Short answer: Peak week settings span three platforms. In Google Ads, set a seasonality adjustment for 1-7 day windows, loosen target ROAS or target CPA only down to the break-even limit, and raise the budget cap before the peak. On Meta, raise budgets gradually and do not enter peak day with campaigns still in the learning phase. In product data, enter the sale price with a start and end time and make sure it matches the price on the page.
Which Google Ads and Meta settings should you change in Black Friday week?
Five settings matter in peak week: the seasonality adjustment in Google Ads, a review of your target values and budget cap, a correct sale price in Merchant Center, and a Meta budget plan that does not disturb the learning phase. They do not replace your offer. They make sure the offer you prepared is read correctly on each platform. The campaign calendar and budget split are in our Black Friday 2026 e-commerce plan, you can have them reviewed in the free November Readiness Audit, and the day-by-day plan for the first peak is in our Singles' Day 11.11 guide. This article covers only the settings inside the platforms.
Black Friday also goes by local campaign names in some markets, and in many of them the sale season stretches across the whole month. The settings follow the date and not the name: November 11 is the first peak, November 27 is Black Friday, November 28-29 is the weekend and November 30 is Cyber Monday. The table below shows the platform task for each date.
| Date | Google Ads | Meta | Product data |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 29-November 10 | Break-even ROAS is recalculated at sale prices and the seasonality adjustment for 11.11 is planned | New campaigns and creative go live, all of them live by November 13 | The sale price and date range are entered in the feed with your time zone offset and checked with a test order |
| November 11 (11.11) | A one-day seasonality adjustment and hourly monitoring | Budgets are left alone and only the hour the budget runs out is watched | The price and stock match is checked during the day |
| November 12-23 | Adjustments are off and targets are updated with 11.11 data | Frequency and creative fatigue are read and the budget is raised step by step | The Black Friday price and date range are prepared |
| November 24-27 | Targets are final by November 24, the budget cap is raised by November 25 and the seasonality adjustment is switched on | The budget increase is completed on November 24 and nothing changes during the peak | The sale starting at 00:00 on November 27 is live |
| November 28-30 | A separate window for the weekend and Cyber Monday, closing at midnight on November 30 | A remaining-stock message and scaling of the winning creative | The range ends at 23:59 on November 30, then the normal price returns |
What is the Google Ads seasonality adjustment and when do you use it on Black Friday?
A seasonality adjustment is a Google Ads feature that lets you tell Smart Bidding in advance that conversion rate will change during a short event. According to Google's documentation it is designed for short events, the ideal length is 1-7 days, and it may not work well when used for more than 14 days. When the event ends, the campaign returns to its pre-adjustment performance, so you do not need to enter a second adjustment in the opposite direction.
Google recommends the feature only when you expect a large change in conversion rate, because Smart Bidding already handles seasonal events on its own. Black Friday meets that test, because on the day you make the strongest offer of the year, conversion rate is expected to rise above a normal day. According to the documentation, the adjustment can be used in Search, Shopping, Demand Gen and Display campaigns if you use target ROAS or target CPA, and with all bidding strategies in Performance Max. Scope can change, so check the current documentation before you set it up.
When you estimate the rate, use the same days last year and your 11.11 results. In Google's own example, a three-day sale is expected to lift conversion rate by 50 percent and the adjustment tells the system in advance. If you are unsure, do not overstate it, because a rate that is too high can push bids higher than necessary. Enter dates and times in your account's time zone.
A seasonality adjustment and a data exclusion are different tools. A data exclusion removes conversion data that was measured wrongly, for example because of a tag error or a site outage, from what Smart Bidding learns. It is the tool to use if the site goes down or a tag breaks on peak day. Google recommends not using either tool often or for long periods. For the site side of preparation, see our article on Black Friday website infrastructure readiness.
How do you set target ROAS and target CPA in peak week?
Recalculate your break-even ROAS at sale prices before you loosen a target, because a target is safe only while it stays above the break-even line. If the seasonal change lasts longer than a week or is small, we recommend adjusting target ROAS or target CPA yourself instead of using a seasonality adjustment. This is our preference and not a Google rule. Discounts squeeze margin, so break-even ROAS rises in November. If your target still reflects the old margin, the system either restricts you unnecessarily or pushes you into unprofitable sales. Do the calculation with the steps in our article on break-even ROAS.
Three rules work. First, set the target by the margin of the product group and not as a single campaign value, because discounted products have a different break-even point. Second, make changes gradually and finish the last change by November 24. Do not rework the target on peak day. Third, do not make a seasonality adjustment and a target change in the same window. Both affect the conversion expectation, so you cannot tell which one produced the result.
Budget and target belong together. When you loosen a target, spend rises and the budget runs out earlier. Take the target decision on the same day as the budget cap decision in the next section.
When should you raise the daily budget cap for Black Friday?
Raise the daily budget cap at least one day before the peak, in practice by Wednesday, November 25. Here we look at Google's budget logic, because a daily budget is an average and not a fixed spend.
According to Google's spending limits documentation, a campaign can spend up to twice its daily budget on a single day, and over a month total spend is capped at 30.4 times the average daily budget. So your spend on peak day can reach twice your budget, and it evens out over the other days of the month. If your monthly spend cap is fixed, account for this flexibility in advance.
After you raise the budget, check on November 25 that spending has actually gone up. If spend does not rise even though you raised the budget, the constraint is the target value and not the budget, and you need to loosen the target within the limits in the previous section.
How do you define a Black Friday discount in Merchant Center?
A Black Friday discount is defined in Merchant Center with the sale_price attribute (the sale price) and the sale_price_effective_date attribute (the sale date range). According to Google's documentation, when you send a sale price you must keep sending the regular price in the price attribute. The sale price is expected to match the price on the landing page and on the checkout page.
Two details in the date field are critical. If you do not write a time zone, Google assumes UTC, so write your own offset. For 00:00 on November 27 in a store on Central European Time that is +0100, and in the UK in November it is +0000. Second, always send the sale price and the date range together. Example format: 2026-11-27T00:00+0100/2026-11-30T23:59+0100.
Merchant Center promotions are a separate program that shows promotion details in product ads. Google supports promotions only in the countries it lists, so check the Promotions section of your account and Google's current list for your country. If the section is not available to you, do not wait for it and give the discount with the fields above.
Schedule the feed update to run right after the site price changes, because a price mismatch can get a product removed from ads. For the full set of feed fields, see our Merchant Center guide. For how the prior price is determined and the price display rules that differ by market, check the rules where you sell and read our campaign localization guide.
How do you prepare Performance Max asset groups for Black Friday?
For Black Friday we recommend building a separate campaign-themed asset group inside your existing Performance Max campaign instead of opening a new campaign. This is our preference and not a Google rule. Our reasoning is that the data your existing campaign has built up can also be used for the new offer.
Add wave-specific images, vertical and horizontal video and single-offer headlines to the asset group, and find the sizes in our ad creative guide. Remember that Performance Max serves across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps inventory together. The date and offer in a headline therefore show up in every channel, and an asset that stays live after the end date makes a false promise.
Assign the closing job for midnight on November 30: pause the asset group or update the text. An ad that still says Black Friday on the morning of December 1 puts both trust and price rules at risk. For the basics of this campaign type, see our Performance Max guide.
How do you manage the Black Friday budget and Advantage+ campaigns on Meta?
The most important rule on Meta is not to enter peak day with a campaign in the learning phase. The learning phase is the period in which Meta learns the best delivery for a new or significantly changed ad set and results can fluctuate. Budget and other setting changes can restart learning. Meta can update how long the learning phase lasts and how large a change restarts it, so check the current values in the Meta Business Help Center. If you need to make many changes, we recommend making them all at once.
For that reason, put new campaigns and new creative live at least two weeks before the peak, by November 13. If your daily sales volume is low, an ad set may not collect enough conversions to learn. In that case reduce the number of campaigns and concentrate the budget in one. Raise the budget step by step between November 1 and 24 and not on peak day. A budget change in the middle of the week can shift how spend is distributed, so watch spend daily after each change.
Meta's Advantage+ shopping campaigns can appear in your account under a different name, such as Advantage+ sales campaigns, and Meta can change the naming. If Ads Manager offers an existing customer budget cap that splits budget between new and existing customers, you can use it as an option. Leave the cap loose if you are weighting the warm audience in peak week. Tighten it between November 12 and 23 if you want to win new customers. If the option does not appear in your interface version, check Meta's current documentation. For the full setup, see our Advantage+ Shopping guide.
When cost per impression rises in November, showing ads to the same audience more often is tempting. Read frequency weekly and not daily, exclude recent buyers from the audience and finish audience building in October. This reduces the number of times your warm audience sees the same ad in peak week.
What is the peak-week settings checklist?
The checklist is nine questions to close by the evening of November 25 at the latest, and each one maps to a setting above. If you cannot answer yes to all of them, close the missing item before the peak.
- Was break-even ROAS recalculated at sale prices?
- Is the seasonality adjustment planned with dates and a time zone, and does it stay within 7 days?
- Were target ROAS or target CPA made final by November 24?
- Was the daily budget cap raised by November 25?
- Were the sale price and date range sent to Merchant Center together, with your time zone offset?
- Were the feed price and the site price verified with a test order?
- Are the dates and offer wording in the Performance Max asset group true?
- Did the Meta campaigns leave the learning phase, and was the budget increase completed on November 24?
- Is the close at midnight on November 30 assigned (pausing, text updates, return to the normal price)?
Frequently asked questions
What does the Google Ads seasonality adjustment do on Black Friday?
A seasonality adjustment tells Smart Bidding in advance that conversion rate will change during a short event. According to Google's documentation it suits events of 1-7 days, it may not work well when used for more than 14 days, and after the event the campaign returns to its pre-adjustment performance. Use it only if you expect a large change in conversion rate.
Should I lower target ROAS on Black Friday?
It depends on your margin. First recalculate break-even ROAS at sale prices and loosen the target only as far as it stays above that limit. Make changes gradually, finish the last change by November 24 and do not touch the target on peak day.
Are Merchant Center promotions available in my country?
Google supports Merchant Center promotions only in the countries it lists in its promotions documentation, so check the list for your country and look for the Promotions section in your account. If it is not available, give the discount with the sale_price and sale_price_effective_date fields, write the date range with your time zone offset and confirm with a test order that the price matches the price on the site.
When should I increase my Meta campaign budget for Black Friday?
Not on peak day but step by step between November 1 and 24. Budget changes can restart the learning phase, so make changes gradually. Put new campaigns and creative live by November 13 so that they are not in the learning phase at the peak.
Should I touch campaign settings on peak day?
No, only watch. Target, budget and creative changes should be finished before the peak. The exception is a measurement problem: if a tag breaks or the site goes down, you can use a data exclusion in Google Ads to remove wrongly measured conversion data from what Smart Bidding learns.
How do I undo the settings after Black Friday ends?
When a seasonality adjustment ends, the campaign returns to its pre-adjustment performance and no reverse adjustment is needed. Schedule target values, the budget cap and the sale price date range for midnight on November 30 in advance, pause the Performance Max asset group or update its text, and make your first job on the morning of December 1 checking the date wording in your ads.
Related articles
- Black Friday 2026 Plan: Four Sales Waves for Your Online Store
- Free November Readiness Audit for Black Friday
- Singles' Day 11.11 2026: An E-Commerce Preparation Guide
- Black Friday Website Infrastructure Readiness: Load, Payments, Stock and Outage Plan
- How to Prepare Ad Creative for Black Friday and November Sales
- Performance Max guide
- Google Shopping Ads and Merchant Center guide
- Meta Advantage+ Shopping guide
- Break-even ROAS: what it is and how to calculate it
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