Black Friday Google Ads 2026: A Six-Week Plan, With or Without PPC Campaign Management Services
Start your Black Friday ads in mid-October, not the week of the sale. Black Friday falls on 27 November 2026, and tracking checks, audiences, offer pages and ad approvals all take time, so six weeks is a realistic run-up for a small business.
This plan covers each week from mid-October to Black Friday, then December through to Boxing Day and what to switch off afterwards. You can follow it yourself or hand it to PPC campaign management services. PPC (pay-per-click) is advertising where you pay each time someone clicks your ad, mainly on Google and Meta (Facebook and Instagram).
Star Digital Marketing is a full-service digital marketing agency in Spring Hill, Brisbane, that works as an outsourced marketing department for small and medium businesses across Australia. Google and Meta ads management is one of our seven services, and this is the timeline we’d work to.
Why Black Friday ads need a six-week run-up
The sale weekend is short and competitive, so anything not ready beforehand costs money on the day. The Australian Retailers Association forecast $6.8 billion in spending over the 2025 Black Friday to Cyber Monday period, up 4% on the year before. [INSERT: the 2026 Black Friday to Cyber Monday spending forecast, if the ARA has published one by publication date, as one sentence with the figure, growth rate and source.]
Ad campaigns take weeks to optimise, and new campaigns and ads need review before they run.
The six-week Black Friday plan
Each week has one job. If you’re starting later than mid-October, do weeks 1 to 3 together first, because tracking, audiences and the offer page matter more than the ads.
Week | Dates (2026) | The job |
1 | 19–25 October | Check tracking and the account |
2 | 26 October–1 November | Build retargeting audiences and warm up your list |
3 | 2–8 November | Finalise the offer, the offer page and the website |
4 | 9–15 November | Build the campaigns and submit the ads |
5 | 16–22 November | Set budgets and pacing, and start awareness ads |
6 | 23–30 November | Run Black Friday to Cyber Monday and watch daily |
Week 1: Check tracking and the account
Before you spend more, make sure every sale and enquiry is being recorded. Conversion tracking records which clicks became purchases, calls or bookings, and both Google and Meta use it to decide where your money goes.
Place a test order or enquiry and confirm it shows up. Then check the search terms report and any automated settings switched on since you last looked.
Week 2: Build retargeting audiences and warm up your list
Retargeting means showing ads to people who have already visited your website or bought from you. Those audiences take time to fill, so they need to be running weeks before the sale.
Your customer list is the cheapest audience you have. Email it now with something useful, so your first message in sale week isn’t the first they’ve heard from you in months. Our email marketing service handles this for clients.
Two rules apply. Under the Spam Act 2003, marketing emails need the recipient’s consent, must identify you as the sender and must include a working unsubscribe, as the ACMA explains. And uploading a customer list to Google or Meta for targeting involves personal information, so privacy obligations may apply. The OAIC’s Australian Privacy Principles are the place to start, and your own adviser can tell you how they apply.
Week 3: Finalise the offer, the offer page and the website
Decide the offer, then build one page for it. A landing page is the page someone arrives on after clicking an ad, and for a sale it should show the offer, the end date and the way to buy without scrolling.
Our copywriting team writes offer pages and ads that match each other. Discount claims must be accurate: under Australian Consumer Law, a “was” price or a percentage off has to be genuine, and the ACCC publishes guidance on sale pricing.
Then check the website can cope. Run a full purchase on a phone, check page speed, and ask your host whether your plan handles a traffic spike. Our website hosting and security service covers this for clients, because a slow or offline site wastes every click you’ve paid for.
Short on time for weeks 1 to 3? Call 1300 859 066 or email sales@stardigitalmarketing.com.au and tell us where you’re up to.
Week 4: Build the campaigns and submit the ads
Build the sale campaigns now, with start and end dates set in advance. Submitting early leaves time for review and for fixing anything that’s rejected.
Write ads for three phases: early access, the sale itself and last chance. Set the end dates so nothing keeps running with sale wording once the offer has finished.
Week 5: Set budgets and pacing, and start awareness ads
Set a total sale budget and split it across the days, with the largest share on the days you expect most buying. Start a modest awareness campaign on Meta to fill your retargeting audiences before the sale opens. Organic social posts help here too, at no cost per click.
Week 6: Run Black Friday to Cyber Monday and watch daily
From Black Friday on 27 November to Cyber Monday on 30 November, check spend, sales and stock every day. Pause ads for anything that sells out, and move budget toward what’s converting.
Do ad costs go up before Christmas in Australia?
Usually, yes. Clicks are priced in an auction, so when more businesses compete for the same searches and audiences, each click tends to cost more. That’s one more reason to build audiences early, while clicks are cheaper, and spend the bulk of the budget on people who already know you.
How much should a small business spend on Christmas advertising?
Work out your Christmas advertising budget from what a sale is worth to you, not from a percentage someone else uses. There’s no single right figure for every business.
A worked example, purely to show the arithmetic: if an average order brings you $40 in gross profit and you’d accept spending half of that on ads, each sale can cost up to $20. If you want 100 extra orders over the period, that’s a ceiling of about $2,000 in ad spend. Those figures are illustrative only.
Then check capacity. If you can only pack or service so many orders a day, size the budget to that, so you don’t pay for sales you can’t fulfil. We ask that question before we suggest what to spend.
Want a budget and a plan for your business? Book a free strategy call and quote, or call 1300 859 066. The call runs 30 minutes with no obligation, and you get a written action plan to keep whether or not you go ahead.
Should I run Google or Meta ads for Black Friday?
Most retailers benefit from both, used for different jobs. Google Search ads reach people already looking for what you sell, so they suit buyers ready to purchase. Meta ads reach people who weren’t searching, and they’re strong for visual products and for retargeting people who visited your site.
Google Search ads | Meta ads | |
Suits | People searching for your product or service | Visual products, reaching new people and retargeting |
When to start | Campaign ready by week 4 | Awareness from week 5, retargeting audiences from week 2 |
Watch for | Rising cost per click on competitive searches | Ad fatigue when the same people see the same ad |
December to Boxing Day
After Cyber Monday, shift from discount messaging to gift messaging. Promote your own last order date for delivery before Christmas, then switch to gift cards and click-and-collect if you offer them.
Boxing Day on 26 December is a second sale for many retailers. If you’re running one, set up its ads in early December with fixed start and end dates, the same way as week 4.
What should I do with my ads after Boxing Day?
Switch off every ad, extension and page that mentions a sale that has ended, and return budgets to normal levels. Then keep what you built.
- Switch off: sale ads, countdowns, sale prices in ad text, temporary budget increases and seasonal campaigns.
- Keep: retargeting audiences, new email subscribers (with consent), and the search terms that converted.
- Review: what each channel cost per sale, so next year’s plan starts from your own figures.
When to bring in PPC campaign management services
Bring in PPC campaign management services when you can’t fit this plan around running the business, or when last year’s sale spend produced sales you couldn’t trace.
If you’ve been let down by an agency before, ask who owns the ad accounts and what the report shows. Our clients own their ad accounts, analytics, domain and website. Our monthly report is a short plain-English summary of what we did, what it produced and what’s next. And we tailor the work instead of selling bronze, silver and gold packages, so a small retailer isn’t paying for a plan built for a big one.
Plan your Black Friday and Christmas ads with us
The first conversation is diagnostic. We ask what a customer is worth, how many more orders you can handle and where your sales come from now. Then we tell you which parts of this plan are worth doing this year.
Book a free strategy call and quote, call 1300 859 066, or email sales@stardigitalmarketing.com.au. It’s 30 minutes with no obligation, followed by a written, plain-English action plan that’s yours to keep whether or not you proceed.