Every Black Friday feels intense. But this one felt different in a way that’s worth paying attention to.
Across our agency accounts and broader industry data, Black Friday and Cyber Monday didn’t feel louder or more chaotic than past years. In many ways, it felt calmer. Less frantic. Less reactive. And paradoxically, more revealing.
One reason for that shift was structural. Many brands ran longer promotions, stretching sales across a full week or more instead of compressing everything into a single high-pressure weekend. That alone lowered the sense of urgency behind the scenes and gave teams more room to observe, adjust, and optimize.
But the biggest reason Black Friday felt different had nothing to do with timing.
It was because BFCM 2025 made one thing impossible to ignore: Black Friday doesn’t create demand. It reflects it.
For some businesses, it’s still a massive revenue event. But for most, performance was a direct outcome of what they’d been doing all year long. Customers weren’t discovering brands during the sale. They were waiting for it.
A Quieter Black Friday With More Complexity Under the Surface
From a day-to-day execution standpoint, BFCM felt less hectic than previous years. That didn’t mean it was easier.
One of the biggest operational challenges was reduced control over daily spend. Meta continued its shift toward front-loaded delivery, with some accounts spending up to 75% of their daily “average” budget before noon. This made intraday adjustments far less effective and reinforced the reality that daily budgets are no longer precise levers, but flexible guidelines.
Cyber Monday also brought the first notable Shopify-related technical disruption many teams had seen in years. While it was resolved relatively quickly, it served as a reminder that during peak traffic moments, even the most prepared brands are still exposed to platform-level risk.
But the most meaningful shift wasn’t technical. It was strategic.
Performance during Black Friday and Cyber Monday was deeply tied to everything that came before it. Brands that had consistently run ads, diversified creative, captured leads, and stayed visible throughout the year were finally able to convert demand that had been building for months. Others learned, sometimes painfully, that no amount of promotional urgency can make up for weak momentum going into Q4.
What Actually Worked This Black Friday
One of the clearest patterns this year was restraint.
Instead of tearing down account structures or launching entirely new strategies, many of the strongest performers stayed anchored in evergreen foundations. Rather than relying heavily on a central Black Friday sales page, some brands deprioritized it almost entirely. They ran a single campaign focused on middle-of-the-funnel messaging and kept the rest of their structure evergreen, with sale creative layered into existing campaigns instead of isolated into new ones.
This approach reduced complexity and preserved learning during the most volatile period of the year.
Evergreen creative played a critical role, but not in a “set it and forget it” way. Starting as early as June, several teams made diversifying evergreen creative their top priority. That meant building more angles per product, testing more concepts, and ensuring there was enough variety to support scale without fatigue. When Black Friday arrived, those brands didn’t need to invent new ideas under pressure. They simply repurposed what already worked with seasonal messaging.
Whitelisted partnership-style ads continued to perform well, particularly when paired with promotional framing. The combination of existing trust and timely offers helped these ads stand out without feeling forced or overly aggressive.
Promotion length also mattered. Brands that ran sales for a full week or longer saw steadier performance than those trying to compress everything into a narrow window. This aligned with broader consumer behavior: purchases still clustered around key days, but buyers valued flexibility and clarity over artificial urgency.
Why Full-Funnel Thinking Mattered More Than Ever
BFCM 2025 reinforced the importance of understanding how different campaigns fit into the customer journey.
Brands running multiple channels in parallel, paid social, email, SMS, and sometimes search, performed best when they focused on how those channels worked together instead of optimizing them in isolation. Third-party attribution tools helped teams see which ads were actually introducing new customers into the funnel, even if they weren’t the final click before purchase.
For those using advanced attribution models, first-click insights proved especially valuable. Ads with lower last-click ROAS often turned out to be essential drivers of new demand. Turning them off would have harmed overall performance, even if they didn’t look efficient on the surface.
For teams without third-party tools, native audience segment breakdowns provided similar clarity. By separating results across new audiences, engaged users, and existing customers, brands were able to make smarter decisions about what to scale, what to protect, and what role each campaign played.
Another notable trend was geographic expansion. Several brands saw stronger-than-expected results from international markets during BFCM, even when those regions underperformed earlier in the year. Promotional periods appeared to narrow performance gaps across geographies, making global testing more viable than expected.
Scarcity messaging worked too, but not in the way many brands assume. Countdown timers mattered less than clearly positioning Black Friday as the biggest sale of the year. Framing the event as a once-a-year opportunity proved more persuasive than generic urgency or constant reminders that time was running out.
What Didn’t Work (And Why)
The biggest underperformer this year was reactivity.
Large intraday budget swings, aggressive “day trading” of ad accounts, and attempts to force spend to hit exact daily numbers consistently led to worse outcomes. The brands that tried to wrestle control from the platforms often ended up disrupting performance instead of improving it.
Evergreen creatives also lost effectiveness when left untouched in evergreen campaigns. While those same assets performed well when repurposed with promotional overlays and updated messaging, running them unchanged during the sale period failed to capture seasonal intent.
Another mistake was relying too heavily on purely promotional messaging. Ads that spoke only about discounts struggled to convert colder audiences who didn’t yet understand the product or value proposition. The strongest performers layered promotional framing onto educational or problem-aware messaging, allowing new audiences to understand the offer before being pushed to act.
The Results Brands Actually Saw
Despite the challenges, results across the board were strong.
Most clients saw year-over-year revenue growth in the 20–30% range, with some doubling their Black Friday performance entirely. Brands that entered Q4 already on an upward trajectory carried that momentum through BFCM with relative ease.
Those gains weren’t accidental. They were driven by consistent evergreen performance, diversified creative, and audience-building efforts throughout the year.
Lead generation played a particularly important role. Brands that ran giveaway-style campaigns continuously, and optimized those campaigns for purchase behavior, not just cheap leads, saw meaningful lifts during Black Friday. The audiences they’d built earlier in the year were primed to convert when the offer aligned.
The Bigger Lesson From BFCM 2025
Black Friday is no longer a reset button.
It doesn’t fix weak fundamentals. It amplifies strong ones.
The brands that won this year didn’t outwork everyone for a single weekend. They showed up consistently for eleven months and let Black Friday do what it does best: convert accumulated demand.
If there’s one takeaway from BFCM 2025, it’s this:
Your Black Friday results start in January.
And the brands that understand that will keep winning long after the sale ends.
If you want help building that kind of year-round foundation, from evergreen creative to full-funnel strategy, our agency works with brands to do exactly that. Learn more here:
