BFCM Advertising Strategy 2026: How to Plan Your Google and Meta Ads for Black Friday

This year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) fall on November 27 and November 30. If you haven't started planning your ads yet, don't panic. You're not late, but now is the moment to get moving. The brands that do best during BFCM usually start preparing in October (or even sooner). Brands that wait until mid-November often see their CPMs (cost per thousand impressions, or what you pay every time your ad is shown 1,000 times) spike, and their budgets run out before Cyber Monday even arrives.

Timing matters because ad costs keep climbing through November as more and more advertisers jump into the same auction. The work you put in during October directly affects how much you'll pay once the busiest weeks hit. The good news is there's still plenty of time to set yourself up for a strong season. In this guide, we'll walk you through a week-by-week plan to warm up your audiences, decide how to split your budget between Google and Meta, test your creative early, and choose the right Google campaign type before prices peak.

Why BFCM Rewards Early Planners

Every year, more people shop online during the holidays, and more brands compete for their attention. Adobe forecasts that U.S. online holiday spending will reach $275.1 billion between November 1 and December 31, 2026, up 6.7% from last year (1). Black Friday alone brought in $11.8 billion in online sales in 2025, partly because brands started offering discounts earlier than ever (2).

All that demand pulls advertisers into the same auction at the same time, and ad prices go up as a result. Among the brands that use Triple Whale, Meta CPMs averaged $22.26 during BFCM 2025, about 7.8% higher than the year before (1). Meta's average price per ad also rose 12% year over year in the first two quarters of 2026 (1). So it's safe to plan for higher costs than last year.

What's even more telling is how early brands are spending now. In the four days leading up to Black Friday 2025, brands spent the equivalent of 65% of what they spent during the entire BFCM weekend (3). Many brands no longer wait for Black Friday to start advertising. Instead, they build interest beforehand so that when the weekend arrives, they reach people who already know them instead of paying peak prices to introduce themselves to strangers.

The BFCM Advertising Timeline: 8 Weeks Out to Live

That early-spend pattern is why a plan works backward from Black Friday, not forward from today. Each phase below has one job, and skipping an early phase makes every later phase cost more.

8 Weeks Out (early October): Warm Your Audiences

This first phase focuses on reaching new people early with low-cost ads so you can show them your offer later, once they recognize your brand, a process known as audience warming. Impressions are still relatively cheap right now, so this is the best time to do it. And if you're reading this a little past the 8-week mark, that's okay. Just start this week.

Focus your awareness and engagement campaigns on your hero products, the few items that drive most of your sales. Short videos and engagement ads work especially well here, because everyone who watches or interacts with them gets added to your retargeting audiences (the groups of people you can show ads to again later). It's also a great moment to grow your email and SMS lists with early-bird signups, so you have a direct way to reach those shoppers when your deals go live.

Before moving on, make sure your conversion tracking is working correctly. If something is broken, you want to find out now, because a tracking problem discovered in late November usually can't be fixed in time to save your campaigns.

4 Weeks Out (late October): Test Your Creative and Offers

Now's the time to figure out which ads actually work, so you're not guessing once the sale starts. CPMs tend to rise sharply in the first two weeks of November as bigger advertisers enter the auction (5), which means every test you run in October costs less and gives you more useful data.

By the time BFCM arrives, you'll want 8 to 10 tested ad concepts in rotation, so try out different ideas now and keep adding new ones each week (4). Remember to test the offer itself, not just the visuals. A clear, generous discount will almost always outperform a clever headline on a weak deal. By the end of this phase, your goal is to have your main offer finalized and three to five winning ads ready to scale.

2 Weeks Out (mid-November): Prime the Funnel

By now, you should know which ads are working, so it's time to put more money behind them. The key is to raise your budgets little by little, not all at once. A good rule of thumb is to increase them by no more than 15 to 20% at a time, every few days (4). A big jump can push your campaign back into its learning phase, the period when the platform is still figuring out who's most likely to buy, and that's the last thing you want right before the busiest weekend of the year.

This is also a great moment to start teasing your BFCM offer to the audiences you warmed up in October. A quick "something big is coming" message builds anticipation, so by the time the sale goes live, many of those shoppers will already be watching for your deal and ready to buy.

Live (BFCM Weekend): Harvest the Demand

This is where all your prep pays off, so put your budget behind your winning ads and the audiences you've already warmed up.

One adjustment makes a big difference this weekend, and it's about your ROAS (return on ad spend). When CPMs are high, keeping your usual ROAS target tells Google and Meta to bid cautiously, so your ads show less often right when shoppers are most ready to buy. To avoid that, lower your target ROAS by 20 to 30% for the BFCM window (5). For example, if your normal target is 4x, you'd set it somewhere between 2.8x and 3.2x. Make the change on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and switch it back on the Tuesday after Cyber Monday.

How to Split Your BFCM Budget Across Channels

Meta and Google do different jobs during BFCM, so your budget should reflect that. Among the 33,000+ brands Triple Whale analyzed in 2025, Meta got 67.6% of ad spend with a 2.26x ROAS, while Google got 22.65% and had the highest ROAS of any platform at 3.62x (6).

Meta is better at getting new people interested in your products, while Google reaches people who are already searching to buy, so most brands use both.

Here's a good starting split based on your total budget:

If you sell products:

• Around $5,000: 60% Meta, 30% Google Shopping, 10% reserve.
• Around $10,000: 40% Meta, 35% Google, 15% TikTok, 10% reserve.
• Around $25,000: 35% Meta, 30% Google, 20% TikTok, 10% other channels, 5% reserve.

If you sell services:

• Around $5,000: 50% Google Search, 40% Meta, 10% reserve.
• Around $10,000: 45% Google Search, 40% Meta, 5% Performance Max, 10% reserve.
• Around $25,000: 40% Google Search, 35% Meta, 10% Performance Max or YouTube, 10% other channels, 5% reserve.

Always keep some money in reserve. There's almost always a surprise winner during BFCM, and on Cyber Monday morning you can put that extra budget behind it.

If You Sell Products: Performance Max vs. Standard Shopping

If you sell services, you can skip this section, since Shopping campaigns are only for physical products.

On the Google side, your biggest decision is whether to use Performance Max, Standard Shopping, or both. They actually work best together, and many of the strongest ecommerce accounts in 2026 run them side by side (7).

Performance Max is Google's automated campaign type. It shows your ads across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Discover, and Maps, and it decides where to show them and how much to bid. It's great for reaching people who aren't actively searching for your product yet, but it gives you less detail about which searches led to a sale. Standard Shopping only shows ads on Google Search and the Shopping tab, and it gives you full control over your bids plus a complete list of the exact searches that triggered your ads.

For BFCM, a good setup is to put about 70% of your Shopping budget into Performance Max to cover most of your catalog, and the other 30% into Standard Shopping for your hero products, the best sellers where you want more control (5). Just make sure each hero product lives in only one campaign. If it's in both, the two campaigns end up competing against each other for the same shopper.

Performance Max also needs enough data to work well, about 30 conversions in the last 30 days (8). If you're not there yet, stick with Standard Shopping and Search for now. And if you do plan to use Performance Max, launch it well before Black Friday so it has time to learn. BFCM weekend is too late to start a campaign that needs weeks of data.

Your BFCM Advertising Checklist

Everything above comes together in one pre-weekend checklist. Run through it phase by phase.

8 weeks out:

• Conversion tracking tested and firing correctly
• Awareness and engagement campaigns live on hero products
• Retargeting audiences building
• Email and SMS capture running
• Performance Max running and past its learning phase, if you plan to use it

4 weeks out:

• 8 to 10 ad concepts in testing
• Hero offer finalized
• Three to five winning creatives identified
• Budget split set by channel

2 weeks out:

• Budgets scaling gradually on winners
• Offer teased to warm audiences
• Landing pages and product pages load-tested
• Reserve budget set aside

Live weekend:

• Target ROAS lowered 20% to 30%
• Budget flowing to proven winners
• Warm audiences being retargeted
• Daily pacing checked against the five-day window

Key Takeaways

BFCM rewards the brands that plan, and the good news is there's still time to get your plan in place. Here's what to keep in mind as you build it:

• The work you do in October shapes what you'll pay in November, so the sooner you start, the better your costs will be.
• Warm up your audiences while ads are still cheap, so that once BFCM arrives, you're reaching people who already know your brand.
• Test your ads and offers early, so you go into the weekend already knowing what works.
• Use Meta and Google together, since Meta gets new people interested and Google reaches those ready to buy.
• Adjust your bid targets before the weekend starts. If you sell products, lower your ROAS target. If you sell services, raise your CPA target a bit. Either way, it helps your ads keep showing when competition is highest.

Ready to Build a BFCM Plan That Protects Your Margin?

You win Black Friday in October, and you still have time to make the most of it. The sooner you start, the more you'll get out of every dollar as costs climb in November.

Schedule a complimentary strategy session with our team. We'll review your current setup and help you build a BFCM plan with clear dates and a budget split across Google and Meta that fits your goals. You'll walk away with clear next steps, whether or not we end up working together.

Schedule Your Complimentary Session!