TL;DR
Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BF/CM) 2025 is approaching fast, and smart brands have already started planning. This year brings new challenges: consumer uncertainty due to tariffs and inflation, longer research cycles, and the expansion from "Cyber 5" to "Cyber 12" as discounting starts earlier. Key moves: start top-of-funnel campaigns in October, expand audience targeting, prepare for daily budget optimization, leverage AI-driven search features, and ensure your product feeds are sale-ready. The brands that prepare now will dominate Q4.
The holiday shopping season keeps getting more complex, and 2025 isn’t any different. What started as a single day of deals has become weeks of discounting, with some brands now treating the entire fourth quarter as one long sale period.
Here's what you need to know to win this season.
Online spending during Black Friday and Cyber Monday has grown 350% over the past decade (Adobe Holiday Shopping Report), but the landscape has shifted dramatically. We're seeing "Cyber 5" expand into "Cyber 12" as brands discount earlier and earlier, starting as early as Singles Day on November 11th. More than half of shoppers are purchasing at any given moment throughout Q4 (Google/Ipsos Holiday Shopping Study 2024).
Consumer behavior is evolving too. Research shows that 73% of holiday purchases are now researched before buying — a five-point jump from the previous year (Google/Ipsos Holiday Shopping Study). People aren't impulse shopping anymore; they're comparing, reading reviews, and making deliberate decisions.
AI has also changed how people search. Queries longer than five words grew by 24% last year, while shorter searches actually declined (Google Internal Data). Consumers want detailed information, and your campaigns need to deliver it.
Consumer confidence dropped 8% in early 2025, and 78% of shoppers are concerned about how tariffs will impact their household expenses (University of Michigan April Sentiment Survey 2025, Coresight Consumer Pulse). It’s not all doom and gloom though. Wage growth is outpacing inflation and unemployment remains stable, so consumers are shopping but being more intentional about their purchases. PwC surveys show US customers expect to see price increases during BFCM compared to last year due to delayed tariff impact. Holiday Sales growth is expected to be slow, according to Deloitte, in part due to inflation/tariffs.
Higher-income households (those earning over $100K annually) are still shopping online at 60% rates compared to 40% for households earning around $50K (Adobe Holiday Shopping Report). If you're selling premium products, the market is still very much there.
(more of a video watcher than a reader? Check out our BF/CM episode of our video series, The Hypothesis)
The most successful Black Friday campaigns don't start in November, they start in August. Here's your preparation checklist:
Audit last year's performance first. Review your 2024 spend patterns, creative performance, offers, and daily efficiency metrics. Identify what worked and what didn't. Pair this with your 2025 YTD run rate so you have recent forecasting data to predict your expected revenue and efficiency through the period. This data will inform your 2025 strategy and help avoid repeating mistakes, specifically helps to avoid over/underspending and leaving revenue on the table.
Align on creative early. Nothing kills a sale faster than realizing you don't have the assets you need. Create a creative scheduling document and nail down who's responsible for what, when it's due, and how much you need. Make sure to include variation on messaging, offer structure, etc. in case one doesn’t work. For example, create one set of graphics for strikethrough vs. % off.
Plan your offers strategically. With economic uncertainty, many advertisers could push higher discounts than usual. Make sure your offers are competitive but still profitable. Consider your inventory levels too. If you're going to sell out organically, you don't need to discount as aggressively. Focus on value vs discount. The perceived value of an offer can still be impactful even at a high AOV. Consider product bundling and upsell packages to increase AOV while still presenting good value to the customer.
Contingency planning. Plan multiple scenarios: good and bad. With this planning, map out key decisions that would need to be made in these cases. If you’re not reaching revenue targets by date X can you compromise efficiency? If you’re crushing ROAS, can this open up more budget allowance? Speed is a valuable asset during BFCM, and if you’re typically slow to pivot internally, can you pre-approve elements of your contingency plan?
Align on key dates. Go live, close, extensions, key shipping dates pre-Christmas, etc.
Inventory planning. What are the hot products, which are at risk of going out of stock mid-sale, what are the slow moving inventory that you’d love to get out of the warehouse? All of this impacts your sale approach.
Conversion rate optimisation prep. A frictionless and easy-to-navigate website is key for campaign performance in 2025. With decreasing sessions on site, you’ll need a higher-than-anticipated conversion rate to get the revenue goals you want.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are one of the few times when daily budget optimization really matters. Use your 2024 data to identify patterns: which days underperformed due to conservative spending? Which days hit efficiency targets that suggest you could have scaled further?
Set up hourly pacing tools to track performance against previous years. When your boss asks at 10 AM whether you’re going to hit targets, you'll have data-backed answers instead of educated guesses.
Consider frontloading your top-of-funnel spend in October. One case study showed moving 20% of budget to October (versus 16% the previous year) led to significantly better incremental revenue in November and December. The logic is sound: build brand awareness early, then capitalize with conversion-focused campaigns during peak sale periods.
Google and Performance Max: Feed-only Performance Max consistently outperforms standard Shopping campaigns in head-to-head tests. The audience signals and broader placement inventory (YouTube Shopping, Display Shopping) give Performance Max the edge. Test this configuration before November if you haven't already.
Meta and TikTok: Advantage Plus Shopping campaigns should be your default for sale periods. Consider optimizing to add-to-cart rather than purchases to increase conversion volume (if this has been tested ahead of November), and don't forget to add click and view-through conversions for more optimization data.
TikTok specifically: Creative fatigue happens faster on TikTok, and the platform charges higher CPMs for fatiguing ads. Have a deep bench of fresh creative ready to rotate daily.
Update your product feeds with sale prices using the dedicated sale price column. This enables those crucial sale annotations that drive engagement across Google, Meta, and TikTok.
Refresh your audience lists if they're not automated. Lookalikes based on high-value customers, category exclusion lists, and expanded lookalike percentages (move from 5% to 10% for broader reach during sale periods).
Extend your retargeting windows from 30 days to 90 days during peak periods. With higher demand, these longer windows help capture everyone who showed interest.
This year's key dates matter more than ever:
Your competitors might be discounting earlier than you expect. Stay aware of the competitive landscape throughout this extended timeline.
Don't communicate your entire sale timeline upfront. In the early days of your sale, use messaging like "offer ends soon" rather than "sale ends December 1st." This prevents customers from waiting to shop around.
Save the specific end dates for when you're within 48 hours of the actual deadline. On the final day, make it crystal clear: "sale ends today" or "offer ends today."
Be clear on your final offer. Make sure the customer knows that early in your sale the offer will be the same as on BF actual day. So they aren’t holding off to get a better deal.
YouTube and Google Search are now used interchangeably for holiday shopping research. The days of search-first, video-second are over. Make sure you're present on both platforms when consumers are doing research.
AI overviews Google Lens, and virtual try-on features are slowly rolling out. If you have access, test these features now. If you don't, ask your Google rep what's available in your market.
AI will be more of a conversion driver. AI increased conversions +9% in 2024. Imagine how much impact it’ll have in 2025. But have you started to operationalise AI in your customer experience? 48% of shoppers think AI will simplify holiday shopping (Sinch Report).
Consider globalised campaigns. PwC’s 2025 holiday outlook suggests U.S. consumers will be more price sensitive in 2025, and plan to cut holiday spending by 5%. Citing inflation, weak job market, and tariffs. While UK, Canadian & US spending growth are projected to decline, the likes of India (63.5%), Brazil (45.4%) and Mexico (41.6%) consumers are planning to spend more.
Don’t forget Reddit. Reddit is becoming an unexpected player in purchase research, with AI companies heavily utilizing Reddit data for training. Consider both organic and paid presence on the platform if appropriate to your brand.
The brands that win Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025 won't be the ones with the biggest discounts, they'll be the ones that prepared earliest, tested most thoroughly, and executed most precisely.
Start your planning now. Your Q4 revenue depends on the decisions you make in the next 30 days.