Creative
25 Black Friday Ad Campaign Ideas for Offers, Creative and Landing Pages
Written by Darkroom leardership
14 min read
Nov 13, 2026
Each November, social feeds fill up with red tiles advertising "50% off." Most shoppers scroll past these, and the brands that succeed aren’t always the ones offering the biggest discounts.
The good news is that most Black Friday ad campaigns are won before anyone even sees them. Your offer sets your margin, your creative gets people’s attention, and your landing page turns clicks into sales.
Here are 25 Black Friday marketing ideas for Cyber Week 2026, including tips for creative, offers, and landing pages.
Key takeaways:
Pick your offer based on how much profit you keep after costs. The biggest discount doesn’t always bring in the most revenue.
Options like tiered spending, bundles, or gifts with purchase help you keep more profit per sale than just offering a flat percentage off.
The best Black Friday ads quickly show the offer, the product, and the deadline.
Update your creative whenever the offer or deadline changes, from early access to the final hours.
A good Black Friday landing page repeats the ad’s offer at the top, shows real-time stock and delivery dates, and loads quickly on mobile devices.
Big brands built their 2025 Black Friday campaigns around strategies you can use too, like staged events, exclusive deals, or taking a clear stand.
Live shopping, sale prices in Shopping ads, and pay-over-time options give shoppers reasons to buy beyond the size of the discount.
What makes a Black Friday ad campaign convert?
A Black Friday ad campaign includes all the paid ads a brand runs from early November teasers through Cyber Monday, all designed to promote a holiday offer. The key is to keep things simple: use one main offer, make sure the creative clearly shows the deal, the product, and the deadline, and send every click to a landing page that repeats the same message.
Looking at the 2025 numbers, it’s clear that the type of offer matters more than just how big the discount is. Klaviyo’s BFCM 2025 recap found that even though the average discount dropped from 29.6% to 26.2%, brands using Klaviyo still saw same-site sales up 11%.
Salesforce's Cyber Week 2025 data points the same way: the average selling price rose 6% while global order volume grew only 2%. And Shopify merchants sold $14.6 billion over the 2025 weekend, at an average cart of $114.70.
Shoppers were willing to pay more per item, and fewer people were swayed by the size of the discount alone. That means the real job of your campaign is to make sure your offer is easy to understand and something your margins can support.
Read also: The BFCM Paid Media Plan and What to Lock In Before Black Friday
Black Friday ad campaign ideas for creative, offers and landing pages
1. Creator and UGC ads
A creator quickly shows the product in action, then shares the offer and end date in their own words.
How to run it:
Ask each creator to film one main video, and record the offer line separately so you can update it for each phase.
Post the ad from the creator’s account as a partnership or Spark ad, and keep using the best-performing hook even when the offer changes.
Example: fashion brand Edikted worked with more than 500 creators and ran TikTok Video Shopping Ads over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The brand cut CPA by 50% and lifted ROAS by 170%. For briefing and testing volume, see our guide to UGC ads on paid social.
2. Product demos
Gift buyers want to see the product in action. Show 15 seconds of the product in action, then add an end card with the price and deadline.
How to run it: create demos for the five products included in your offer, so each demo highlights the sale. Film the end card separately so you can update the price without reshooting.
Example: Sodastream's 2025 holiday spot, "Drink better and host better", launched in November 2025, shows two party guests customizing their drinks with the machine.
3. Countdown ads
Countdowns are effective only if the deadline is real.
How to run it: use Google Ads' countdown customizer, which counts down by day, then hour, then minute in search ads. Tie every countdown to the real end time in the time zone you state. The FTC's September 2022 staff report Bringing Dark Patterns to Light lists countdown timers on offers that aren't time-limited among deceptive designs.
Example: Bath & Body Works ran a countdown to its holiday Candle Day sale in December 2024, when every 3-wick candle dropped to $9.95. A 12-foot candle at New York's Hudson Yards served as the countdown clock, and the countdown ran on digital billboards across the city as a persistent reminder that the sale was coming, according to Bath & Body Works' Candle Day announcement. The brand also invited fans to join the countdown on social media, while loyalty members got early access.
4. Price-led statics
Make the discount amount the most prominent, followed by the product, end date, and a single call to action. Keep the offer line and brand logo small.
How to run it: show both the old and new prices only if the original price meets the bona fide test in idea 8. Use these static ads for retargeting and cart audiences who already know the product.
Example: Best Buy's Black Friday announcement in November 2025 led every deal with the savings, then the sale price: "Save $160 on TCL 55-inch Class F35 Fire TV (Sale price: $169.99)." Copy that order on your statics.
5. Teaser and reminder ads
Share teaser ads before the sale to announce the dates and encourage sign-ups, but don’t include prices yet.
How to run it: use Instagram reminder ads to notify people who opt in one day before your sale and again when it starts. End the ad an hour before the event, as Instagram requires, and direct the call to action to your early-access sign-up.
Example: activewear brand Gym+Coffee earns around 60% of its annual revenue in Q4 and builds its audience well before Black Friday. SMS subscribers grew 2,006% in 2024, and daily urgency push notifications lifted push revenue 571%.
6. Gift guide carousels
Create one card for each recipient or price range (like "for runners" or "under $50"), and include the gift price and offer on each card.
How to run it: link each card to its own collection on your landing page, so one ad can cover several gift needs. Feature your highest-margin gift on the first card.
Example: Best Buy's 2025 holiday calendar, released in October 2025, pointed shoppers to curated gift lists by interest, including travelers, foodies, gamers, and homebodies.
7. Brand film with cutdowns
Create one long film to share your main campaign idea, and use shorter versions to highlight each offer.
How to run it: film the shorter versions with the end card left open for each phase’s offer. It’s important to give the algorithm different concepts, as explained in our breakdown of how Meta Andromeda selects creative.
Example: Walmart's 2025 WhoKnewVille film cast Walton Goggins as the Grinch, ran as a YouTube masthead and was cut into shorter spots. "Long-form content actually performs really well for Walmart," Walmart VP of creative David Hartman told Retail Dive in November 2025.
8. Percentage off
Choose the mechanic by what each order leaves after product, fulfillment and payment costs.
Offer | Units | Revenue | Contribution per order | Contribution per unit | Vs. full-price order |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Full price | 1 | $80 | $40 | $40 | Baseline |
25% off | 1 | $60 | $20 | $20 | -50% |
40% off | 1 | $48 | $8 | $8 | -80% |
Spend $150, save $30 | 2 | $130 | $62 | $31 | +55% |
Bundle of 3 for $180 | 3 | $180 | $84 | $28 | +110% |
Gift with purchase ($6 gift) | 1 | $80 | $34 | $34 | -15% |
Illustration: $80 list price, $28 landed cost per unit, $12 fulfillment and payment fees per order. Contribution is revenue minus those costs. Run your own numbers.
As a rule of thumb for Black Friday sale ideas, percentage off cuts every unit, tiers and bundles raise the order, and a gift or early access holds the price.
Percentage off fits high gross margin, a broad catalog and shoppers who compare on the number.
How to run it: if the headline says "up to," put the most common discount in the ad copy. The "was" price must be the actual, bona fide price you offered regularly, under the FTC's Guides Against Deceptive Pricing at 16 CFR 233.1.
Example: Target's Black Friday week in November 2025 offered up to 50% off tech, toys and small appliances, with flat 40% off on select sweatshirts and denim.
9. Tiered spend
Tiered spend works well if your average order is just below a key threshold.
How to run it: Set the first tier slightly above your current average order and highlight the dollar savings.
Example: In 2024, Shinola ran its first promotion tied explicitly to BFCM as a spend-more, save-more sitewide event. Email revenue rose 22% and revenue per recipient 48% year over year. In 2025, Best Buy gave members a $5 certificate for every $50 of doorbusters, up to $25, issued about 15 days after fulfillment, which also brings a second visit.
10. Bundles
Bundles are great for pairing complementary products, gift sets, or slower sellers with a popular item.
How to run it: Price them lower than the total cost of the individual items and show the dollar savings. If you sell on TikTok Shop, check our Black Friday playbook for tips on bundles and flash deals.
Example: For Black Friday 2025, Target sold exclusive Pokémon ex Box Bundles with promo cards and booster packs for $34.99, regularly $49.99.
11. Gift with purchase
Gift with purchase works well for brands that want to keep their list prices intact.
How to run it: Choose a gift your customers will want, make sure it costs less than its perceived value, and feature it right away.
Example: during its four-day Black Friday to Cyber Monday event in 2025, Apple gave an Apple Gift Card worth up to $250 with eligible products, from $25 with AirPods 4 to $250 with a 14-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pro with M4 Pro or M4 Max. The card was redeemable only on future purchases, as MacRumors reported in November 2025.
12. Early access
Early access is ideal for brands with members, subscribers, or a loyalty list. Here, the reward is extra time to shop.
How to run it: Set up sign-up ads for prospects during the teaser phase, then send access-focused messages to members when early access starts. Make sure your dates match your email schedule, like in our Black Friday calendar.
Example: Walmart+ members got five hours of early online access to each of Walmart's 2025 deal events, starting at 7 p.m. ET the evening before each event opened, as Walmart announced in October 2025.
13. Price match
Price matching helps brands that launch promotions early but risk losing sales to shoppers who wait for better deals.
How to run it: Mention the guarantee in your early-season ads. It only affects your margin if prices drop later, so plan your pricing calendar. Look at shopper behavior on Cyber Monday and Black Friday to decide when to run each offer.
Example: Target's Holiday Price Match Guarantee ran from the start of November through December 2025 and matched Target's own lower price later in the season. Best Buy ran its own Holiday Price Match Guarantee, announced in the same October 2025 holiday calendar.
14. Offer above the fold
Salesforce reports that 70% of online orders during Cyber Week 2025 came from phones, so design every page with mobile users in mind first.
How to run it: Make sure your headline matches the ad’s offer and end date exactly. Feature the promoted products at the top and use just one call to action. Keep your /black-friday URL active every year so links and rankings stay intact. The best landing pages clearly state the offer, highlight selected products, and remove the main navigation.
Example: for BFCM 2017, Blenders Eyewear scheduled two separate site designs, one for its Black Friday sale and one for its Cyber Monday promotion, to go live at set times. Its Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales grew tenfold year over year.
15. Stock and shipping cues
Only display low-stock messages when your inventory actually supports it, as the FTC warns against false low-stock claims.
How to run it: put a delivery-by date next to add to cart. USPS's 2026 holiday dates are December 17 for Ground Advantage, December 18 for Priority Mail, and December 19 for Priority Mail Express, for expected delivery before December 25 in the lower 48. Calculate your own order-by date from your carrier and warehouse cutoffs, and update it daily from December 1.
Example: in its November 2025 release, Walmart told shoppers to look for items marked "Pickup today" or "Delivery today," backed by delivery to 95% of US homes in three hours or less.
16. A page built for peak speed
Try to meet Core Web Vitals 'good' scores at the 75th percentile: LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds, and CLS under 0.1.
To prepare, compress your main video, set up lazy loading for content below the fold, and remove any unused apps before November 19. Then, run load tests to handle peak traffic. For example, Shopify merchants reached $5.1 million in sales per minute at 12:01 p.m. EST on Black Friday 2025.
In Google and Deloitte's Milliseconds Make Millions study of 37 brand sites and more than 30 million sessions, a 0.1-second mobile speed gain lifted retail product-page-to-basket progression 9.1% and spend 9.2%.
Example: streetwear brand Represent sees traffic rise 25x and conversions 8x on Black Friday without site speed issues.
17. One-tap checkout
According to Salesforce, mobile wallets accounted for 29% of US Cyber Week orders in 2025.
To set this up, display wallet payment buttons on both the product page and in the cart. Make sure the ad’s discount is applied automatically through the link, so customers don’t have to search for a code.
Example: after Princess Polly enabled Shop Pay's authenticated checkout, conversion rose 4.1% for buyers with an existing Shop Pay session and median checkout time fell 7.6%.
18. Staged deal events
Staged events are best for brands with a large product catalog and enough budget to run the sale multiple times.
To do this, divide your sale into two or three separate events, each with its own start and end time and a unique offer. Use new creative for each event, and pause all ads from the previous event as soon as it ends.
Example: Walmart split its 2025 Black Friday campaign into three events: a mid-November sale, a second sale through Thanksgiving week and an online-only Cyber Monday, with up to 60% off top brands and thousands of deals under $20, as Retail Dive reported in October 2025.
19. Black Friday exclusives
Exclusives work for brands that can create or license a special product just for the sale, giving your ad something new to feature besides a discount.
To run this, highlight the exclusive product first in your creative, then show the price and the sale date. Offer early access to members or subscribers to help grow your list.
Example: in November 2025, Target turned Black Friday into a full week, with early access to select deals for Target Circle 360 members late in the week and seven products sold only at Target, including a Wicked: For Good vinyl and a Mario Kart racing jacket, as its Black Friday announcement described.
20. A stance instead of a sale
Taking a stance works for brands whose customers care deeply about a shared value and will support you even if you skip the discount.
How to run it: announce the stance before the sale ads start, and give people one thing to do instead, such as spending the day outside or backing a cause. Run the announcement to your existing customers first, since they are the most likely to share it.
Example: for the tenth year of #OptOutside, REI closed its stores on Black Friday 2025, gave employees a paid day off, and invited people to spend it outside.
21. Live shopping events
A livestream lets shoppers see the product in action, ask questions in real time, and buy directly from the stream.
To run a livestream, schedule it during your launch window and promote it with teaser ads and creator videos in the days leading up. Keep the main product and its offer visible on screen throughout, and later turn the best moments into short ads for future use.
Example: home improvement brand VEVOR ran marathon livestreams on TikTok Shop over Black Friday 2025, where viewers watched live torque tests of its tools. As VEVOR reported in December 2025, its four US stores generated $1.5 million in GMV in a single day, and its November GMV nearly doubled year over year.
22. Google Merchant Center Ads
Shoppers who search on Black Friday compare prices before they click, so your Shopping ads need to carry the sale price and the offer.
To do this, enter your sale prices in Merchant Center with the right effective dates, so they update automatically with your sale. Add a promotion for any sitewide code. For Performance Max, create a Black Friday asset group with offer images, headlines, and a video.
Example: Nature Love moved to Performance Max 14 days before Black Friday 2023 and built a full set of text, image, and video assets for it. Revenue rose 60% and ROAS 26% year over year, and the new creative assets brought in about 20% of Black Friday season revenue.
23. Pinterest ads for gift planners
Pinterest ads connect with shoppers while they’re still collecting gift ideas, before they’ve chosen where to buy.
To use Pinterest ads, start running catalog ads with your Black Friday products in early November. Use broad targeting so Pinterest can find gift planners. Build all ads from one template, so your product, price, and brand look consistent in both static and video formats.
Example: sleep brand Emma Sleep tested Pinterest's automated Performance+ campaigns alongside its usual setup over Black Friday. The brand reached a 10.4x ROAS in Germany in November 2024 and earned 25% more revenue than with its traditional campaign setup.
24. A donation in place of a discount
A donation works for brands that want to keep their list prices and have customers who care about supporting a cause.
To do this, promise a set percentage of sales to a specific charity during the sale, and mention both the percentage and the charity right away. After the sale, share the total amount raised so you can highlight it in next year’s ads.
Example: For the seventh year, British outdoor brand Keela replaced its Black Friday sale with Bright Friday. From late November to early December 2025, it donated 15% of all web sales to the Cash for Kids Mission Christmas appeal instead of offering sitewide discounts, as the charity announced in November 2025.
25. Pay-over-time messaging
Pay-over-time options work well for expensive products, especially when the full price might make a gift buyer pause.
How to run it: Show the installment price next to the full price on the product page and in the cart. Add this information to the end card of ads for products that cost more than your average order. Always follow your provider's advertising rules when an ad mentions a payment amount.
Example: Balsam Hill, which sells artificial Christmas trees starting at $499, offers Afterpay to help shoppers spread out holiday costs. According to an Afterpay case study, the brand made $1 million in Afterpay sales in the first five weeks of the partnership during the festive season. Pay Monthly customers also spent 156% more on average than those who paid in four installments.
Getting ready for Black Friday? Darkroom can help
Successful Black Friday ad campaigns usually hinge on three key decisions. First, choose an offer that makes sense for your margins. Next, create ads that highlight the offer, the product, and the deadline right away.
Update your creative every time the offer changes. Finally, make sure every click leads to a landing page that repeats the offer, shows up-to-date stock and delivery info, and loads quickly on mobile devices.
Darkroom’s performance creative team handles the entire process. Senior creatives handle the strategy and testing plan, and each cycle delivers 250-600 assets, including UGC, static images, motion graphics, and AI-generated content.
For example, Olipop’s first national video campaign with Darkroom led to a 3x revenue increase. Sauz saw a 118% boost in paid media revenue over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, thanks to Meta creative with some of the highest thumbstop rates in the portfolio.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should Black Friday ads start running in 2026?
Start teaser and sign-up ads around November 9, open early-access ads on November 19, and launch the full offer on Thanksgiving evening, November 26. Black Friday falls on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30, so last-call ads run through December 1 and stop at the stated end time.
How many creative versions does a Black Friday campaign need?
Plan one version of each winning concept for every offer phase: teaser, early access, launch, weekend, Cyber Monday and last call. Build each version as a vertical video, a static, and a carousel, so one strong concept becomes about eighteen ads. Add new concepts on top of that only if your budget can test them.
Should Black Friday ads link to a landing page or to product pages?
Send broad offers, sitewide sales, and bundles to one Black Friday landing page that repeats the ad and shows the advertised products. Send ads for a single hero product straight to its product page, with the offer, the end date, and the delivery-by date added above the add-to-cart button.
Do Black Friday ads need to say Black Friday?
Not in the first frame, because almost every ad in the feed already says it. Lead with the offer and the product, then put Black Friday in the headline text or the end card so shoppers know the deadline. Search and Shopping ads still need the phrase in the copy for relevance.
