Black Friday this year is November 27, and Cyber Monday is November 30. From October 31 there are four weeks left. We have already written about what to get done in October (the article Black Friday Is November 27. What to Do in October). Here the angle is different: a November schedule, week by week, for a shop advertising on Google and Meta. Each step ends with a check the owner can do alone. We verified the facts on October 26–31, 2026 against Google and Meta help pages and reviews; where there is no primary source, we say so.
Shoppers decide in advance
First, the numbers you may have seen in the news. Ukrainian reviews retell a Google survey run from July 25 to August 4, 2026 in six European countries: the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland. It covered 6,514 people aged 18–64, of whom 2,937 shopped last year’s sales. According to Netpeak’s retelling of October 22, 2026: 78% of shoppers who remembered when their interest began started eyeing their most expensive Black Friday purchase before the sales started; 84% of last year’s shoppers who gave an answer were putting the purchase off until November.
Three caveats. First: we did not find the primary Google source (the presentation “Black Friday in Europe – 2026”); the link in the retelling leads to a third-party site. Second: this is shoppers’ intention, not proven purchasing. Third: no such survey has been run in Ukraine. In our view the trend is the same: people choose in advance, so prepare your ads and your offer before they make up their minds. But that is a conclusion, not a measurement.
Week of Nov 2–8: money and the feed
A ceiling per sale. A discount eats your earnings, and advertising does not get cheaper. Example: an item costs UAH 1,000 and you earn UAH 300 on it. With a 20% discount you keep UAH 100. If one sale from ads costs more than UAH 100, that sale is a loss. This is arithmetic, not a market figure. Check: in Google Ads open “Campaigns”, pick November 2025, and divide spend by the number of purchases from ads. If the result is above the ceiling, revisit the discount or the product set.
The discount in the feed, with dates. A feed is a file of products and prices for Google’s product ads. The discount is set with two fields: “Sale price” (sale_price) and “Sale price effective date” (sale_price_effective_date). According to Merchant Center help, the second field defines the period when the sale price is displayed; if no time zone is given, UTC is used. So the discount switches on and off by date, not by your night-time manual edits. Manual edits are risky: Google’s help warns that automatic data updates may not work for products whose price changes more often than once a day, and the product may be disapproved.
There is also a trap. The “Promotions” section in Merchant Center is not available for Ukraine: according to Google’s help (the page “Get started with Promotions”) it works for offers in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK and the US. Ukraine is not on the list. Check: open a sale product in Merchant Center. Are both fields there? Do the dates match your sale? Whether your platform (Prom, Horoshop and others) passes these fields into the feed we did not check; ask whoever runs the feed.
Week of Nov 9–15: two sets of creatives
A video or image with “−30%” is needed only on sale days. After November 30 such an ad promises a discount that is gone, and it keeps running until someone turns it off. A common practice we recommend to shops: a separate set with the discount for the sale days, and a main set without a discount before and after. This is our advice, not a Google or Meta rule. Check: go through all creatives in Google Ads and Meta, list those that show a discount figure, and write down the date to switch them off.
Week of Nov 16–22: launch early
New ads are checked first. Google says the review of most ads takes one business day, more complex ones longer, and advises submitting ads in advance if you need them reviewed by a certain date. Paused ads are reviewed the same way as active ones. Fill in a new page on your site before launch: Google reviews it too. At Meta, according to its advertising standards, review is typically completed within 24 hours, sometimes longer, and ads may be reviewed again, including after they go live.
For a sale product in Google Merchant Center there is a separate review: according to the promotions help it takes up to 24 hours and sometimes up to 72, and Google advises submitting at least 24 hours before the start. That concerns the “Promotions” section, which does not exist for Ukraine, so just take the general rule: leave nothing for the last day.
Check: three days before the start, the ad status in Google Ads is “Eligible”, and in Meta the ad is not rejected. If not, there is still time to fix it.
Week of Nov 23–27: a seasonality adjustment is not a guess
A “seasonality adjustment” is a hint to Google: on these days the conversion rate will differ from usual, meaning people will buy more often. Google’s own position is restrained. Its help says smart bidding always accounts for seasonal events, so adjustments should be used only when significant changes in conversion rates are expected, and they suit short events of up to seven days best.
Practitioners disagree. Some advise switching it on before the peak along with a budget increase. Others consider it unnecessary. There is also data: a study by an ad-automation service across three Black Friday and Cyber Monday seasons (2022–2024), up to six thousand advertisers a year, retold by Search Engine Journal on November 24, 2025. In 2024 the cost per click rose 17% without an adjustment and 34% with one; return on ad spend (ROAS) changed by +5.7% without it and −15.7% with it. A caveat: the study was done by a service that sells bid automation, and the retelling does not name the accounts’ countries, probably mostly the US. So treat it as a reason to check, not a verdict.
Check: in Google Ads, “Tools” → “Bid strategies and budgets” → “Adjustments” → “Seasonality”. Is there an entry for November? And is this year’s sale really bigger than last year’s? If not, the adjustment is most likely unnecessary. We matched the name “Tools” not against a live account but against the help page’s description, where the start of the path is only “click the icon”.
November 30 and December 1: after the sale
Cyber Monday, November 30, is the last day. On December 1, check what got switched off: creatives with a discount, sale ads, raised budgets. A separate word on comparing with last year. Last year Black Friday was November 28 and Cyber Monday was December 1; this year Cyber Monday falls on November 30. So November will “grow” and December will “dip” without any real change in demand. This is a conclusion from the calendar, not a measured figure. Compare November and December with last year together.
What we found but did not use
- Total campaign budget in Google Ads: a separate campaign for the sale days, from three to ninety days. Google spreads the amount across the days, and you are never charged more than the total budget. But it is for new campaigns only, the budget type cannot be changed later, so it usually does not suit a shop owner.
- A permanent “/black-friday/” page address every year: the Google Search Central advice dates from 2020, so we left it out as outdated.
Summary
Four weeks means six concrete checks. First work out the ceiling per sale, then the discount in the feed with dates, creatives in two sets, a launch a few days before the start, a careful attitude to the seasonality adjustment, and a plan for the day after the sale. You can do all of this without a marketer, and where you need help, you know what exactly to ask for.
For what else to do with ads in October, see Black Friday Is November 27. What to Do in October. On discounts in ads, see From October 12, Google Adds Your Discounts to Your Ads by Itself. On the product catalog, see How to Avoid a Merchant Center Ban: 9 Checks for a Shop Owner.
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