by Austin LeClear
on November 3, 2025
Black Friday is just around the corner, and if you’re running Google Ads campaigns, you’re probably feeling that mix of excitement and pressure.
Last year, Grow My Ads generated over $2 million in Black Friday sales for our clients. Want to know how? In this post, we’re going to share the exact strategies we use to maximize Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales through Google Ads.
Prefer video? Check out Black Friday & Cyber Monday Google Ads Masterclass 2025 on YouTube:
Still with us? Good. Here’s everything you need to plan ahead and dominate this year’s Black Friday campaigns.
Tip #1: Review Last Year’s Data (This Is Non-Negotiable)
Before you do anything else, dive into last year’s data (specifically around Black Friday through Cyber Monday). Often, the insights you’ll find here are gold.
Here’s what we always check first: search impression share lost due to budget. If you’re newer to Google Ads, this metric essentially tells you if your campaign budgets were too low and as a result you missed out on potential sales.
Go into your Google ads account, segment by day, and pull up those search impression share metrics from last year.
If you see double-digit percentage losses, you know what to fix this year.
Aim for less than 2% budget-related impression share loss on your top-performing Shopping campaigns. Ideally, this number is as close to 0% as possible, as this suggests your budget allocation is optimized for campaign success.
Then, check if your competitors increased. Your competitors are probably ramping up their Black Friday ads right now. Use the auction insights report in your Google Shopping campaigns to see who got more aggressive last year during the holiday shopping period.
Look for those competitors whose impression share shot up during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Tip #2: You Must Have a Good Offer
If you’re thinking about running a 5% Black Friday sale, just don’t. You’ll still get Black Friday purchases from holiday shoppers without any promotion. But if you want to be competitive in this market and really move the needle, you need to offer at least 20-30% off.
Data from hundreds of stores shows that sitewide sales in this range are what actually drive results during Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. Think of 20% off as the bare minimum. Anything less, and you’re not giving potential customers a reason to click through your ads instead of your competitors’.
Tip #3: Update Your Ad Copy
This is where your click through rates can explode. Go into every ad group that you know performs well and create Black Friday-specific ad copy. Add Black Friday references, mention your Cyber Monday deals, and prominently display those discount percentages.
When someone searches during the holiday rush, your ad copy needs to scream “BLACK FRIDAY SALE – 30% OFF” right in the search results. Those numbers with the percent sign? They pop. Use them liberally across your ad text. Update your search ads, your shopping ads — everything. Let people know what your deals are across your Google Ads campaigns.
Tip #4: Create Ad Labels
If you’re going to create Black Friday ads (and Cyber Monday ads), you’re going to want to label them. This keeps them separate from your other campaigns, and helps ensure they only run when you intend.
To add a label, select the ad you want to label > label > select the label you want > apply.
In your columns, make sure you have labels on so that you can review ad performance by label.
In addition to labeling Black Friday ads, you can also label your usual ‘legacy’ ads to ensure you know what ad copy you were running before any holiday promotions. Use whatever naming convention makes sense to you, but definitely use labels as it will make ad management easier.
Tip #5: Set Up Promotion Ad Assets
If you’re running promotional Black Friday Google Ads, don’t forget promotion extensions and promotion assets.
These make your ads relevant to what holiday shoppers are actively searching for, and they help your ads stand out from the competition. Plus, adding a sitelink extension is a sneaky way of getting more Black Friday copy into your Google Ads, as in the example below:
Consider how you could craft sitelink assets that would be specific to some of the deals and sales you’re planning to run to make your ad pop even more.
You can also add price assets. But be careful, as you can’t add any promotional text to the headers or descriptions. With price assets, you can simply show what the price is from.
Tip #6: Your Shopping Feed Must Be Up to Date
If you’re running Google Shopping campaigns, your Merchant Center feed needs to be perfect. However, a word of caution: do not adjust your feed too close to Black Friday.
When it comes to Shopping campaigns, the more optimized your feed is, the better the results you get. Therefore, it’s important to check Merchant Center for any errors in the run-up to Black Friday. You don’t want any issues around some of your biggest sale days.
So, how can you check? In your Google Merchant Center Next account, go to Products > Needs attention.
Once you know what’s wrong, investigate and try to fix any problems before Black Friday.
You should also set up any promos you plan to run in Merchant Center as well. This will help your Shopping ads stand out, for example via the ‘Sale’ tag:
Your shopping campaign performance during this sales event depends heavily on having the right information feeding through. Check it twice. Then check it again.
Tip #7: Update Your Keywords
Advertising for Black Friday? Add keywords that are specific to Black Friday (or Cyber Monday) deals.
Be sure to do some keyword research first to determine whether there is any search volume for these terms. If the volume is there, bake these keywords into your campaigns.
If you want to try to grab some of the traffic that’s intended for your competitors, there is no time quite like Black Friday to do so. You can bid on your competitor’s branded keywords, allowing you to show up in searches users make for the competition. This can look something like this:
This competitor keyword strategy can be especially effective if you know your promotion prices are better than the competition.
Tip #8: Have the Right Campaign Structure
At Grow My Ads, we do not typically segment campaigns for Black Friday. So, if a client sells keyboards, we will keep their normal keyboard campaign and work within it — possibly adding Black Friday keywords instead.
However, if you only have one group of products that you tend to push for Black Friday promotions, you can absolutely consider segmenting. This is a unique use case though.
Tip #9: Dial In Your Budgets & Bidding
Even if you don’t do anything else to prepare for Black Friday, you should focus on budgets and bidding.
To work out what makes sense from a budget perspective, research interest over time for your most important terms.
If, as in the example below, interest is normally at 50, and it goes to 100 during Black Friday and Cyber Monday (doubles), you should probably anticipate needing double the budget to keep up with the increased demand.
That said, don’t just double everything on the day of — that’s too aggressive and Google’s automated bidding strategies need time to adjust. Instead, start increasing campaign budgets incrementally about a week before Black Friday.
At Grow My Ads, we typically increase budgets by 20-30% initially, then another bump a few days later, building up to Black Friday. This gives your smart bidding strategies time to optimize with the higher ad spend, and it prevents you from wasting money on poorly performing clicks during the holiday rush.
If you take anything away from this blog post, take this: at the bare minimum, increase your budgets 2-3X for Black Friday. You will mint money.
Next, we’ll look at bidding. There are two options when it comes to bidding: use seasonality adjustments or lower ROAS bids.
If you’re using Target ROAS (target CPA works similarly), here’s a counterintuitive move: Consider lowering your ROAS targets leading into Black Friday.
Here’s why: During Black Friday, conversion rates naturally spike because purchase intent is sky-high. If you keep your normal ROAS target, you’re essentially capping Google’s ability to be aggressive when it should be. That’s why, at Grow My Ads, we start dropping ROAS bids about a week before — maybe from 300% to 280%, then lower still.
By Black Friday, we want Google’s bidding strategy to be aggressive, knowing that the higher conversion rates will still deliver the overall ROAS our clients need. This approach to bid adjustments has consistently delivered better results than just riding into Black Friday with the same bidding strategies used year-round.
Tip #10: Pay Attention to Other Settings
- AI Max: We’ve had mixed results with AI Max so far, but turning it on a week or two before Black Friday and Cyber Monday could help you tap into further search term expansion.
- Auto Rules: If you’ve correctly labeled your Black Friday and legacy ads, you can create auto rules to enable Black Friday ads and pause legacy ads around the holiday. We recommend having two sets of rules, one to enable Black Friday ads and another to pause legacy ads. This makes management much easier.
- Backup Billing: This is critical. Go to your billing section and add a backup payment method. We’ve heard horror stories of accounts that had billing issues hit right before Black Friday. Catastrophic doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Final Thoughts
There you have it — the complete playbook for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Google Ads success. Review last year’s data, spy on competitors, create killer ad copy, optimize those bidding strategies, and plan ahead with proper budget allocation. Use promotion assets, set up auto rules, and for the love of all that is profitable, add that backup billing method.
This holiday season is your chance to capture those holiday shoppers actively searching for Cyber Monday deals and Black Friday discounts. Follow this playbook, adapt it to your specific situation, and you’ll be in position to have your best Black Friday sales yet.
