Google Ads Promotion mode: how to set it up for Black Friday

Google Ads Promotion mode lets you schedule a 3 to 14 day window in which a Search or Performance Max campaign bids toward a lower target ROAS and, if you want, gets extra daily budget. When the window closes, the campaign goes back to its normal target and budget on its own. Google launched it in beta on June 15, 2026. For Black Friday, the setting that decides whether the extra sales make money is the ROAS tolerance, and the safe way to pick it is from your break-even ROAS at the discounted price.

What is Google Ads Promotion mode?

Google announced Promotion mode on June 15, 2026, in a package of bidding and budgeting updates. According to Google's announcement, it lets you schedule temporary changes to your ROAS tolerance and add extra daily budget during peak periods such as seasonal events, flash sales and product launches. The beta covers Search and Performance Max campaigns. It works with daily budgets, and the tolerance change can also be combined with campaign total budgets.

The window has a fixed length. Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Product Liaison, explained that the first step of the setup is choosing the start and end dates, for a period of 3 to 14 days, and that you don't need to come back to switch it off, as PPC Land reported on June 22, 2026.

The tolerance is the same mechanism Smart Bidding Exploration uses. It lowers the target the bidding system works toward. In Google's own example, a 200% target ROAS with a 10% tolerance gives an effective target of 180%. The tolerance is a share of the target, not a number of percentage points: 15% on a 400% target gives 340%, not 385%.

Which campaigns can use Promotion mode?

As of October 2026, Promotion mode is a beta for Search and Performance Max campaigns. Because the setting is built around a ROAS tolerance, it applies to campaigns bidding with a target ROAS. Standard Shopping campaigns are not part of the beta Google announced. Being a beta, it may not show up in every account; Google tells advertisers who want access to contact their account team.

For a store whose Shopping traffic runs through Performance Max with a Merchant Center feed, that covers most of the Black Friday spend. If you still run standard Shopping campaigns, the tools you have there are seasonality adjustments for Black Friday and planned budget changes.

How do you set up Promotion mode for Black Friday?

1. Fix your baseline target ROAS first. Once a promotion is active, Google Ads blocks edits to the target ROAS and only lets you change the tolerance, as Search Engine Roundtable reported on September 25, 2026. Since Google's August 17, 2026 bidding change, budget-limited campaigns also deliver closer to their stated target, so the baseline has to be the number you actually want. Our guide on updating target ROAS on PMax after the August 2026 bidding update covers how to audit it.
2. Open the campaign settings. Promotion mode sits in the campaign's settings, as shown in Google's announcement. Because it is a beta, labels can differ slightly between accounts.
3. Set the dates. Choose 3 to 14 days. Black Friday falls on November 27, 2026 and Cyber Monday on November 30, so a window from Thursday, November 26 to Tuesday, December 1 covers both in six days.
4. Set the ROAS tolerance. Work it out from your margins, as shown in the next section.
5. Add extra daily budget if you need it. It is optional. It is worth adding when the campaign is limited by budget or you expect demand well above its usual daily spend.
6. Save and record the dates in your Black Friday plan so nobody on the team tries to edit the target during the window. Our Black Friday Google Ads checklist has the full timeline up to Cyber Monday.

How much ROAS tolerance should you set?

Discount and tolerance push in the same direction. A discount lowers the margin on every sale, which raises the ROAS you need to break even. The tolerance lowers the ROAS the campaign aims for. Set both without checking and the campaign can buy sales that lose money.

Break-even ROAS is 1 divided by your margin after product costs: with a 40% margin, you need 250% to break even. Assuming your conversion value is the order value after the discount, a quick check is: maximum tolerance = 1 minus (break-even ROAS at the sale price divided by your normal target ROAS).

Here is a worked example with made-up numbers. A product sells for $100 and costs $60 to buy and ship, so the margin is 40% and break-even ROAS is 250%. The campaign's normal target ROAS is 500%. For Black Friday the product drops to $80 with a 20% discount. The margin falls to $20 on $80, or 25%, so break-even ROAS rises to 400%.

In this example, 20% is the ceiling, and 10 to 15% leaves room for the fact that the campaign won't land exactly on its target. Payment fees, returns and free shipping raise break-even further, so include them if you know them. A tolerance that goes below break-even can still make sense when Black Friday buyers are mostly new customers who come back and buy again, but base that call on your repeat-purchase data, not on the hope of volume.

Expect wide gaps between products. A deeply discounted item may have no safe tolerance at all, while a full-price bestseller may handle 20% easily. That is the main reason to keep promoted products in their own campaign, covered below.

How is Promotion mode different from seasonality adjustments?

Seasonality adjustments tell Smart Bidding to expect a change in conversion rate during a short event, and Google says they work best for events of 1 to 7 days. They leave your target unchanged. Promotion mode changes the target itself through the tolerance and can add budget. In the LinkedIn thread covered by PPC Land, Marvin confirmed the two work on different levers and can run at the same time. Google has not documented how they interact when both are active on the same dates.

For Black Friday, the choice comes down to intent. If you want to keep your target and let bids react to a spike in conversion rate, use a seasonality adjustment. If you have decided to trade some efficiency for more sales over a few days, use Promotion mode. Until you have tested both together in your account, avoid stacking them on the same campaign, since nobody outside Google knows how the two signals combine.

Which products and campaigns should run Promotion mode?

Promotion mode applies to the whole campaign. If a campaign mixes discounted products with full-price ones, the lower target applies to all of them, including items whose margin hasn't changed. Group the discounted products first: tag them with a custom label in Merchant Center, for example custom_label_0 set to bfcm_promo, and build a separate campaign or asset group on that label. Our comparison of custom labels and automated product bucketing explains the options. Then turn on Promotion mode only for the promo campaign and keep the full-price campaign at its normal target.

Keeping those labels current by hand across a large catalog is where most of the work goes. Clarmix's Product Labelizer labels SKUs every day as Profitable, High Potential, Low Potential, Costly, Zero Conversion or Zombies, based on clicks, target ROAS and cost per conversion, lets you add custom segments, and sends the labels to Merchant Center as custom labels through a supplemental feed.

Lowering the target only helps if shoppers can see the deal. Sale prices and Merchant Center promotions are what show up on the ad, as covered in our guide to price drops and promotions on Google Shopping.

What should you monitor during the promotion window?

• Spend against the budget. Compare daily spend with the normal daily budget plus the extra amount you added.
• Actual ROAS against the effective target, not against your usual target. In the example above, the campaign is on plan at 425%, even though that is below its normal 500%.
• Conversion value after discounts. Check that your tracking reports the order value shoppers actually paid. If it reports the full price, every ROAS figure during the sale is overstated.
• Product mix. Look at which SKUs take the extra spend. If low-margin items absorb it, lower the tolerance; it stays editable during the window.
• Channel mix in Performance Max. More budget can flow to YouTube, Display or Search rather than Shopping. Clarmix's PMax Insights dashboard shows spend outside Shopping, branded search terms and alerts.
• The end of the window. The campaign should return to its normal target and budget on its own. Check it the day after.

Frequently asked questions

Does Promotion mode turn itself off?

Yes. You set start and end dates when you create it, for a window of 3 to 14 days. When the end date passes, the campaign goes back to its normal target ROAS and budget without any action from you.

Can I change my target ROAS while Promotion mode is active?

No. Google Ads shows a message that the target ROAS can't be edited while Promotion mode is active and offers to edit the tolerance instead. Set the baseline target before the window starts.

Does Promotion mode work with standard Shopping campaigns?

Not in the beta Google announced in June 2026, which covers Search and Performance Max. For standard Shopping campaigns, use seasonality adjustments and planned budget changes for Black Friday.

Can I use Promotion mode and a seasonality adjustment on the same dates?

Google says both can run at the same time, but it has not documented how the two interact. Test the combination on a smaller campaign before relying on it for your main Black Friday campaigns.

Do I have to add extra daily budget?

No, it is optional. A lower target only produces more sales if the campaign has budget to spend, so add extra budget when the campaign is already limited by budget or demand is expected to rise sharply.

Sources

• Google, Bidding and Budgeting Updates to Scale Your Growth (June 15, 2026)
• Google Ads Help, Set up Smart Bidding Exploration
• Google Ads Help, About seasonality adjustments
• Google Ads Help, Changes to target based bid strategies
• PPC Land, Promotion mode is here: Google's Ginny Marvin explains what actually changed (June 22, 2026)
• Search Engine Roundtable, Google Ads Disables Target ROAS Edits While Promotion Mode Is Active (September 25, 2026)

Cover photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash.