Black Friday Is November 27. What to Do in October

Black Friday 2026 is on November 27. Many businesses think about their sale ads only a few days before it — and pay for that with pricier impressions, broken links and a product catalog that gets blocked on the very day of the sale.

Below are five tasks that are best done in October, followed by a short look at what to do during the sale and after it. They suit both stores and service businesses; where the two differ, we say so.

This article draws on case studies and analyses we collect for our work, and on the rules we follow. Where a figure is old or comes from a single source, we say so.

The calendar at a glance

Counting back from November 27:

• October 16–30 — decide on the promotion and plan the ads (4–6 weeks before the peak);
• October — start reminding customers that you exist, at least a week before the sale, that is, by November 20;
• November 6–13 — check the catalog and pages (2–3 weeks before);
• by November 13 — sale products are already in the catalog; around the same time, launch the campaign for the demand surge (2 weeks before);
• November 20 — for stores: separate campaigns for your best products (7 days before);
• November 27 and the weekend — sale days;
• after the sale — restore your usual settings and switch off everything promotional.

1. Decide on the promotion now

Before the ads, you need a decision: which products or services are included, how big the discount is and what the dates are. Until you have that, there is nothing for the ads to show.

Experts advise planning sale ads 4–6 weeks before the peak, not in the last week. For November 27, that means roughly October 16–30.

Two more rules come up again and again across different sources:

• a campaign for a demand surge launches about 2 weeks before it;
• the budget goes up a few days before demand grows, not on the day of the sale itself.

Stores are advised to start even earlier: a seasonal campaign for an online store is prepared a quarter ahead. If that moment has passed, it is not a disaster, but it is all the more reason not to put off the rest.

2. Remind people about yourself in advance

A discount shown straight away to people who don’t know you almost never sells.

It is worth reaching a person a few times first: show up in their feed and let them browse your site or pages. Then the promotion comes from someone they know, not a stranger. Practitioners advise 3–4 touchpoints before a promotion.

Start showing your ads to customers at least a week before the promotion. Better yet, start in October. This rule applies to Facebook and Instagram ads.

Now, about how people will search for you on Google:

• “Black Friday” on its own is too broad a search term. Don’t bid on it bare: “Black Friday” plus a product or category works better. Otherwise your ad is shown to people searching for something entirely different.
• People who have already visited your site can be shown the promotion separately, with a higher bid on the search “Black Friday + product”.

3. Budget for pricier ads

Ads get more expensive ahead of a sale: in Google Ads, the cost per click rises in those days. So don’t plan your budget as if it were an ordinary month. Set aside a separate seasonal reserve for the sale. One analysis also advises against squeezing a campaign with a rigid budget at the peak.

Raise the budget gradually, not in one jump. In our practice, what works is a step of 10–20%, a pause of a few days between steps, and changes made at the start of the week. A sharp jump throws away what the ads have already learned, and a bigger scale means pricier traffic. A 2022 analysis likewise advised against raising the budget by about 70% at once, as used to be done, and recommended building it up through October and November instead. We wrote separately about why Google “overspends” your daily budget.

4. Make sure the ads won’t stop

For a store. Product ads with photos and prices pull their data from your product catalog in Google (Google Merchant Center). If it gets blocked on the day of the sale, product ads stop, and an hour of downtime for a large store can cost tens of thousands of hryvnias on such a day.

• Check the catalog 2–3 weeks before the peak (November 6–13): that leaves time to fix any problems.
• Add sale products to the catalog at least 2 weeks before the sale: new products go through Google’s review, which is not instant.
• Update the catalog more often so you don’t advertise items that are out of stock.
• A promotion (a discount, a gift, free shipping) can be marked right in the catalog, which makes it more visible. Set it up in advance, with dates.
• 7 days before the start, move your 7–10 best products (by profit and sales volume) into separate campaigns. Practitioners disagree here: Google advises adding new asset groups to existing campaigns, because that causes fewer launch problems. The difference comes down to one thing: a separate campaign gives you a separate budget and control over the money, while a group gives you speed. Ask whoever runs your ads which they chose and why.

For services. The promotion page, phone number and booking form must work before the start, not after. Also check that inquiries and calls are actually being recorded in your analytics: otherwise on the peak day you will have nothing to measure the result with.

5. Go through the customer’s path yourself

Open the promotional link on your phone and go through the same steps a customer would:

1. Does the page open?
2. Is the price the same as in the ad?
3. Can you complete the order or booking?

This is not a minor detail. In one Black Friday case, the ad had a link with the site address doubled: it led to a “404” page, meaning “page not found”. Check this before launch, not after.

And give the promotion an end date: otherwise the discount label will stay in the ad after the sale. For promotions, Google Ads offers promotion assets with a validity period.

During the sale

• Check your ads several times a day, not once a week. Has the budget run out? Have products been rejected? Does the page open? For the peak, this is recommended instead of trying to predict the result in advance.
• Don’t adjust bids by hand “just in case”. According to a three-year analysis of the Black Friday peak (up to 6,000 accounts, USA, 2022–2024), Google’s automated bidding strategies noticed the surge in purchases on their own, while manual seasonal adjustments doubled the rise in click costs. Ukrainian practitioners advise such adjustments only for short, unusual events. Opinions differ here, so just ask whoever runs your ads why they are making these particular adjustments.
• Make sure someone is there to respond. Calls, chat, orders: somebody has to handle them. One practitioner’s advice for holidays: if no one can handle the volume, it is better to switch the ads off, because the damage to your reputation costs more than losing what the algorithm has learned; if someone is on duty, keep the ads running and even raise the budget.
• Don’t draw conclusions from a single day. An ad that was the first to introduce a person to your store looks useless in a last-click report. In one analysis of Black Friday 2025 from abroad, 6 of 9 paid channels looked unprofitable, though in another attribution model they were working. This is secondhand, so it is not proof, but it is a reason not to switch a channel off in a hurry.

After the sale

• Restore your usual bids and settings, adjusted for what the ads learned during the peak.
• Switch off the promotional ads and check that it actually worked. An automatic rule may not catch everything, for example dynamic ads that Google builds from your site’s pages and that are listed separately in the editor. Ask whoever runs your ads to check everything. The ads that ran before the promotion, on the other hand, should be switched back on.
• Check whether products whose season is over are eating your budget. You can see this in the products report.
• If the result is below expectations, don’t pour more budget into the same campaign. It is better to look for new customers — with parallel test campaigns and a reworked catalog — than to keep pushing the same audience.
• Write down what worked. A report for next year will save you a week of preparation.

Summary

1. Decide on the promotion and dates now, and plan the ads 4–6 weeks ahead.
2. Start showing your ads to customers in October, not three days before the promotion.
3. Budget for pricier ads and raise the budget gradually.
4. Check the catalog (store) or the page, phone and form (services) 2–3 weeks ahead.
5. Go through the customer’s path on your phone and give the promotion an end date.
6. During the sale, check your ads every day, and after it switch off everything promotional.

You can read how we run ads for products and services in the Google Merchant Center and Meta advertising sections.

Want a free audit of your Google Ads account? Send us a request — we will look at your account before the season and tell you what to fix first.