What is the best Black Friday e-commerce strategy? Here's what insider platform data reveals

The strongest Black Friday e-commerce strategy isn't a single tactic; it's matching budget to where performance actually holds up under pressure, not to where everyone assumes the volume is.

That's the short answer. The longer one comes from real BFCM 2025 activity across CMT's commerce media platform, which tells a different story than the usual planning assumptions: that Coupons drive the day, that Black Friday itself is the peak, and that bigger budgets automatically win.

Spend, conversion, and delivery moved independently across placement types, days, and devices, and some of the placements most associated with Black Friday weren't the strongest performers. This piece breaks down what actually happened during BFCM 2025 on CMT, using platform data rather than assumptions, to help brands, retailers, and agencies plan 2026 budgets around what's proven to work.

Key terms in this article

Commerce media

Advertising placed across the retail and commerce ecosystem, including coupon sites, deals pages, marketplaces, and other placements tied directly to purchase intent.

Win ratio

The share of won ad auctions that convert into delivered impressions or clicks.

BNPL placements

Ad inventory tied to Buy Now, Pay Later checkout flows and messaging.

Black Friday advertising timing: when to launch, and where budget shifts as peak season nears

How early should e-commerce brands start their Black Friday campaigns?

In short: two weeks before Black Friday, not the week of. On CMT, daily data shows volume already running 35% above baseline and spend up 15% between November 10 and 23, a full two weeks before the Black Friday weekend itself. Brands treating Black Friday week as the starting line are already behind a market that shifted into a higher gear well before that.

Should e-commerce brands shift budget to mobile for Black Friday?

It seems like the answer is yes, but only briefly. On CMT, mobile's share of spend peaked during Black Friday weekend at just over 60%, then pulled back for Cyber Monday as shoppers moved back to desktop. Mobile pricing ran above desktop throughout the period, and that gap was widest during Black Friday weekend itself. Brands leaning mobile-heavy for the entire BFCM window may want to reassess once Cyber Monday shifts behavior back to desktop.

Black Friday media buying: what converts, and the shopper behavior driving it

Which ad placements perform the best during Black Friday?

Timing and cost only tell part of the story. The rest comes down to matching budget to what actually performs, not to what everyone assumes performs.

On CMT, the Coupon inventory, the category most associated with Black Friday, grew the slowest of any expanding placement type during peak and lost roughly a quarter of its overall share. The categories that grew fastest were Deals, Buy Now Pay Later, and Email. Growth alone doesn't tell the full story, though, which is where the real planning opportunity sits.

Why does interest in general sales spike so much harder than everyday shopping intent?

Year-round data outside the BFCM window shows two shopping behaviors that move very differently:

• Deeplink traffic (a shopper who already knows what they want and navigates straight there) stayed remarkably steady over six months, moving by only a few percentage points.
• Commerce media inventory tied to general brand and sale interest shrank in overall volume, but converted much better on what remained.

The likely explanation is behavioral. A shopper using Deeplink is acting on a decision already made, steady year-round. A shopper responding through commerce media inventory is reacting to something happening right now, closer to an impulse.

That second behavior is a large part of BFCM peak season: commerce media interest surges because Black Friday and Cyber Monday manufacture that "something's happening now" trigger at a scale the rest of the year doesn't. For 2026 planning, budget for a genuine spike in this kind of impulse-driven interest during BFCM, not just a proportional bump on normal months.

Where's the room to buy smarter during Black Friday?

Not every category that got more budget made the most of it. On CMT, Deals inventory was among the fastest-growing placement types by spend, and pricing rose sharply alongside it, while conversion softened as volume scaled quickly.

It’s a useful reminder that the categories attracting the most budget aren't automatically the most efficient. A few other fast-growing categories saw a similar pattern. On the flip side, categories like commerce content and knowledge panel placements held pricing steady while conversion actually improved, pointing to where 2026 budgets could work harder rather than just bigger.

Should e-commerce brands buy Deals inventory during Black Friday?

Not necessarily at peak. The better move is testing it before peak arrives, then setting a hard ceiling once Black Friday demand kicks in.

Outside the BFCM window, deals inventory on CMT converted roughly four times better than coupon inventory, a gap wide enough to make it worth buying deliberately rather than out of habit. That edge didn't survive contact with peak season, though. Deals was among the fastest-growing placement types in BFCM 2025, expanding to 5.41x baseline spend, and as budget poured in, the conversion rate fell.

The lesson isn't that Deals inventory is a hidden gem worth overhauling budgets for. It remains a small slice of overall inventory, and it still draws one of the lowest levels of bidding attention of any placement type on CMT. The window to capture that value sits before peak, not during it. For 2026, that means testing deals inventory during the ramp-up weeks and setting a firm ceiling on what you're willing to pay for it once Black Friday demand arrives.

Why does Buy Now, Pay Later matter so much more during Black Friday?

Buy Now, Pay Later placements aren't bought evenly across categories. On CMT, spend concentrates almost entirely in categories built around bigger, more considered purchases:

Based on CMT platform data from August 2026.

The likely reason is straightforward: financing options matter most when the basket is big enough that spreading out payment changes the decision. BFCM is exactly the moment when basket sizes tend to climb, as shoppers consolidate bigger purchases or buy higher-ticket items they'd been waiting to justify.

That makes BNPL placements worth planning for deliberately heading into Black Friday, not as a niche add-on, but as a channel that becomes more relevant precisely because shoppers are making bigger decisions. One caveat: this stays a narrow, premium-priced channel rather than a high-volume one, so it's a category to plan intentionally around rather than expect mass reach from.

Closing

BFCM 2025 rewarded precision over assumption. On CMT, the categories everyone associates with Black Friday weren't the ones that performed best, and spend size alone didn't guarantee efficiency. CMT's Ad Exchange gives brands, retailers, and agencies direct access to real-time peak season data like this, so 2026 budgets can be built around what actually converts rather than what usually gets repeated.