Get Your Ad Campaigns Ready Before Black Friday

For most PPC marketers, the weeks leading up to Black Friday aren’t just doing busy work. They’re loaded with decisions, deadlines, and last-minute requests.

If you’re managing Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or any ad platform in between, this time of year can either be a strong finish or a missed opportunity.

The difference usually comes down to planning.

If you’re looking to approach Black Friday with a more structured and thoughtful strategy, keep reading. This article focuses on what you can control (like budgets, campaign builds, and feed readiness) and includes specific examples across platforms to help you avoid common pitfalls.

Let’s start with what to revisit from last year.

Take The Time To Audit Last Year’s Wins And Pitfalls

Before building anything new, it’s worth taking a closer look at last year’s performance.

The strategy here isn’t about copying old campaigns; it’s about understanding where they overdelivered, where they stalled out, and how the landscape might have changed since then.

In Google Ads, start with the attribution reports. Look beyond just last-click conversions and examine how various campaign types contributed throughout the funnel.

If Performance Max campaigns played more of an assist role, that should inform how you structure them this year.

If Standard Shopping capped out early or certain product categories were underrepresented, those are fixable issues.

You can also use auction insights to see when competitors ramped up spend, or whether you lost impression share due to budget or rank. These reports offer useful context if you’re planning to scale this year but didn’t last year.

If you’re using Microsoft Ads, review audience and device performance to see where volume shifted.

Holiday behavior isn’t always the same across platforms. What worked well on Google may not have translated to Bing or Meta, and vice versa.

The goal is to identify specific opportunities, not just assume last year’s playbook will hold up.

Build Early, Even If You’re Not Launching Yet

There’s value in building out your campaigns well in advance of Black Friday, even if you don’t plan to activate them until closer to the sale.

Whether you’re launching new campaigns or just updating ads in existing ones, getting ahead on structure gives you time to QA creative, troubleshoot disapprovals, and coordinate across teams.

If you’re planning to reuse existing campaigns, you can still stay organized using labels. For example:

• Apply labels to new Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) that include holiday-specific copy or promotions.
• Label sitelinks, callouts, or promo assets that reference Black Friday offers.
• Tag ad groups or asset groups that are tied to limited-time sale messaging.

Using a clear naming convention makes it easier to filter, review, and schedule changes across campaigns without confusion.

If you want to automate this even further, you can create automated rules based on labels.

For example, you can…