22/08/2025 • Ryan Hakeney
Getting the most out of Meta for Black Friday
Black Friday Article
TL;DR
Black Friday on Meta in 2025 is all about creative-first targeting and early preparation. Andromeda has shifted the game – your creative now drives who sees your ads, making format and angle testing months in advance essential.
Key actions for success:
- Start early – test formats (UGC, DPAs, lo-fi, high production) and angles (emotional vs. logical, urgency vs. value, social proof vs. authority) in September–October so Andromeda learns before peak.
- Warm your audience pre-peak – build intent with storytelling, education, and light offers so remarketing pools are primed.
- Optimise catalog match rates – keep product feeds clean, current, and fully attributed for stronger DPA performance.
- Nail your CAPI setup – maximise event match quality, integrate platforms, and ensure signal clarity for accurate optimisation.
- Use integrations and exclusions – protect budget by removing existing customers, loyalty segments, and irrelevant audiences.
- Plan stock and contingencies – ringfence inventory, prepare “back in stock” campaigns, and adjust feeds for margin and availability.
Get your creative, signals, and stock strategy right, and you’re not just playing in the auction – you’re leading it.
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Why Meta is still a Black Friday powerhouse
Meta has evolved from being an audience-targeting machine into a creative-first advertising platform – and that matters more than ever in 2025. With Facebook, Instagram, Reels, and Stories all under one roof, the platform still commands huge daily usage across key buying demographics.
Black Friday remains one of the most competitive times in the Meta auction, with costs per thousand impressions (CPMs) spiking sharply in Q4. The difference this year is that Meta’s latest AI – Andromeda – makes creative the main lever for targeting and performance.
For eCommerce brands, that means success isn’t just about “who” you target anymore. It’s about what you show them, and how quickly Meta can learn from your creative signals. But because everyone’s chasing the same attention, winning this period still comes down to early prep, tight execution, and precise optimisation.
Below are the strategies we’re implementing with clients in 2025 to help them cut through the noise, spend smart, and maximise sales during peak season.
Takeaway Tips
Start earlier than you think you need to
CPMs can double (or more) from early November onwards, and rarely drop again until after Christmas. The earlier you get in, the more impressions you buy at a lower cost, and the bigger your remarketing pools will be when Black Friday hits.
For 2025, we’re not just saying “start early” – we mean start testing early. Use September and October to run structured tests on creative formats:
- Lo-fi vs. high-production
- UGC vs. branded studio
- Static vs. motion-first
- Screenshots vs. product-in-use demos
- DPAs with lifestyle images vs. plain cut-outs.
As well as tests on creative angles:
- Emotional or logical triggers
- Social proof or authority
- Static reviews or video testimonials
- Benefits-driven or motivation-driven
- Short-term urgency or long-term value
- Resonant emotions or intense emotions.
By the time BFCM rolls around, you should already know which formats your audience prefers – and feed that into Andromeda so it has weeks of learning behind it.
In 2025, audience targeting on Meta is no longer your biggest lever. I barely spend any time at all thinking about ‘audience targeting’ in the traditional sense, thanks to Andromeda.
Andromeda optimises delivery based on creative performance, meaning your ad concepts now define who sees your ads.
That makes creative diversity essential:
- Different hooks for different motivators (price, exclusivity, quality, FOMO).
- Format variety so Meta can match styles to user behaviour.
- Clear testing plans where each creative concept has a measurable hypothesis.
It also makes thinking about your creative from a customer-first perspective essential. It’s serving based on what customers want to see. Not based on who Meta wants to give priority to. Of course, advertiser budget will override some of that to a degree, but there’s no point trying to control that.
Don’t throw £100 away because you think it should be £200, you know?
Think of creative like an engine – Andromeda can’t run without high-quality, varied fuel. And this creative testing you get done early, that is your targeting.
Educate and warm up your audience pre-peak
Meta’s AI works best when it already understands your customers. Running prospecting ads in September–October that educate users about your brand builds intent before your sale even starts.
In practice:
- Use storytelling ads to highlight your value proposition and problem-solving angle.
- Layer in emotional hooks – whether that’s quality, convenience, or status – to make your brand memorable.
- Retarget engaged users with lightweight offers or exclusive previews so they’re primed for your BFCM push.
Warmed audiences not only convert at a higher rate – they’re also cheaper to win in the auction compared to going cold during peak week.
Once you’ve got them warmed and primed early with those BFCM previews, so long as the problem-solution proposition and your offers are valuable enough for a large volume of people, watch the money print, right?
Maximise catalog match rates for DPAs
Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) remain a high performer for Black Friday – but only if your product feed is healthy. In 2025, the single biggest driver of DPA efficiency is catalog match rate.
Checklist for peak season:
- Audit your feed for missing or outdated product data.
- Ensure images meet Meta’s quality guidelines and aspect ratios.
- Ensure events have the necessary product attribute parameters so Andromeda can correctly match products to browsing behaviour.
Higher match rates mean those users you’ve warmed up are more likely to be shown to people with relevant intent, showing them the right products at the right time. Exactly the sort of ad personalisation Meta wants to see from you. Expect to be rewarded with printing money, right?
Nail your CAPI setup and signal quality
With privacy changes and cookie limitations, Meta’s performance now depends heavily on the quality of signals you send back. That’s where Conversions API (CAPI) and integrations come in.
For Black Friday prep:
- Ensure CAPI is implemented server-side, ideally integrated via your eCommerce platform or tag manager.
- Work with Meta’s Technical Pros (or your agency) if matching quality isn’t at least 8.0 on purchase events.
- Make sure advanced matching is turned on to send hashed customer data for better attribution.
- Link your CRM, email platform, and analytics tools so Meta gets a full view of the customer journey, where relevant.
The higher your match quality, the stronger your retargeting audiences, Andromeda learnings, and testing insights. There’s no point in doing all of that testing if you can’t clearly see the results as you’re only going to take incorrect insights away.
Use integrations and exclusions to stay efficient
Integrations aren’t just for tracking – they help you exclude the wrong audiences so the budget goes further.
For example:
- Sync your customer list to exclude existing purchasers from new-customer campaigns.
- Remove high-value loyalty segments from discount-heavy ads.
- Block internal traffic and irrelevant IPs from your attribution.
If you use Shopify, consider upgrading to Shopify+. Shopify audiences alone has made the upgrade worthwhile in our experience. It makes targeting for low-funnel, as well as excluding existing customers, super effective. We brought these audiences in for a construction eCommerce client when they were looking at the upgrade. The Meta account went from CAPI not being able to supply enough volume of data to retarget at all, to driving three-quarters of a million from less than $40k media spend.
Every wasted impression in Black Friday week is budget you can’t get back at peak-cost season. Exclusions keep your spending focused.
Know your stock and plan for contingencies
Stock planning is still crucial. For high-demand SKUs, consider:
- Ringfencing inventory ahead of time so your bestsellers don’t sell out before peak.
- Preparing two creative sets – one for active sales, one for “back in stock” lead capture if you run out.
- Adjusting your DPA feed to prioritise products with the best margin and availability.
This avoids frustrating customers and keeps your campaigns profitable, even if inventory moves faster than expected.
Final Thoughts
Black Friday is the most competitive week in the Meta auction all year – and in 2025, the winners will be the brands that adapt to a creative-first world. Audience lists and granular targeting still have their place, but Andromeda now rewards advertisers who bring variety, speed of learning, and signal clarity to the table.
The brands that test early, feed Meta a healthy mix of creative angles and formats, and keep their product feeds and event tracking in top condition will be the ones hitting their revenue goals before most have even launched their sale. Those who wait until November to “see what works” will simply be too late – paying more for impressions, fighting cold audiences, and missing the opportunity to dominate their category.
Your checklist going into Q4 should be simple but non-negotiable:
- Strong, diverse creative tested well before BFCM.
- Clean, up-to-date catalog data with high match rates.
- Accurate, high-quality event signals via CAPI and integrations.
- Tight exclusions and stock strategy to protect budget and maximise availability.
Black Friday on Meta is no longer about just showing up – it’s about showing up prepared, with every element of your campaign ready to work harder, faster, and smarter than your competition. Get that right, and you’re not just in the auction…you’re the one setting the pace.
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