Black Friday has become the perfect excuse for shoppers to use a holiday bonus, grab gifts for loved ones, or finally treat themselves. Advertisers face a high-stakes window where consumer intent peaks, competition is intense, and a smart strategy can turn clicks into significant revenue.
For media buyers operating at scale, Black Friday is the ultimate proving ground for AI programmatic advertising. Leveraging advanced audience targeting, AI-driven optimizations, and performance tracking allows campaigns to reach the right shoppers with precision, maximizing return on investment during one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year.
Black Friday is a high-stakes playground, and programmatic is the tool that turns market chaos into calculated opportunity.
The Black Friday 2024–2025 Market Landscape
How Spending Soars
The numbers don’t lie, and in the case of Black Friday, they highlight an extraordinary opportunity.
Shoppers are more willing than ever to act quickly. In 2024, U.S. consumers spent $10.8 billion on Black Friday alone, marking a 10.2% increase from the previous year.
Additionally, the National Retail Federation found that nearly 45% of all US consumers begin their holiday shopping on Black Friday, demonstrating how crucial the day has become for capturing early intent.
High Average Spend and Participation
Looking ahead, over 70% of Americans plan to participate in Black Friday shopping in 2025, suggesting another wave of both online and in-store activity.
Advertisers who plan strategically now can position themselves to capture a significant portion of consumer spending.
The Rise of Online Sales
E-commerce continues to take center stage. CoinLaw stated that, in 2024, 58% of Black Friday sales occurred online, and this share is expected to grow in 2025.
It also concluded that the Black Friday weekend—from Thursday through Cyber Monday—is projected to generate $75 billion in revenue, a 5% increase from last year.
Such trend reinforces the importance of digital-first strategies, where programmatic campaigns can capitalize on intent signals and deliver tailored messaging across devices and channels.
Why Programmatic Excels During High-Stakes Shopping
Smarter Audience Targeting
Black Friday rewards precision. Programmatic platforms surface the customers most likely to buy by analyzing engagement signals like behavior or location.
Campaigns aren’t built on assumptions; they’re directed by real indicators of intent, ensuring spend flows toward audiences with the highest likelihood of converting.
Unified Customer Experience
Shoppers move fluidly between devices and platforms, often within the same buying journey.
Programmatic maintains consistency across display, video, social, and mobile, creating a connected brand presence throughout the process. That continuity reinforces recognition, builds trust, and helps shoppers complete their purchase without friction.
Reducing Wasted Ad Spend
Black Friday can drain budgets quickly if spend isn’t carefully managed. Programmatic minimizes waste by suppressing irrelevant impressions and filtering out low-value clicks.
Through predictive allocation and automated controls, budgets are funneled into placements that are more likely to convert.
The result is stronger efficiency, even in a hyper-competitive bidding environment.
Data Insights and Campaign Adjustments
Programmatic doesn’t stop at delivery; it constantly measures impact. Insights into engagement, conversions, and audience response allow advertisers to refine their campaigns mid-flight.
Underperforming segments can be trimmed, creative can be swapped, and higher-performing channels can receive increased investment. Ongoing adjustments help campaigns stay aligned with consumer behavior as it evolves throughout the weekend.
Strategies for Black Friday Programmatic Campaigns
Pre-Black Friday Preparation
Effective campaigns start well before the holiday weekend. Building intent pools through retargeting, segmenting by past user behavior, and testing messaging in advance ensures ads are refined and ready when demand spikes.
Early engagement keeps brands visible while competitors are still warming up.
Day-of Execution
Black Friday itself is the decisive moment. Precision bidding concentrates resources on high-value audiences, while predictive budget allocation—based on historical data—ensures funds are deployed where they’re most likely to deliver returns.
The balance of targeting and allocation keeps campaigns sharp when competition is most intense.
Creative Strategy
Black Friday advertising lives or dies by its message. Dynamic pricing, urgency cues, and personalized offers help campaigns cut through the flood of promotions.
Customizing ads to reflect prior browsing, purchase intent, or category engagement allows messaging to feel relevant rather than repetitive, which is key to converting attention into sales.
Omnichannel Coordination
A shopper might begin exploring deals on their phone, compare products later on a tablet, and complete the purchase on a laptop.
Programmatic ties those touchpoints together, ensuring campaigns follow the customer journey seamlessly. A consistent experience across channels strengthens the path to purchase.
Preparing for Black Friday 2025
Measurement Framework
Defining KPIs such as cost-per-action, new customer acquisition, or lifetime value benchmarks before the holiday ensures campaigns are evaluated against meaningful outcomes.
With a framework in place, adjustments during the weekend become strategic refinements rather than reactive moves, keeping performance aligned with long-term business goals.
Testing and Optimization
Preparation doesn’t happen the week before, but months in advance. Creative variations, audience segmentation, and channel strategies should all be tested ahead of time to lock in what resonates.
By the time Black Friday arrives, campaigns are already fine-tuned.
Agility and Adaptation
Market dynamics shift quickly during the holiday season. Flexible campaign structures—built to allow creative swaps, audience adjustments, or budget reallocations—ensure advertisers can pivot in real time without losing momentum.
The brands that adapt fastest are often the ones that capture the most share.
The Multi-Day Opportunity
Black Friday is only the start. With the extended weekend projected to generate $75 billion in revenue and the average spending per shopper expected at $367 on Cyber Monday, advertisers that sustain their campaigns through all four days capture far more opportunity than those who treat it as a single-day sprint.
Programmatic makes that continuity possible, aligning campaigns with consumer intent across the entire shopping arc.
Maximize Your Holiday ROI with AI Programmatic Advertising
Black Friday is high stakes, high reward, and high competition. The sheer volume of shoppers, the magnitude of potential revenue, and the complexity of modern consumer behavior demand more than standard advertising tactics.
Work with KPAI to harness sophisticated programmatic strategies that ensure your brand stands out, engages the right audience, and maximizes returns during the holiday season. Don’t leave Black Friday to chance—turn data into dollars by booking a meeting with our team today.
