Black Friday 2026 Google Ads checklist for online stores

Black Friday falls on Friday, November 27, 2026, and Cyber Monday on November 30 (Universal Time Date). To get Google Ads ready, most of the work happens before November: choose your offer and check each product's price history now, fix your Google Merchant Center feed (the product data behind your Shopping ads) and shipping settings in early November, submit promotions at least 24 hours before they start, then raise budgets and add a seasonality adjustment for the main sale days only.

When should you start preparing Google Ads for Black Friday 2026?

Earlier than most stores expect. Your price history decides whether Google shows your discount, and ads and promotions need time to be reviewed.

How do you choose a Black Friday offer for Google Shopping?

Start with the result you want, then pick the format. Choosing a discount first and deciding what it should achieve afterward is a common mistake.

• More orders: stores built on one-time purchases often want more first orders. A straight percentage or fixed amount off is the simplest option.
• Bigger baskets: stores with lower-priced products may care more about average order value. A tiered discount, such as 20% off three products and 30% off four or more, rewards larger orders.
• Loyalty: brands with frequent repeat purchases can reserve an offer, or early access, for existing customers.
• Urgency: a flash sale concentrates the offer into one day or one afternoon, on one product or category, with a clear end time.

Then set the length of the event. Some sectors start a "Black Month" on November 1. Many stores run a Black Week with the strongest offer from Friday to Sunday, continue on Cyber Monday, and keep lighter discounts through Cyber Week before Christmas delivery deadlines take over.

The format also decides how the offer reaches Google. A straight price cut goes into the feed as a sale price. A coupon code or a condition on the order, such as a minimum spend, is a promotion.

How do reference prices affect your Black Friday discount?

A reference price is the "was" price shoppers compare your deal against. In Google Shopping it can appear as a crossed-out price next to the sale price, called a sale price annotation. Google's display rules and the law both apply to it, and meeting one does not guarantee the other. Plan the discount and the price calendar together.

What Google needs before it shows a crossed-out price

According to Google's page on sale price annotations (as of October 2026):

• The discount must be greater than 5% and less than 90%.
• Your product page must show both the regular price and the sale price.
• For Shopping ads in the US, the regular price must have been charged for 5 days within the past 30 days, or 15 days within the past 200 days.
• For Shopping ads in the UK, the regular price must have been valid for 30 days within the past 200 days.
• Even then, the annotation is not guaranteed, and Google regularly checks the sale price against your website.

Separately, Google may add a "price drop" badge on its own when your price falls significantly below the average price you listed over the previous 60 days (Google Merchant Center Help). Shoppers can also track prices themselves, as explained in our guide to price drops and price tracking on Google Shopping.

What the law expects from a "was" price

• US: the FTC's guides treat a former price as a legitimate comparison when it is the "actual, bona fide price at which the article was offered to the public on a regular basis" (16 CFR 233.1).
• UK: on July 30, 2026, the High Court refused the Competition and Markets Authority's request to impose a fixed sales-ratio rule on reference prices in its case against Emma mattresses, calling a reference price's genuineness "a multi-factorial question". The CMA has temporarily withdrawn its guidance (Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer).
• EU, if you also sell there: a price reduction must be calculated from the lowest price you applied in the 30 days before it (Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer on the EU Court of Justice ruling).

This is not legal advice: check the rules for each market with your legal adviser.

A worked example: an earlier sale follows you

A padel racket normally sells for $70. On day 15, a promotion lowers it to $56. On day 29, the price goes back to $70, and the Black Friday sale starts on day 30.

Under the EU rule, the reference price for the Black Friday discount is $56, the lowest price in the previous 30 days, and putting the price back to $70 doesn't reset it. Google's US rule would still accept $70 as the regular price, because it was charged on at least 5 of the past 30 days. That gap is why you check both sets of rules.

The practical step: count back 30 days from the day each offer starts and review every price change in that window.

Avoid creating new product references just to get around price history. It adds work, starts the product's advertising history from zero and is not a safe default.

Should you use sale prices or Merchant Center promotions?

Use a sale price for a straight price cut, and a promotion for an offer with a condition, such as a code, a minimum spend or a free gift. Google says sale prices shouldn't be submitted as promotions.

How to set up sale prices

Keep the regular price in price, put the discounted price in sale_price, and add sale_price_effective_date with start and end times and a time zone, for example 2026-11-27T00:00-0500/2026-11-30T23:59-0500. Without a time zone Google uses UTC, and without a time the sale starts at midnight (sale price effective date). With the dates set in advance, nobody has to change prices by hand at midnight.

How to set up promotions in time

A promotion needs a promotion_id, the products it covers, whether a code is required, a title of up to 60 characters and its start and end dates, among other fields. Promotions show in 13 countries, including the US and the UK, and can run for up to 183 days (promotions data specification).

Google recommends submitting promotions at least 24 hours before they start, during business hours from Monday to Friday. Review usually finishes within 12 hours of the start time but can take up to 24 hours (promotion status FAQ). For a Black Week starting Monday, November 23, submit by Friday, November 20. With Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 26, don't leave a Black Friday promotion until that week.

One 2026 change to check: since October 12, Google Ads can pull discounts from your website into promotion assets for Search and Performance Max campaigns that have location assets and no promotion asset of their own. It is on by default, and you can turn it off under Automated Promotions in the account-level automated assets settings (PPC Land, October 6, 2026). If it applies to you, make sure what it shows matches your real offer.

What should you check in Merchant Center before Black Friday?

1. Fix disapproved products. Clear product errors before the rush. A discount that doesn't match your site can also lead to misrepresentation problems, covered in why Merchant Center accounts get suspended.
2. Keep promotional words out of titles. Google's title specification says "Don't include promotional text" and puts sale prices and dates in other attributes. Spend the time on enriching your product titles instead.
3. Check stock on promoted products. Make sure availability matches your site, and decide in advance what happens when a product sells out.
4. Set your order cut-off and handling time. Google estimates delivery from your maximum handling days plus maximum transit days. Orders after your cut-off time, 8:00 a.m. PST by default, get an extra business day, and Google adds another day when handling or transit overlaps a holiday such as Thanksgiving (estimated delivery time). These estimates can appear in your ads.
5. Label the products you promote. Custom labels (custom_label_0 to custom_label_4) are tags for grouping products in campaigns. A "black-friday" label lets promoted products get their own campaign or asset group (a set of products and ads inside a Performance Max campaign) and budget. See how custom labels and labelizers work.

Choosing which products to push is easier with performance data than with gut feel. Clarmix's product labelizer labels every SKU daily as Profitable, High Potential, Low Potential, Costly, Zero Conversion or Zombies, based on clicks, target ROAS and cost per conversion, and sends the labels to Merchant Center as custom labels through a supplemental feed.

How should you set budgets and bids for Black Friday?

Raise budgets before the weekend, not during it. Your average daily budget is what you plan to spend per day on a campaign: Google can spend up to twice that on a busy day, but no more than 30.4 times it over a month (Google Ads Help). A campaign that already runs out of budget on a normal day will run out much earlier on Black Friday.

Smart Bidding is Google's automated bidding, based on your conversion data. Target ROAS aims for a set revenue per dollar spent, and target CPA for a set cost per conversion. A seasonality adjustment tells Smart Bidding to expect a temporary change in conversion rate between two dates. Because Smart Bidding already accounts for seasonal patterns, Google advises using one only when you expect a major change in conversion rate (about seasonality adjustments):

• Adjustments are ideal for events of 1 to 7 days and may not work as well beyond 14 days. A four-day Black Friday to Cyber Monday window fits; a month-long Black Month does not.
• They work on Search, Shopping, Demand Gen and Display campaigns using target ROAS or target CPA, and on Performance Max with all bid strategies.
• No negative adjustment is needed when the sale ends.

If you plan to change target ROAS, do it before the sale week rather than on top of a seasonality adjustment. Our guide on updating target ROAS after Google's August 2026 bidding update covers how to set it.

What should you watch during Black Friday weekend?

• Budget status: campaigns holding promoted products that show "Limited by budget".
• Disapprovals and price mismatches: Google checks sale prices against your website, so a price changed on the site but not in the feed can block products.
• Stock: exclude products that sell out, for example by changing their custom label.
• Promotion status: confirm each promotion is approved and live under Marketing, then Promotions.
• Where Performance Max spends: Performance Max (PMax) campaigns can spend on YouTube, Search and Display as well as Shopping, one of the common Performance Max mistakes.

For that last point, Clarmix PMax Insights shows how much of each Performance Max campaign goes outside Shopping, with branded search terms and alerts, so you can spot a shift during the weekend rather than after it.

What should you do after Cyber Monday?

• Check that sale prices ended on time and every promotion has expired.
• Leave seasonality adjustments alone: no correction is needed afterward.
• Update order cut-offs and delivery settings as Christmas approaches.
• Review which promoted products sold at a profitable ROAS and update your labels.

Black Friday Google Ads checklist

1. Choose the result you want: more orders, bigger baskets or loyalty.
2. Pick the offer format and the length of the event.
3. Count back 30 days from each start date and review every price change.
4. Fix disapproved products and keep promotional words out of titles.
5. Check stock, order cut-off times and handling times.
6. Label promoted products and give them their own budget.
7. Load sale_price with sale_price_effective_date for straight price cuts.
8. Submit promotions at least 24 hours before they start, on a weekday, and check Google's automated promotions.
9. Raise budgets before the weekend and add a seasonality adjustment for the peak days only.
10. Watch budgets, disapprovals, stock and Performance Max spend, then close out the sale and review results by product.

Frequently asked questions

Can I add "Black Friday" to my product titles?

No. Google's title specification says not to include promotional text, sale prices or sale dates in titles, and products that don't meet the title rules can be disapproved. Put the discount in sale_price or a promotion.

How long does Google take to approve a Merchant Center promotion?

Review usually finishes within 12 hours of the promotion's start time, but it can take up to 24 hours. Google recommends submitting at least 24 hours ahead, during business hours from Monday to Friday.

Why isn't my sale price showing as a crossed-out price?

The usual reasons are a discount outside the 5% to 90% range, a regular price that wasn't charged for long enough, or a product page that doesn't show both prices. Even when everything is in place, Google doesn't guarantee the annotation.

Can a promotion run for the whole of November?

Yes: Merchant Center promotions can run for up to 183 days. A long sale does shorten the time your regular price was charged, which can limit the reference price you can show next time.

Sources

• When is Black Friday 2026? (Universal Time Date)
• About sale price annotations (Google Merchant Center Help)
• About price drop annotations (Google Merchant Center Help)
• Sale price effective date (Google Merchant Center Help)
• Promotions data specification (Google Merchant Center Help)
• Frequently asked questions about promotion status (Google Merchant Center Help)
• Title specification (Google Merchant Center Help)
• Set up estimated delivery time (Google Merchant Center Help)
• About the ad review process (Google Ads Help)
• About overdelivery and your average daily budget (Google Ads Help)
• About seasonality adjustments (Google Ads Help)
• Google Ads will auto-apply website coupons to some campaigns from October 12 (PPC Land)
• 16 CFR 233.1, Former price comparisons (eCFR)
• High Court rejects CMA's fixed volume requirement for reference pricing (Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer)
• CJEU confirms price reduction claims must be based on lowest price in last 30 days (Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer)

Cover photo by 愚木混株 Yumu on Unsplash.