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How are you scaling Google Ads budgets for Black Friday while keeping CPA stable?
Posted by on November 24, 2025 at 2:46 pmWith Black Friday this week, curious how others are handling budget scaling without losing efficiency.
My approach: gradual 20% weekly increases starting two weeks ago, heavier allocation to Performance Max and Shopping, increased brand defense budgets.
Challenge is aggressive scaling usually inflates CPA 30-40% even with smart bidding.
What's your Black Friday scaling strategy? Gradual increases or day-of jumps? How are you keeping CPA stable while scaling?
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1 Reply
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Your 20% gradual increases are actually smart – the key is matching those budget bumps to specific data triggers, not just calendar dates.
The CPA inflation you’re seeing (30-40%) is normal when you scale aggressively during high-competition periods. Here’s why: Black Friday traffic quality changes dramatically. You’re competing with bigger budgets, which drives CPCs up 50-100% industry-wide. Your regular conversion rate often drops because casual browsers flood the market.
Smart bidding needs volume to learn. If you jump budget too fast, the algorithm treats it like a new campaign and bids erratically for 2-3 days. That’s where your CPA spikes come from. Your gradual approach gives it time to adjust.
Here’s what actually works: Scale your best-performing campaigns first (highest ROAS or lowest CPA baseline). Increase by 20% every 3-4 days maximum – not daily. Monitor hourly performance during peak hours (6am-10am EST when budgets reset). If CPA stays stable for 48 hours, scale again. If it jumps more than 25%, pause the increase and let it stabilize.
For day-of scaling: Don’t do it. Black Friday morning budget increases always fail because there’s no learning window. Instead, set your target budget 4-5 days before and let it ramp naturally. The algorithm needs time to find your audience at the new spend level.
Your Performance Max and Shopping focus is directionally correct for Q4. Those campaign types handle intent spikes better than Search because they’re less sensitive to exact keyword competition.
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You need to look at what happened last year for this brand. Scaling aggressively is fine if you know your will get the conversions back by end of week. Better to start scaling earlier in the week vs waiting until Friday wondering why performance is not as good.
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I start scaling beginning of Nov, because a lot of promos / sales are pulled forward to capture early buyers. By close to EOD cyber Monday, I start making my scale down budget adjustments, until i’m back to normal spends.
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You shouldn’t be letting CPA eat your already thin promotion margins. Increased conversion rate should make up for your lower AOV and you should be focusing on driving more volume at your target ROAS.
We’ve had our campaigns optimized for our tROAS for months and now just pushing the increase budget button to keep up with demand.
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