Short answer: Black Friday 2026 is on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30, but the season starts earlier with Singles' Day on November 11. Preparation begins in September with stock, price and technical checks, continues in October with creative production and audience warm-up, fills carts with early access from November 1 to 10, peaks on 11.11 and again on November 24-27, and closes on November 30. Rebel Co. Group recommends giving about a third of the budget to warm-up and about half to the peak, and testing every discount against break-even ROAS.
In November, ad costs rise, competitors crowd the same audiences at the same time, and customers keep carts waiting until they find the best offer. In that market, a brand that says "we will look at it when campaign week arrives" ends up buying the year's highest demand at the year's highest price. The maths of November is simple: the brand that prepares early, collects its audience while it is cheap and sells to that audience at the peak wins.
This guide is a week-by-week countdown built around Singles' Day on November 11, Black Friday on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30, 2026. It covers the dates, the budget split, the logic of the remarketing pool, discount design that protects margin and the operations checklist in one place. Each section can be moved into your own calendar and applied directly. For the detail of each wave, see the Singles' Day 11.11 guide, and for ad visuals see the Black Friday ad creative guide.
November 2026 Calendar: Critical Dates
November 2026 has four separate sales waves and each one needs a different offer. Early access offers open the month, Singles' Day on 11.11 is the first big peak, Black Friday on November 27 is the main peak and Cyber Monday on November 30 closes the month. Treating these four dates as one "November discount" is the most common mistake, because customers feel campaign fatigue early in the month and by Black Friday your offer looks ordinary.
| Date | Wave | Offer logic | Ad intensity |
|---|---|---|---|
| November 1-10 | Early access | Early discount for loyal customers and the email list, getting products into carts | Medium, growing the pool and first sales |
| November 11 | Singles' Day, first peak | A hard but limited offer on selected products | High, a one-day jump |
| November 12-23 | Interim period | Category campaigns, gift sets, Black Friday teaser | Medium-low, remarketing-led |
| November 24-27 | Black Friday week | The strongest offer of the year, hourly and stock-limited campaigns | Highest |
| November 28-30 | Cyber Monday close | Last chance, remaining stock, focus on digital and technology products | High |
| December 1-15 | Loyalty and holiday bridge | Second-order offer for first-time buyers, holiday gift guide | Low-medium |
Singles' Day is Wednesday, November 11, 2026, US Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 26, Black Friday is Friday, November 27 and Cyber Monday is Monday, November 30. Marketplace campaign dates are announced separately in each seller dashboard.
Weekly Countdown Plan
The countdown starts in September and each month has a single job: September is preparation, October is warm-up, November is harvest and December is loyalty. If you are reading this at the end of October and September and October have slipped, do not skip them, compress them. Lock stock and prices this week, start collecting the audience now and have new campaigns live by November 13.
September: Stock, Price and Technical Foundations
September's job is to decide, not to advertise. Settle which products will join the campaign, the cost of each, the sale price and how many units you will reserve. Supplier lead times stretch in October and become impossible in November. At the same time, check the site load test, the payment setup, the carrier integration and your measurement (conversion tags, GA4, server-side sending). An account with broken measurement flies blind in the most expensive week of the year.
October: Creative Production and Audience Warm-Up
October's job is to collect the audience you will sell to in November while it is still cheap. Before costs rise, grow the remarketing pool with video view, site traffic and product page visit campaigns. Widen your consented email and messaging lists with a promise such as "hear first in November". On the creative side, do not produce one Black Friday visual. Produce a separate set for each wave: early access, 11.11, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and last chance. Prepare at least three formats for each set (vertical video, static image, carousel), because creative fatigue in November starts within days. Format sizes, message examples and the test plan are in the Black Friday ad creative guide.
November 1-10: Early Access and Getting Products into Carts
In the first ten days of the month the target is carts, not sales. Open an early access discount to loyal customers and your list, and tell the rest of the audience to save the product, add it to the cart and see the Black Friday price first. Every product added to a cart in this period is the warmest signal you can call back in peak week. You will see more cart abandonment than usual in this period, and that is expected. We explain how to set up reminder flows in how to reduce your cart abandonment rate. Rules on consent for email, SMS and messaging apps differ by country, so check the rules where your customers are before you plan message counts per wave.
November 11: The First Peak
Singles' Day is a one-day jump and the offer should stay limited. For the day-by-day preparation plan see the Singles' Day 11.11 guide. Instead of discounting the whole catalog, run a hard, time-limited offer on a selection of 10 to 20 products. The goal is twofold: win first-time buyers and add new buyers to the remarketing pool before Black Friday.
November 24-27: Peak Week
In peak week your only job is to sell to the warm audience. The biggest slice of the budget sits here, and most of it goes to remarketing and existing customer audiences. Raise the daily budget cap ahead of Black Friday morning, because the platform learning process should not start from zero on peak day. Opening the offer on Thursday evening as "early Black Friday" and continuing with hourly, stock-limited campaigns through Friday is a structure that works well in many markets. The date-by-date list of Google Ads and Meta settings, including the seasonality adjustment, target values, budget cap and Merchant Center sale price, is in Google Ads and Meta settings for Black Friday week.
November 30: Cyber Monday Close
Cyber Monday is the "last chance" day and it is designed for remaining stock. A last 24 hours message to people who built a cart on Black Friday and did not buy, an extra discount on slow sellers and an offer built around digital or electronics products carry the day. Really close the campaign at midnight on November 30. A discount that drifts into December teaches customers next year that "it will be extended anyway". We cover the post-Cyber Monday analysis, the real profit reading after returns and the December transition in what to do after Black Friday: Cyber Monday and December planning.
December: Loyalty and the Second Order
December's job is to carry the new customers you won in November to a second order. Build a second-order offer within 14 days for first-time November buyers, a holiday gift guide and an invitation to your loyalty programme. To connect these flows to automation, see email marketing automation.
Budget Split: Warm-Up, Peak, Close
A healthy November budget is roughly a third for warm-up, about half for the peak and the rest for the close and loyalty. The table below shows an example split for a brand with a total ad budget of 100,000 from the start of October to mid-December. The figures are in any currency, because the percentages are what matter.
| Period | Goal | Budget share | Example (100,000) |
|---|---|---|---|
| October (warm-up) | Grow the pool, collect list signups | 20% | 20,000 |
| November 1-10 (early access) | Carts and first sales | 12% | 12,000 |
| November 11 (Singles' Day) | One-day peak | 8% | 8,000 |
| November 12-23 (interim) | Remarketing, teaser | 10% | 10,000 |
| November 24-27 (peak) | Sell to the warm audience | 35% | 35,000 |
| November 28-30 (close) | Last chance, remaining stock | 10% | 10,000 |
| December 1-15 (loyalty) | Second order | 5% | 5,000 |
The shares are a starting point. Brands with a high repeat purchase rate should grow the warm-up share, and brands that sell one-off products should grow the peak share. To work out your own figures, use the ad budget calculator.
The logic of the split is this: every unit spent on warm-up lets you target cheap warm traffic instead of expensive cold traffic when CPMs hit their ceiling at the peak. A brand that piles its whole budget into November 24-27 shows ads to an audience that has never met it on the most expensive days, and its conversion rate stays low.
Why CPMs Rise and How the Remarketing Pool Works
CPMs rise in November because the number of advertisers in the auction and their budgets grow while the number of impressions does not. Costs typically climb through the month and are highest in Black Friday week. You reach fewer people with the same budget, so every impression has to count.
The remarketing pool is the answer to this problem. The audience that knows you from October, visited your product pages, watched your videos or joined your list is still yours in November, and showing ads to it is cheaper and converts much better than cold traffic. In practice the pool has three layers:
- Hot layer: people who added to cart in the last 30 days, reached the payment step or bought in the last 180 days. The largest share of the peak budget goes here.
- Warm layer: people who browsed a product page in the last 60 days, watched a video or engaged with your social profile. Early access and 11.11 offers go here.
- Cold layer: lookalike audiences that do not know you. The weight sits here in October and the share is lowest in November.
The test for the pool is simple: going into November, your hot and warm layers combined should be at least two to three times your monthly visitors. If not, the October warm-up budget was too small.
Margin-Safe Discount Design
In November, margin and not revenue sets the discount rate, and every discount pushes break-even ROAS up. Take a product that sells for 100 and costs 60. Gross margin is 40 percent and break-even ROAS is 2.5x, so every 1 spent on ads must bring in at least 2.5 in revenue. With a 30 percent discount the price falls to 70, the unit margin falls to 10, the margin rate drops to about 14 percent and break-even ROAS jumps to 7x. With CPMs rising in November, reaching 7x ROAS is not realistic in most categories. The full calculation is in break-even ROAS: what it is and how to calculate it.
That is why four rules work in discount design:
- Discount by product, not by catalog. Give hard discounts to high-margin products with plenty of stock, and give narrow-margin products a gift or a shipping benefit.
- Tiered offers. A structure such as "20 percent off above 150, 30 percent off above 300" grows the average basket and pays for the discount with higher revenue.
- Bundles and gifts. Giving away a low-cost product raises perceived value and erodes margin less than a percentage discount.
- No fake discounts. Raising the price in October and cutting it in November is misleading and customers notice it. The rules on the reference price shown before a discount vary by country, so check the regulation in force where you sell.
The brand that loses in November is not the one that gives the smaller discount, it is the one that gives the discount without doing the margin maths.
Operations Checklist: Speed, Stock, Shipping
In peak week the most expensive failure is operations breaking down, not the ads. Close every item on this list before November starts:
- The site load test is done and the payment step works with at least five times normal traffic as concurrent users. For speed, Core Web Vitals are green on mobile.
- Campaign prices, discount codes and stock counts are identical on the site, on marketplaces and in the ad feed. If an old price stays in the feed, the ad is disapproved.
- Card, wallet and alternative payment methods are open in the payment setup and your payment provider limits have been raised.
- November volume has been shared with the carrier, an extra pickup time and a backup carrier are agreed, and the delivery time on the site is stated realistically.
- Reply templates for WhatsApp and email customer service are ready and extra shifts are planned for campaign week.
- On critical products, an automatic "sold out" mark and a similar product suggestion work when stock runs out, and the ad for a sold-out product pauses automatically.
- Measurement: conversion tags are verified with a test order, and revenue value and order number reach GA4.
We cover the technical preparation in detail, including load tests, caching and CDN, payment backup, the code freeze date and the outage plan, in how to prepare your website and payments for Black Friday traffic.
Marketplace Campaign Registrations Close Early
The only way to join a marketplace November campaign is to apply from the seller dashboard before the deadline, and those deadlines often close well before the sale itself. Marketplaces change their campaign calendar, discount conditions and fee treatment from season to season, so do not trust last year's dates and follow seller dashboard announcements weekly from September. A store that is late stays out of the showcase for the whole month. We compare the two channels in marketplace vs your own website.
Also align your own site price with the marketplace price. A product that looks cheaper on a marketplace kills the conversion of the ads you run to your own site. Offering an extra benefit on your own site (a gift, free shipping, loyalty points) at the same price pulls the customer to your direct channel.
After the Campaign: The Returns Wave and Cash Planning
Part of the November sales comes back as returns in December, and a brand that is not ready for it is surprised by its December cash flow. Return rates tend to rise in campaign periods, and the effect is sharpest in fashion and footwear, because customers order several sizes and return the extras. Set aside part of your November revenue as a returns reserve, agree return pickup capacity with your carrier and build a process to put returned products back on sale quickly. For preventive steps, see reducing the return rate in e-commerce.
The last job when the campaign ends is the review: which wave delivered which ROAS, which product protected margin, which creative tired and at what hour stock ran out. These notes are the first page of your 2027 plan.
There is no secret to winning November, there is a calendar. To see where your preparation falls short, request the free November Readiness Audit. A brand that prepares in September, collects its audience in October, sells in November while protecting margin and keeps its customers in December comes out bigger every year. To build your campaign plan, budget split and discount maths together, talk to our performance marketing team, or get in touch for a free first conversation.
Frequently asked questions
When is Black Friday 2026?
Black Friday 2026 is on Friday, November 27, the day after US Thanksgiving on November 26. Cyber Monday is Monday, November 30. The sales season does not wait for those dates, because Singles' Day on Wednesday, November 11 is the first peak and many marketplaces and stores open early offers in the first week of the month. Plan around a four-wave calendar from November 1 to 30, not around a single day.
What is the difference between Black Friday and the wider November sales season?
Black Friday is one day on the global calendar, November 27 in 2026. The November sales season is the whole month, with early access offers, Singles' Day, Black Friday week and Cyber Monday. Customers see discounts all month and tire of them, so your Black Friday offer has to be clearly stronger than what you ran earlier in the month. Otherwise the main peak day looks like any other November day.
When should I increase my November ad budget?
Start in October, not in November. While CPMs are still low, growing the remarketing pool means that in peak week you show ads to a cheap warm audience instead of expensive cold traffic. Raise the daily budget cap for peak week at least a day ahead, because the platforms should not begin learning from zero on Black Friday morning. As a rule of thumb, Rebel Co. Group suggests about a third of the budget for warm-up and about half for the peak.
What discount should I offer on Black Friday?
There is no single right rate, because your margin sets it. On a product with a 40 percent gross margin, a 30 percent discount cuts the margin to about 14 percent and lifts break-even ROAS from 2.5x to 7x, which most categories cannot reach in the expensive ad market of November. Prefer product-level discounts, tiered offers, bundles and gifts to one rate across the catalog, and test every offer against break-even ROAS before it goes live.
Is it worth joining the November sales with a small budget?
Yes, if you focus on your own audience and not on cold traffic. A small brand cannot win the peak-week auction against large ones, but showing ads to your email list, your messaging subscribers, site visitors and past buyers is cheap and converts well. Even a small warm-up budget in October grows that pool noticeably by November. Go in with few products, a clear offer and a warm audience.
When should I apply for marketplace November campaigns?
Registration deadlines usually close early, often well before the sale itself, and every marketplace announces its own calendar in the seller dashboard. Marketplaces change campaign conditions, discount thresholds and fees from season to season, so do not rely on last year's dates. Check the seller dashboard announcements every week from September. A store that registers late stays out of the campaign showcase for the whole month.
Related articles
- Free November Readiness Audit for Black Friday
- Singles' Day 11.11 2026: An E-Commerce Preparation Guide
- How to Prepare Ad Creative for Black Friday and November Sales
- How to Set Up Google Ads and Meta Campaigns for Black Friday Week
- How to Prepare Your Website and Payments for Black Friday Traffic
- What to Do After Black Friday: Cyber Monday and December Planning
- Break-even ROAS: what it is and how to calculate it
- Ad budget calculator
- How to reduce your cart abandonment rate
- Reducing the return rate in e-commerce
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