Your competitive slide says nobody has touched Black Friday yet. On Instagram, that’s almost true. In paid search and YouTube, twice as many brands are already running it as on the same day last year. Nine weeks early.
Ask your team when the competition starts Black Friday. Most will say “Early-November”, and point at the social feed as proof. Hardly a Black Friday post anywhere.
They’re right about the feed. They’re looking in the wrong place.
The count
We checked every ad and post of the brands we track for one thing: the words Black Friday, Black Week or Cyber Monday. Two recent days, each against the same weekday last year.
On both days, the share of advertisers already running Black Friday has roughly doubled year on year. Last Thursday’s ad count was already two-thirds of last year’s pre-Black-Friday peak.
On Instagram, TikTok and Facebook: zero to five posts. Your competitive slide isn’t lying. It just can’t see the auction.
What it looks like
Three moves, all live last week of September:
A fashion platform bids on “Black Friday women’s clothing”, “Black Friday kids’ shoes”, “Black Friday beauty”. It isn’t selling Black Friday yet. It’s buying the search term before you do.
An electronics retailer’s product ads already read “Black Weeks: up to −50%”, on Search and on YouTube.
A fashion retailer: “Black Friday: up to 40% on almost everything.”
Nobody announced any of this. It happened where no one screenshots it for the Monday deck.
Why a CEO should care
Black Friday isn’t a date any more. It’s an auction, and the bidders arrive in September. By the time it shows up in the social feed, the early bidders have been in the auction for two months, and your customers have already seen their price for your category.
Does your team plan Black Week off what it can see? And what it can see is organic?
What’s moving is paid.
Book an info call.
We'll show you which brands in your category are already running Black Friday in paid search, and since when.
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