Black Friday week has long been treated as the moment when ad prices spike and returns vanish. New data from Billy Grace challenges that playbook—at least on the metric that matters most.
Pricier impressions, cheaper orders
Billy Grace’s 2026 Black Friday Playbook, published September 22, pulled aggregated first-party data from ecommerce and omnichannel advertisers between September 1 and December 31, 2025. The median CPM sat around EUR 6.50 through September and October, then climbed to EUR 8.83 during Black Friday week, defined as November 24 to December 1. That is about 36% above the autumn baseline.
But the median cost per order moved the opposite way, dropping roughly 18% below the pre-peak runway—the lowest weekly figure in the four-month window. Median return on ad spend rose about 26% into the peak week. On Black Friday itself, the median advertiser recorded 30 orders at a median cost of EUR 27.10, about 29% cheaper than quieter days in the same week.
The report credits conversion: “More expensive impressions still produced cheaper orders, because a larger share of those impressions turned into purchases.”
Attribution is the real story
The headline result is not cost; it is measurement. Under last-click attribution, six of nine paid channels—Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat and Reddit—read as loss-making during Black Friday week. Under Billy Grace’s unified marketing measurement, every one of them clears break-even.
The gap is large. UMM credits Pinterest with 9.2 times the peak-week revenue that last-click does, followed by Reddit at 7.8 times, YouTube at 7.4 times, TikTok at 4.5 times, Meta at 2.2 times and Snapchat at 2.0 times. Google and Bing barely move because they already capture the final click.
Channel inflation was uneven. Social and video prices rose hardest:
- Snapchat CPM: +72% versus the runway
- YouTube CPM: +51%
- Meta and TikTok CPM: +45% each
- Google CPM: +22%, the smallest rise charted
Steven Marsé, Insights Manager at Billy Grace, argues: “If you’re planning 2026 budgets on last-click numbers, you’re planning against the wrong picture.”
What marketers should do
For 2026 planning, the playbook recommends having first-party tracking and UMM live before November, funding upper-funnel and video activity early, and locking creative and budgets in the first half of November. During Black Friday week, steer on cost per order or ROAS rather than CPM, adapt return floors so bidding is not starved, and protect social and video budgets.
New customers made up about 66% of Black Friday–Cyber Monday orders. That strengthens the case for a pre-Christmas retention push: keep video running and trigger flows for first-time buyers.
One caveat for operators: the playbook’s calendar still shows 2025 dates. Black Friday 2026 falls on November 27, so the equivalent week is November 23–30.
Source: PPC Land
