Black Friday checklist: what to sort out now
What you arrange three weeks ahead, you won't have to buy in at a premium later
Sten Bossong
Project Lead, Flii Media
What you arrange three weeks ahead, you won't have to buy in at a premium later
Black Friday falls on Friday 27 November this year. Last year it was the busiest day of the entire Black Friday period: 6.25 million iDEAL payments, more than 7 per cent up on the year before. Cyber Monday followed with 5.5 million. It has been busier every year for five years in a row.
You see that rush in the ad auctions too. In Black Friday week, click prices go up because everyone wants to advertise at the same time. If you only start then, you pay the most and learn the least. What you set up now will work for you later.
Is your conversion tracking still accurate? Test a purchase from start to finish and see whether it comes through in Google Ads, Meta and your analytics. Also check that Consent Mode is working properly. You would rather find a fault in your measurement now than halfway through the busiest week of the year.
For Shopping campaigns and dynamic ads, your feed is the foundation. Make sure prices, sale prices and stock levels are correct and update automatically. A product that is on offer in the ad but not on the site costs you money and trust.
Retargeting only works if there is someone to retarget. Drive extra traffic to your site in November, let people sign up for early access or a newsletter, and build lists of visitors, cart abandoners and existing customers. On 27 November those lists are worth their weight in gold.
Make several versions of your ads and test them before Black Friday. That way you know which message works, and you do not need time to switch on the day itself. Think about formats too: vertical for Reels and Stories, square and 4:5 for the feed.
New campaigns have a learning phase. Meta needs around 50 conversions per week per ad set to deliver stably. So launch your campaigns well in advance and do not make drastic changes just before the peak. In Google Ads, you can use a seasonality adjustment to signal in advance that you expect a temporarily higher conversion rate, so Smart Bidding responds to it straight away.
A slow site costs conversions, and on the busiest day even more so. Check the loading speed of your promotion pages, test the checkout on mobile and make sure your offer can be found straight from the homepage.
Black Friday is not a day but a period. Decide now what you will do in the days before, on Cyber Monday and in the weeks after. People who browse now but do not buy are your best audience in December.
You do not win Black Friday on 27 November, but in the weeks before. If your tracking, feed, audiences and creatives are in order now, you can do what matters on the day itself: sell.
Source: iDEAL, Black Friday update 2025.