Seasonality adjustments are available for Search, Shopping, and Display campaigns using Target ROAS or Target CPA strategies. They can also be applied to Performance Max and App campaigns in certain cases. However, they aren’t suitable for every situation, longer sales or accounts with limited historical data may experience unwanted volatility.

For broader holiday campaigns, ensure your Smart Bidding strategies have enough data to function effectively. Check the Bid Strategy Report regularly for signs of limited learning or budget constraints. Entering a critical promotion without stable bidding can result in inefficient spending, especially with newer campaigns.

Audit Your Product Feed

It’s easy to concentrate on campaign settings and overlook your product feed, which fuels everything from Standard Shopping to Performance Max. An inaccurate or outdated feed can prevent your best offers from displaying correctly.

In Google Merchant Center, visit the Diagnostics tab and resolve any disapprovals or pricing mismatches. These issues often increase during holidays when sale prices fail to sync or out-of-stock items remain active. Confirm your feed includes current GTINs and product identifiers, along with attributes like ‘saleprice’ and ‘salepriceeffectivedate’ for promotions. Use high-quality images that meet platform specifications and provide clear shipping and availability information.

For Performance Max campaigns, check the Listing Groups report to confirm your top products are being shown. Some advertisers discover that certain SKUs receive few impressions due to budget allocation or structural problems. This is also an ideal time to upload holiday-themed creative assets, such as lifestyle images and product videos, which can boost performance on placements like YouTube and Discover.

By managing your feed and assets proactively, you reduce the chance of automation making poor choices when competition is at its peak.

Prepare for the Unexpected

Black Friday campaigns rarely go perfectly. Promotional pages may not update, budgets can deplete too soon, and tracking might fail midday. Thinking through potential problems now gives you time to develop backup plans.

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Fundamentals of Campaign Planning

Begin with these core principles to build a strong foundation:

• Verify Conversion Tracking: Before launching, meticulously audit your conversion actions in both Google Ads and Google Analytics 4.
• Eliminate Duplicates & Ensure Accuracy: Confirm there are no duplicate events and that essential actions, such as purchases, add-to-cart events, and email sign-ups, are being tracked correctly.
• Proactive Problem-Solving: The more issues you resolve before launch, the fewer emergencies you will face when campaign activity intensifies.

Strategy: Continue Campaigns After Cyber Monday

Resist the urge to pause all advertising immediately after Cyber Monday. Shopping activity often continues well into December.

Key Insights:

• Sustained Intent: Historical auction data from Google Ads frequently shows that competition decreases after Cyber Monday, while shopping intent remains steady.
• Strong Conversion Rates: Conversion rates often stay strong through the first half of December, especially for businesses offering:
  • Fast shipping
  • Digital products (instant delivery)

Actionable Tactics for December:

• Refresh Your Messaging: Maintain urgency by updating your ad creative.
  • Replace “Black Friday” with phrases like “Still Time to Save” or “Guaranteed Delivery Before Christmas.”
  • Utilize countdown timers and shipping deadline assets.
• Optimize Remarketing:
  • Exclude recent purchasers from your campaigns.
  • Concentrate on users who visited key pages (e.g., product pages) but did not convert.
  • Promote gift cards or bundled offers to these audiences, who often convert at a lower cost.
• Build for Q1: Use December visitors from your BFCM campaigns to build audience lists for retargeting in January for loyalty programs or cross-selling initiatives. Ensure your campaign setup supports clean audience segmentation.

Core Principle: Preparation Is Your Greatest Advantage

Black Friday does not favor last-minute efforts. It rewards careful structure, thorough preparation, and proactive problem-solving.

• What the Platform Controls: The ad platforms will operate based on their algorithms. Smart Bidding will make decisions using your inputs, and asset groups will combine in ways you cannot entirely direct.
• What You Control: Your inputs, including budgets, tracking, and product feed integrity, remain crucial to your campaign outcomes.

Organizing your campaigns early provides the flexibility to monitor results, scale successful efforts, and address problems before they escalate. Most importantly, when something inevitably shifts unexpectedly, you will already have a response plan ready.

(Source: Search Engine Journal)