Google Ads for Black Friday: how to protect your sales and ROAS

Black Friday advertising in Google Ads is usually won or lost in the weeks before the Friday. The account should be fully built by the time Black Friday week starts, and unnecessary changes during the week can cost you sales. Here we go through what makes a difference and what to leave alone.

In this post we answer:

• What to do 8, 4, 2 and 0 weeks before Black Friday
• How to handle budget and bidding
• Which settings in Google Ads and Merchant Center matter most

We assume the rest of the account is already in good shape, so we don’t cover basic Google Ads optimisation here. We are a Google Ads agency based in Malmö, Sweden, with 14 years in search.

Not every suggestion below matters equally. Every business is different, and not every company should do the same things.

• Update your ads and mention Black Friday
• Raise the budget and leave the bid strategy alone
• Promotion asset
• Use genuine reference prices

• Add a countdown
• Add Black Friday audiences
• Remarketing
• Update your sitelinks
• Optimise the product feed
• Add brand exclusions in Performance Max

Google Ads work is best done by looking at the results and making decisions on statistically significant data. Over one short week, that is hard.

Data from previous years can give an indication, but it is usually less reliable, especially when conditions keep changing.

If you are running Black Friday for the first time, do it as well as you can, but also treat it as a chance to learn. For some retailers, this week is decisive.

The timeline is simple. Anything that changes the account structure should be finished four weeks before, and during Black Friday week you change only messaging and budget. Smart Bidding (Google’s automated bidding) needs a steady flow of conversions to learn, and every major change restarts the learning. Make those changes in November and the algorithm is learning just as traffic is at its least predictable.

Eight weeks before, you need to know that what Google Ads learns from is correct. Smart Bidding optimises towards the purchases that are reported, and if the reporting is wrong it optimises towards the wrong thing all autumn.

• Check that each purchase is counted once. If you have both the Google Ads tag on the thank-you page and a purchase imported from GA4 set as primary conversions, the same order is counted twice. Smart Bidding then believes the return is twice what it really is.
• Check the consent banner. Since Google’s update to its data controls on 15 June 2026, it is Consent Mode, no longer Google Signals in GA4, that decides whether ad cookies and identifiers from the GA4 tag reach Google Ads. If a visitor denies ad_storage, Google Ads receives no ad cookies or identifiers from that visit. So make sure the banner sets ad_storage, ad_user_data and ad_personalization to denied before consent is given, and to granted when the visitor says yes. According to the same documentation, Google will also move control of ad personalisation to ad_personalization later in 2026.
• Clean up and enrich the product feed in Merchant Center (more on that further down).
• Start prospecting, for example with Demand Gen and broader search campaigns, so that your remarketing lists have time to fill.

Freeze the account structure by around 30 October at the latest. After that, you don’t add new campaigns or asset groups, and you don’t change bid strategy.

• Re-enable the paused campaigns and keywords you want to test now, not during the week.
• Add brand exclusions in Performance Max.
• Exclude products that will sell out or that you don’t want to sell at a discount. Pause or exclude them in the product feed to Merchant Center, add negative URLs to your DSA campaigns (Dynamic Search Ads) or use negative keywords. That way you spend no budget on products that will run out anyway.
• Raise the budget step by step and expect weaker ROAS in early November.

The last point is the one most people skip. Cut the budget then, and you have fewer visitors to bring back once the sale starts.

• Check that your Black Friday ads have been reviewed and approved (more on that in the next section).
• Check that the reference prices in your ads, your product feed and on the landing page are genuine and the same everywhere (more on the UK rules in the FAQ below). If you use dynamic pricing, also check that no prices were raised in October.
• Decide which offers go into the promotion asset and the countdown.

If you also run a Singles Day promotion in mid-November, it is a good opportunity to check that everything displays as it should.

• Rotate in the Black Friday ads, offers and sitelinks the night before.
• Raise the budget, or let Promotion Mode handle the increase (more on that further down).
• Monitor page load times and mobile checkout throughout the week.
• Judge how things are going from the order count in your ecommerce platform, not from ROAS in Google Ads.

Follow the timeline and your budget goes into an account that has finished learning by the time the purchases come in. That is the difference between paying for clicks that convert and paying for Google’s learning.

Your ads should say Black Friday plainly, so that searchers see the offer straight away. Those of us who search on Google have been spoilt. When we search for something, we want exactly what we searched for. When we are shopping on Black Friday, we don’t want to have to work out for ourselves whether a site is running a Black Friday sale (not every site does, even if that seems odd to those of you reading this).

In your RSAs (Responsive Search Ads), for example, you can pin a second headline that says something like ‘30% off this Black Friday’. Just make sure it is an attractive offer and that the discount is measured against a genuine reference price. If the ad says A, the landing page should say A too, so the same offer is visible as soon as the visitor clicks.

Google reviews most ads within one working day, and paused ads are reviewed just like active ones (Google Ads Help, 2026). So add your Black Friday ads, paused, to the existing ad groups in good time, ideally when you go through the ad copy two weeks before, and switch them on overnight before the Friday. If you are running the offer for the whole of Black Friday week, switch them on overnight before the Monday.

Pause the ad, not the campaign. A paused campaign can stop assets from being reviewed, and every change to an ad restarts the review. So don’t make last-minute changes.

Raise the budget ahead of Black Friday week, but as a rule leave the bid strategy alone. What swings during the period is the conversion rate (the share of clicks that become purchases), and Smart Bidding handles that best without interference.

If you want to go deeper into what affects how many visitors buy, read our guide to conversion rate.

A seasonality adjustment tells Smart Bidding that you expect a certain change in conversion rate over a few days. So it does not raise your click bid; it changes what the algorithm thinks a click is worth. The algorithm takes the instruction literally and bids accordingly, and if the guess is wrong you pay for it in cost per click.

Optmyzr compared accounts with and without seasonality adjustments over Black Friday in 2022, 2023 and 2024, between 4,292 and 5,886 accounts per year. Its conclusion was that adjustments during the big shopping weekends more often hurt than helped (Optmyzr, 2025). Optmyzr sells Google Ads tools itself, but the result is in line with Google’s own description: seasonality adjustments are meant for short events of 1–7 days with large changes in conversion rate (Google Ads Help, 2026). The exception is when the goal is volume at any price, for example to clear stock, and you are prepared to give up margin for it. If you do add an adjustment, you don’t need a negative adjustment afterwards, because according to Google the campaigns return to normal by themselves when the period ends.

Go through the list of seasonality adjustments in the account and remove anything that should not be there. Look in particular for conversion rate adjustments left over from previous years.

Promotion Mode is a beta feature for Search and Performance Max campaigns that Google launched in June 2026. Access to the beta goes through your Google account team. Instead of changing the ROAS target by hand, you schedule a temporarily lower ROAS tolerance and an extra daily budget for a fixed window.

The big advantage is that nobody has to remember to reset anything. A lowered target that is left in place into December keeps buying traffic after purchase intent has dropped. If the feature is not in your account, the advice is the same: raise the budget and leave the target alone.

Also check that your ROAS target is where you want it. Since 17 August 2026, budget-constrained campaigns steer closer to their target. A campaign that has been beating its target will drift towards it, so set the target at the level you actually want before November. Google does not adjust targets for you, but the account has a Bid Target Adjustment Tool where you can go through the budget-constrained campaigns one at a time.

On top of that, you should also increase your budget. How much depends on whether you hit the cap today and how much potential there is. Google recommends keeping the daily budget well above average daily spend, and waiting one to two conversion cycles before judging a budget increase (Google Ads Help, 2026).

Manual CPC is a bid strategy where you set the click bid yourself. As a rule you should start from Google’s automated bidding, but if you run manual CPC, raising your CPC bids is enough.

The maths, on the other hand, is harder.

A larger share of visitors will buy, so the conversion rate improves.

Profit per sale falls, if you are discounting.

If profitability is already a problem, raising the budget alone may be enough. Just make sure you don’t end up showing only on the least important keywords because you didn’t dare raise your bids.

After Black Friday week, the account should go back to normal.

• Lower bids and budgets
• Change the ad copy back and end the promotion assets
• Exclude people who bought during Black Friday week from your campaigns
• Target remarketing at people who visited but did not buy
• Analyse the results and note lessons for next year

In the UK, Christmas trading and Boxing Day (Saturday 26 December this year, with the bank holiday on Monday 28 December) follow soon after, so ‘normal’ may mean your Christmas plan rather than October levels.

It is generally not worth pausing Google Ads, because it disrupts the learning and lowers performance. In Google Ads you only pay for people who are searching for something, and per click. Pausing for the odd day risks harming the account more than you save on those days.

A well-managed budget means you buy clicks when they convert and stop buying them when they don’t. If you would like Nils to look over your bid strategy and old seasonality adjustments before you freeze the account, get in touch.

The promotion asset, previously called the promotion extension, is both simple and effective. Add it in advance and schedule start and end dates, so it only shows during the sale.

Taking up more space in Google Ads usually goes hand in hand with a higher CTR (the share of people who click the ad). At the same time, the ad becomes more relevant to Black Friday.

Assuming the basics are in place in your Google Ads account, you already have sitelinks.

Update them so they are relevant and send traffic to the right place. It is one more way of showing the user that you have the right offer right now. For example: ‘30% off all shoes’.

You can combine the countdown with the first tip about tailoring the ad for Black Friday.

You make this change directly in the ad text, for example in headline 2. See the example below:

Sale ends in {GLOBAL_COUNTDOWN(2026-11-27 23:59:59,5)} – this becomes ‘Sale ends in x’, where x updates automatically.

The number 5 sets how many days before the end date the countdown starts showing, and 5 is also the default. The easiest way to add it is to type { in the headline and choose countdown (Google Ads Help, 2026). Ads with a countdown stop showing once the end date has passed. So always keep headlines without a countdown in the same ad, and remove the pinned countdown headline when the period is over.

There are a few audiences you can add:

• Black Friday Shoppers
• Black Friday Shoppers / Online Shoppers
• Black Friday Shoppers / In-Shop Shoppers

Adding these lets you make bid adjustments and measure how these audiences behave, so you have lessons for next year.

If you have enough data, you can also build a remarketing list of everyone who visited in the weeks before Black Friday but did not buy. Many of them are comparing prices and waiting for the sale, so that list is worth using during the week.

A complete product feed gives Google more to show, and on Black Friday price is the first thing customers compare. This should be in place whether or not it is Black Friday, but it matters even more now, so check it. Make sure you include:

• price [price]
• sale price [sale_price]
• handling cutoff time [handling_cutoff_time] – the latest order time per product, since April 2026
• minimum order value [minimum_order_value] – the minimum order value needed to buy the product
• video link [video_link] – product video directly in the feed, since April 2026

The video link is worth testing. The videos have been allowed to show since 30 June 2026. Remember too that sale_price has to be measured against a genuine reference price, just like your ad copy. Also replace product images smaller than 500 × 500 pixels. Merchant Center has warned about them since April 2026, and from 31 January 2027 the requirement applies in full (Merchant Center Help, 2026).

If you have cut your price more than others, you may get a price drop badge on Google.

In Google Shopping, the lowest price is a strong selling point. Provided your terms are good and you come across as trustworthy, people choose the lowest price when they search for a specific product.

If you change prices overnight before Black Friday, it is a good idea to go into Merchant Center and fetch the products straight away. Otherwise, depending on your settings, it can take a while before the changes come through.

During Black Friday week, make only the changes that have to be made, because larger changes restart Smart Bidding’s learning. Making good changes to a Google Ads account is not always right during Black Friday. In some cases a learning period can be triggered, which you don’t want.

The main goal is to have everything in place beforehand, so you don’t need to make changes during the week.

Google Ads records a purchase on the day the ad was clicked, not the day the purchase was made. Someone who clicked on 15 November and bought on Black Friday shows up as a conversion on 15 November. This is called conversion lag, and it makes Black Friday look weaker in the account than in the till.

On top of that, reporting lags. According to Google Ads Help (2026), it takes up to 3 hours for purchases to show with last-click attribution and up to 15 hours with data-driven attribution. For purchases imported from GA4, it is 12 and 24 hours respectively. So Friday’s figures are not complete until well into Saturday.

A concrete example: it is ten o’clock on Black Friday and ROAS in the account looks weak.

• Account 1: Cuts the budget and changes bid strategy to stop the bleeding.
• Account 2: Touches nothing and watches the order count in the ecommerce platform.

All else being equal, which account would you rather have? Option 2 is the obvious choice. Account 1 has restarted learning in the middle of the most important weekend of the year, on figures that are not complete yet.

Performance Max should be fully built before November, and the most important thing you do is exclude your own brand. Performance Max usually overlaps with your own Search and Shopping campaigns, and the campaign type readily takes the traffic on your brand name. Those clicks are cheap and would usually have come anyway, so ROAS looks good without bringing in more new customers.

If you use Performance Max, do this:

• Add a brand list with your own brand as an exclusion in every Performance Max campaign before the freeze
• Add Black Friday text and images as new assets in the existing asset groups
• Create no new asset groups in November

Avoid creating a new campaign, because the learning curve is too long.

Merchant Center promotions are only available in certain countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, the UK and the US (Merchant Center Help, 2026). The UK is on the list, so alongside the promotion asset in Google Ads you can add your Black Friday offers in Merchant Center, where they can show together with your products.

If you also sell in a country that is not on the list, the promotion asset in Google Ads is the option there. The list changes from time to time, so check it in Merchant Center when you start selling in a new country.

If you have paused keywords or campaigns that were not profitable enough before, it may be worth re-enabling them.

Only do it if you have budget left to allocate, and do it before the freeze four weeks out so that they have time to gather data.

Note whether these keywords and campaigns worked this year, so you can draw conclusions for next year.

What works on Black Friday and what works the rest of the year need not be the same.

Yes. Black Friday is a single Friday, this year 27 November, while Black Friday week is the whole promotional week up to and including Cyber Monday on 30 November. Many online retailers now run their offers for the whole of November as well.

In Sweden, Svea Bank and Prisjakt (2025) found that revenue on the Friday itself fell by just over 3 per cent and the number of transactions by almost 17 per cent, while the average order value rose by 16 per cent. Those are Swedish figures, but the lesson for your advertising holds: plan the budget for the whole week, not just for the Friday.

The best offers to advertise are the ones you have the margin for and that can be understood in a second in an ad headline. A percentage or a pound amount off a clearly defined range is usually easier to take in than lots of small discounts.

Remember that Smart Bidding only sees order value, not margin. If margins vary a lot between products, you can weight conversion values with conversion value rules, so that bidding takes into account what you earn on each purchase.

No, not in itself, but some offers are. In October 2026 the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) fined Wayfair £4.8 million and Appliances Direct £1.2 million, in both cases for time-limited offers that did not end when they said they would (CMA, 2026). Since April 2025 the CMA has been able to fine businesses directly for breaches of consumer law, up to 10 per cent of global turnover.

The UK is not covered by the EU’s 30-day rule for reference prices. Here the question is whether the ‘was’ price is genuine, and how long you actually charged it is an important factor: the longer a discount runs, the weaker the original price becomes as a comparison (Browne Jacobson, 2026). The discount in the ad, sale_price in the product feed and the price on the landing page should all be calculated from the same reference price, otherwise the offer risks being misleading. The same goes for countdowns: if the ad says the offer ends on Friday, it has to end on Friday.

Start about eight weeks before with tracking and prospecting, as in the timeline above. That is when the remarketing lists are built, and those are the visitors you reach again during the week.

Not necessarily. Still, check your own account from last year, because the competition on your particular keywords decides what you pay.

If you would like help with your Black Friday advertising, have a look at how we run ecommerce PPC and Shopping campaigns, or start with a free search audit.