Black Friday lands on November 27 this year, with Cyber Monday on November 30. Unlike the last two years, the whole peak weekend sits inside November, which squeezes a lot of spending into four days.
On paper, it looks like a good year. U.S. online holiday sales are forecast to hit about $275 billion, up roughly 7%. Look closer and the picture gets more mixed. Shoppers are nervous, prices are doing a lot of the growing, and more people use AI to hunt for deals before they ever see your ad. Here’s what that means for how you plan and run campaigns.
Shoppers are nervous, but they’ll still spend
People feel worse about money than a year ago, and they say so in every survey. Then they protect the gift budget anyway. PwC found planned gift spending down just 2% while consumer sentiment dropped hard. What gets cut is travel, eating out, and the extras.
Don’t read too much into the big growth numbers either. Roughly half of this year’s sales growth is higher prices, with no extra stuff in the cart. Even electronics is getting pricier, since AI data centers are buying up memory chips.
So you’re selling to someone who will buy, but needs a good reason. They compare more, abandon carts more, and roll their eyes at “up to 70% off.” A real price on a real product wins. Don’t skip the boring categories either. Lots of people use Black Friday to stock up on basics like clothing and toiletries. A deal is a deal.
What’s different from last year
The peak is shorter and earlier. With Cyber Monday back in November, monthly budgets put more weight on November than last year. When you compare results to 2025, line them up by days from Black Friday instead of by date.
The season really starts in October. October Prime Day and copycat sales from other retailers pull spending forward every year. Discounts build through November and peak around 30% during Cyber Week. Black Friday is also catching up with Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday is still the biggest online day, but Black Friday has grown faster two years running.
AI is part of the research step now. About three in ten shoppers plan to use AI tools this season, mostly to research products and compare prices. Most of them still click through and buy on the retailer’s site, so they land on your page already informed and comparing you against others. Clear prices and specs beat clever copy here. AI referrals also tend to show up as direct traffic, so tag them, or you’ll undervalue whatever got you on the shortlist.
Phones decide Thanksgiving. Close to two-thirds of Thanksgiving Day online spending is expected on mobile, and most Buy Now Pay Later purchases happen there too. A slow mobile lander costs you the most on that day.
What ads will cost
Ignore the viral “CPMs double on Black Friday” posts. Meta’s own numbers for Q4 2025 showed average price per ad up about 6%, with a lot more inventory available. Agency data from last year’s Cyber 5 looks similar: Meta and Google CPMs up a few percent, TikTok up around 15%, Pinterest cheaper. On Meta, prices peaked on Black Friday itself.
The bigger lever was creative. Advertisers that ran two to three times more distinct ads than the year before got lower CPMs and CPAs on Meta, because the platform now favors accounts with real variety over many near-copies of one ad. Budget a small cushion for prices, then put your effort into building several genuinely different concepts per offer before Thanksgiving.
For affiliate and iGaming teams
Affiliate traffic keeps gaining ground in retail, led by cashback and coupon partners, with creators second. If you’re the publisher, now is the time to ask for holiday payout bumps or exclusive codes, before budgets lock in mid-November. If you’re the advertiser, check how many of those last-click coupon sales were already yours before you raise commissions.
For sports and casino traffic, this is also a big football week. The NFL has five games from Wednesday, November 25 through Black Friday, a full Sunday slate after that, and Monday Night Football on Cyber Monday. Shoppers and bettors are the same people on the same phones, competing in the same auctions. Expect costs to move with kickoff times, and tie your offers to specific games instead of a generic “Black Friday bonus.”
Check compliance before you reuse last year’s creatives. In the UK, bonus wagering has been capped at 10x since January, and cross-product offers like “bet on football, get casino spins” are banned. In the U.S., a growing list of states, including California and New York, have banned sweepstakes casinos, and several of those laws cover affiliates who promote them. Geo-filter those states before you scale.
What works and what backfires
Start warming audiences in late October, when attention is cheap, and build your retargeting pools before peak week. Keep the offer simple enough to get in a second: “$40 off” beats a tiered puzzle. And don’t switch off on December 1. Order values in gift categories climb through mid-December and peak on Christmas Eve, so save some budget for shipping-deadline and last-minute angles.
What usually backfires is launching new campaigns on Thanksgiving, when you pay the year’s top prices just to get through the learning phase. Big structural changes mid-week, like new bid strategies or attribution windows, make your results impossible to read. And don’t trust platform-reported conversions alone. During BFCM every platform and partner claims the same sale, and your blended ROAS will look better than your bank account.
Prep checklist
By October 31
- Fire a test conversion through every offer and check the postback lands with the right payout.
- Record October baselines (CR, EPC, CPA, FTD rate) by GEO and device, so you can tell if Black Friday numbers are actually good.
- Add ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini as named referrers in your analytics.
By November 20
- Get new campaigns out of learning, then freeze the structure.
- Confirm holiday payouts and caps in writing, and set fallback offers in case one caps out.
- Align time zones across your tracker, ad accounts, and networks.
- Set alerts for conversion drops and for clicks with no conversions.
During and after
- Compare tracker and network conversions daily. A growing gap usually means a broken postback or a capped offer.
- Wait for refunds, chargebacks, and deposit quality before you call a winner.
- Write down what won while it’s still fresh. That’s your head start for 2027.
Sources
- Adobe 2026 holiday forecast
- Mastercard Economics Institute 2026 holiday forecast
- PwC Holiday Outlook 2026 (Retail TouchPoints)
- Cyber Week 2025 results (Retail Dive)
- Meta Q4 2025 results
- Power Digital Cyber 5 2025 analysis
- Nest Commerce BFCM creative analysis (CMOtech)
- 2026 NFL Thanksgiving schedule (FOX Sports)
- UKGC 10x wagering cap (OLBG)
- State sweepstakes casino crackdown (Venable)
Facebook
Telegram
