Is Your Black Friday Ad Spend Actually Driving More Sales?

[00:00:00] Luke: the whole idea here is, like, based on- All of our understandings of what's most impactful to altering the trajectory of the business, right?

[00:00:10] What are the, what are the set of activities and investments to focus on o- over the course of these time periods? And specifically, we're focusing on, focusing on Black Friday, Cyber Monday as the sort of like con- this, this microcosm right now. So what-- Based on all these signals what are the activities that are, that produce the highest leverage and impact the most growth for brands that we're seeing?

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[00:01:26] Richard: Hey, folks. Welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffan, director of digital product strategy here at Common Thread Collective, and I'm joined again back in the studio by Mr. Luke Austin, who is our president here at Common Thread Collective, we're gonna dig in a little bit deeper into some of the stuff we talked about yesterday around the new kind of paradigm of the intra-day offer that we sort of predict is going-- or we know will sort of be kind of the main event in this upcoming BFCM period here.

[00:01:53] So we're gonna dig into that a little bit more, but first off, as always, Luke, how are you doing today, man?

[00:01:57] Luke: I'm, I'm doing great. Yeah. I'm, I'm doing great. We're in this-- We live in this this, this environment, I think. We were just talking before the podcast a bit about some of these predictions and ideas that we're chatting through, and last night until, I don't know, 7:30 or 8:00 PM, we had someone doing a TikTok Live in here.

[00:02:13] Yep. And then we had another conversation going on, and then we have a Black Friday, Cyber Monday sort of Q4 boot camp planning workshop happening tomorrow. And so it's interesting to see these things converge in, in real time and then look out at the future and try to think, "Okay, what does this, what does this mean for brands out there?"

[00:02:27] So we got some, we got some you know, semi-wild ideas, I guess. I won't oversell it. Yeah. But some of the, some of the things that we see are converging and it's, it's fun to, it's fun to try to live in a, live, you know, a couple steps ahead and see- Yeah ... see what could come to fruition over these coming weeks.

[00:02:42] Richard: Yeah, and that's basically what we're gonna talk about today, which is staying a couple steps ahead of a world that is rapidly changing and ground that is constantly shifting, and that's, that's kind of the theme of what we discussed yesterday, which was kind of Luke broke down for us the intra-day offer what do we call it?

[00:02:56] Phenomenon, I guess, which is the idea that, like, across the course of the day, you're changing your offer so that there's a new marketing moment, these sort of micro-marketing moments, as you would do with a broader calendar within the course of just the Cyber Monday weekend. Or sorry, BFCM weekend. Yeah.

[00:03:11] So what we wanna unpack here is a little bit more about what we think the implications of that are, or the potential things to be aware of as we move into BFCM and kind of the impact the, the intra-day offer phenomenon's gonna have. So what we talked about sort of the three or the two maybe prongs that come off of this are clarity on incrementality, so overall, like the broader awareness amongst sophisticated brands at least of incrementality and how that's going to affect the weekend.

[00:03:41] But then also what content might look like given this sort of intra-day offer thing. So let's start with the first one, talking about the impact of sort of the broad understanding of incrementality on 2026.

[00:03:52] Luke: Yeah. So I think the whole idea here is, like, based on- All of our understandings of what's most impactful to altering the trajectory of the business, right?

[00:04:04] What are the, what are the set of activities and investments to focus on o- over the course of these time periods? And specifically, we're focusing on, focusing on Black Friday, Cyber Monday as the sort of like con- this, this microcosm right now. So what-- Based on all these signals, what are the, what are the activities that are, that produce the highest leverage and impact the most growth for brands that we're seeing?

[00:04:22] And I think, so, so part of this is connected, and we chatted about this in a previous episode, to like you have creative output, you have media spend, you have your marketing calendar, you have your offer design and how do all these things rank in terms of impacting the outcome of the business? I think-- So, so first thing, I think this year we're gonna see more and more brands running conversion lift and/or incrementality tests over the course of the Black Friday, Cyber Monday period.

[00:04:44] We're seeing this more and more over the course of a sale period, so Fourth of July or Labor Day or and to understand what is the incrementality of my media spend in a specific moment in time that is, that has very different consumer behavior- Mm-hmm ... than a, than a normal time period. We, we ran Some of these tests for a handful of our brands last year.

[00:05:02] There's a there's a apprehension, I think, from most folks about, like, doing s- any sort of holdout, whether it be geo or user-based during a time period like this. Yeah. What I would just contend is and, and especially in a conversion lift study, it's a user-based holdout, and it's y- you need to hold out a m- a l- much lower percentage than you would in a geo holdout in terms of the total impact.

[00:05:23] And what we've seen from a h- the handful of tests that we've run during these, during these time periods is you get a really different read on your incrementality factor than you would in a normal time period. Which directly in- in- influences the raw start you need to run your media spend at and the the amount of y- you know, the true incremental impact of your media spend that can have really consequential impacts on how much media spend you decide to allocate to each platform during this time period.

[00:05:48] So we're gonna see-- We're, we're doing more and more of that this year. We're gonna see that done more and more, and we're gonna see this, this idea of, like, the, the-- how we understand incrementality in these specific time periods influencing the ROAS targets and the media spend just get more just get, just get more normalized in that way.

[00:06:05] And as a result of that, what that's going to lead to for most, most brands is not, okay, great, I can spend-- Let's say I get a, a much lower incrementality factor on my meta media spend, so my ROAS target needs to be twice as high, so I'm gonna go pocket that media spend, right? Like, what we're all gonna think about, how do we redeploy those dollars to be able to drive more growth for the, for the business?

[00:06:27] Which, which then gets us into s- I think some of these other areas of what, okay, what are the high- what are the higher- highest impact levers that we can redeploy that media spend in? But we're gonna see more and more brands run these tests, get much clearer views of incrementality in these in these promotional periods, especially a, a time period like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, where the impact of your media spend is drastically different than, than it is in a typical

[00:06:47] Richard: time frame.

[00:06:47] Luke: Yeah.

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[00:07:32] Richard: Okay, a couple follow-on questions on that. One is, so for brands, let's say, who are, and you spoke to this a little bit, but brands who are hesitant about Running something like geo holdout test during a period like B- Black Friday. What's your pitch for why it's important to potentially give up some of that revenue?

[00:07:53] Luke: So if if what we have been seeing across the test that we've run is that there's like marginal or incremental differences- Mm-hmm ... right? Like, oh, yeah, you're running incrementality test and, like, your-- the iROAS read or the incrementality factor is like 5, 10% different even, like, I, I would say potentially not worth the risk.

[00:08:11] But we're-- that's not what we're seeing. We're seeing like- Yeah ... it's 30, 40, 50% variation in, in some direction against your normal, your normal,

[00:08:18] Richard: Right ...

[00:08:18] Luke: read of that channel. And in that case, there's s- there's so much opportunity in either direction if you're getting that wide of an error bar that r- that it's going to make up, that's going to make up for any potential impact of, of- Yeah

[00:08:31] holding out. In a user base holdout, in a conversion lift mechanism, like you aren't-- there, there isn't really a lot of opportunity cost-

[00:08:36] Richard: Yeah ...

[00:08:36] Luke: to be, to be honest, 'cause there's a lot of users on Meta.

[00:08:40] Richard: Right. Yeah, of course. And then so it's not a huge sacrifice, but the potential upside of it is huge, like an- Yes

[00:08:45] understanding that like let's say it's like a 50% or whatever, I mean like a .5 let's say.

[00:08:51] Luke: Yep.

[00:08:52] Richard: A lift in incrementality, then that means that you're returning a lot more than the platform says it is. You should be pushing more spend.

[00:08:58] Luke: Yeah.

[00:08:58] Richard: Or potentially in the other direction. Is that something that-

[00:09:01] Luke: Yes, exactly

[00:09:02] you think of? Yeah. I- is Black Friday-- Is your Meta spend on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Meta and Google spend on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the most incremental spend or the least incremental spend- Yeah ... of the year, right? And it-- and so there's a, there's a, there's pretty wide, wide variation.

[00:09:14] Richard: Yeah. Could be either.

[00:09:15] Okay. So one then broader question on that which is do you-- so we talk about like, okay, this is what we're doing with our brands, this is what we expect brands to be doing generally, or at least more sophisticated brands. For-- Do you think that there's going to be any sort of broad macro impact to brands understanding that this is how they should be allocating dollars on, over BFCM?

[00:09:40] Luke: Hmm. Macro impact in terms of like it lowers the CPMs on Meta

[00:09:45] Richard: more broadly and, and- Potentially, or yeah, just overall behavior is somehow different, and that's something to think about.

[00:09:53] Luke: Until, until more of the majority catches up, no. No. Like it's gonna be- All right ... pretty similar, similar auction dynamics, similar-- like there's just such, there's, there's such a high level of media spend hi- high level of media spend and such big players that like for, for most brands the-- I would count on the auction dynamics are gonna stay pretty consistent.

[00:10:14] And so it's, you know, it's not something where- Yeah ... like this year or next year I think we're gonna see wide variations in terms of folks pulling back spend meaningfully on Black Friday or i- spending twice as much as they would otherwise. It, it'll, it'll work its way there- Yeah ... over the next two, three, four years.

[00:10:28] Okay. But we got, we got a lot, lot of time to get there. Gotcha.

[00:10:30] Richard: All right. But it, but, but then, but broadly that, that is something that potentially could happen, just not right now.

[00:10:35] Luke: Yeah, for sure. In the, in the same way that like launching your Black Friday sale in early November was like a hack. Like- Yeah

[00:10:42] oh, you got your early bird sale, CPMs are so much lower and you catch a lot of the demand, and now it's like, okay, everyone, everyone does that, right? Yeah. So.

[00:10:50] Richard: All right. Okay. So then let's move to sort of the, our second application here, which is the way that content is going to work around these specific moments.

[00:10:57] So again, last time or last episode we were on together, we talked a little bit about how there was going to be these micro moments throughout the Black Friday period. So let's say on the, on the morning of Black Friday, it's a free gift with purchase, and then a different gift with purchase by noon, and then a different one by 3:00, whatever.

[00:11:15] So how do you think content production and creative is going to shift to accommodate for that sort of rapidity of, of change in the offer?

[00:11:27] Luke: Yeah. So, so maybe we, maybe we- Sort of call this the decentralization of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, 'cause this will-- this connects to the creative, the, the creative piece we'll talk about here in a second too.

[00:11:38] So the intraday offer and messaging. So to give a couple other examples, ri-ri-- you brought up, you brought up a couple. But- Mm-hmm ... what we saw last year is more brands pivoting their offer and messaging strategy intraday during these days, right? So, where it used to-- m-maybe it was like, "We have a cyber weekend sale.

[00:11:53] It's 30% off site wide the whole cyber weekend," to like, "Oh, we do 30% off site wide on Black Friday, then we do buy two, get one free on Cyber Monday," right? And you have some ca-cadence, to now during each of those days pivoting the offer to create new ways to speak to consumers all the time and keep them engaged.

[00:12:10] A couple examples. So, on Black Friday last year, we had we had a brand that was running their core offer, and they would do these flash sale refund hours where they'd blast out email and SMS and then on their site, and they'd refund a s- a defined number of orders. So anyone who buys- Yeah ... over the next hour, you're just gonna get full refund on it.

[00:12:25] And so you just like- That's great ... get people like buying more, right? Yeah. And you refunded 10 orders and you made way more money, right? On Saturday, they did a one-hour flash sale with a gift with purchase. They cycled in a few different gift with purchases over that, so that baseline, right? And then over the next hour, anyone who buys is also gonna get this gift with purchase up to X amount of orders.

[00:12:44] Another, another example an apparel brand was doing a different hero product on flash sale every day. So starting like the week of leading up to Black Friday, so that Monday, Tuesday, there's a different sort of core hero product that's flash selling that day. And then you have the rest of your assortment on sale to some extent.

[00:13:01] And you have, again, more communications around this. Now you can send emails and SMS, and you can have messaging on the website that's not just, "Hey, our 30, our 30% off site-wide sale is going." "Hey, our 30% off site wi-wide sale- Yeah ... is extended," right? It's 30% off site wide for the weekend and then every hour, 30% si- off site wide plus gift with purchase for the next hour, plus refunds for the next hour, plus boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and you just have it and you're engaging people more and more in different ways that also brings value to the consumer.

[00:13:27] So we could go through more examples. We're gonna see that more and more this year 'cause it's- Yeah ... it's really effective. And when you think about like, yeah, the read on the incrementality of your media spend and then how that, you know, where you can redeploy some of those dollars or where should those dollars be redeployed this is an idea, right?

[00:13:42] It's like, okay, cool, we're gonna give some more give and purchase, so let's account for it in the inventory cost. Th- the, the other phenomenon we're seeing generally, right, going on with TikTok Shop creative and Tribe is brands are launching more and more ads than ever, thousands of ads a month.

[00:13:56] And the way that that's happening is they're outsourcing the creative production to creators, right? You're, so you're seeding out product, you're having creators post it, and then getting pr- paid a percentage of GMV on that so you don't have to go and fork over 200 grand that month to make 2,000 UGC videos from whatever vendor, right?

[00:14:12] So we're all seeing this phenomenon happening. More and more brands, it's, you know, launching 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 net new ads a month is, is a norm now in this construct what it's doing is it's outsourcing the creative, your creative production, right? So maybe you have some general guidelines, but the creators have a lot more say and are driving their, their individual expression of your brand and your product.

[00:14:32] And then doing it in a way where they're incentivized against the sale of it on, on the back end. I think, I think it's interesting to think about the intraday offer as it relates to the creative mechanism in this way, where like if we take a couple of those examples where you have, let's say, the founder of the brand doing these intraday offers and, "Hey, I'm gonna do a flash sale for the next hour," and they send out a plain text email, right?

[00:14:51] Or, "Hey, over the next-- this hour, I'm gonna do a gift with purchase." So it's one person and the brand's still doing this. What if you had 50 creators doing that throughout the day, right? So you have creators all throughout the day and there's s- a defined set of parameters around the offers and the messaging that they can use, right?

[00:15:09] Based on so you could have like, "Hey, offers that you can run over the course of these days."

[00:15:14] Richard: Yeah. "

[00:15:14] Luke: Buy two, get one free. You can do gift with purchase with these products as long as they're in stock. We'll keep you guys updated within our Discord or within, you know, whatever the communication is. You can do you can do refunds for two people over the next hour," whatever it is, right?

[00:15:26] Like you-- some offer constructs and you-- and within that, you create optionality for the creator to be able to create messaging uniqueness over the course of these days as well and higher volume of content output. So while the founder is going, "Okay, it's Black Friday, I'm gonna do a flash sale refund over this hour," you have one of your top creators who's been posting content all day, and maybe they're even going live on behalf of your brand, and they're doing, "Hey, using my code, you can get a gift with purchase over the next hour," right?

[00:15:52] Like they have, they, they have-- everyone is expressing the brand within the defined constructs that have been agreed on def- expressing the brand in more and more ways unique to them. And so you have similar to create- creative is outsourced via TikTok Shop, Tribe to all the creators. You have your creative and your messaging and your offer orientation are all getting hi- a higher volume of distribution points and unique messaging through through all these end nodes of, you know, these sort of decentralized spokesperson on-- spokespeople on behalf of the, on behalf of the brand.

[00:16:29] That's going to similar to competitions on TikTok shops and blitz or blitzes. You're, you're just gonna-- I think we're gonna see more and more of this, like, the idea that you have a Black Friday offer, it's 30% off site wide, and like you send an, a VIP email out, and that's how it gets announced to the world.

[00:16:45] Go more creator-led, where you have Black Friday offer, you have hundreds of creators posting on behalf their Black Friday offer's live, and then you're incentivizing them to continue to push your brand with novel messaging, equipping them with what they need to be able to express unique offers, gift purchasing, et cetera, throughout the course of those days.

[00:17:04] To be able to create novelty, new, new messaging and newness over the course of these days in a, in a decentralized creator-led fashion for the brand, rather than it being stagnant and centralized.

[00:17:17] Richard: Yeah. Right. And I think that's overall the theme of all of this, is that decentralization is coming It-- because it's the only way essentially to handle the scale required to compete.

[00:17:27] And so we've been preaching that message with creative just generally for the last pr- maybe year or so. And so this is no different. The idea then, like, okay, if having these sort of variant offers across the course of the day is something that you wanna pursue, then it would make sense to actually farm that out as well across a vast sort of swath of the creators that you're given.

[00:17:47] So, yeah. So, yeah, it's an interesting idea, something to definitely consider. I mean, is this something that we've seen, or is this something that we're just sort of, that's off the top of Luke's dome right now?

[00:17:56] Luke: I, we-we've seen it done with like, s- some brands with just a couple, like one or two creators, especially if there's, you know, the founding team, there's like a high-profile influencer- Yeah

[00:18:08] that was part of the founding team. They're doing stuff like this all during the day, right? Similar to- Right ... like what the founder would be doing. So we've seen this done when there's like one or two influencers/creators, like people with social followings that are sizable that are directly connected to the brand.

[00:18:21] We haven't, we haven't seen this done in the same way that you would have like a blitz coordinated through you go on TikTok shop- Yeah ... where you have 40, 50 creators all going, you know, launching the product, blasting out multiple pieces of content, even going live during that day, and it being a really creator-led launch and equipping those folks in that way at this, at this level of scale which I think is which I think is interesting to see.

[00:18:45] But it makes a lot of sense. Like, if there's the incentive there, similar to like if you have, let's say, a brand is started by a founder and then like an influ- like the, you know, it's a f- the, the operator and the influencer are the founding team, they're both gonna be doing stuff during the day. Maybe the operator's like sending out these flash sale emails, SMS, and the influencer's like going live on their Instagram, right?

[00:19:03] So it- it-- that because that, that because the incentive is there if that's happening instead of two or three people over the course of the day, 20, 30, 40, 50 people, and then multiple pieces of content and live content and rotating offers and messaging I just think there's like, there's a, there's more and more competition for us all in terms of our attention and the interest and the way that content is being pursued that like, yeah, even like Black Friday and waiting in line at Best Buy or whatever, like is it, is it-- Like, there's so much, there's so many ideas for a way that a brand can express itself by you have a creator that's in line at Best Buy- Yeah

[00:19:42] and talking to people, and, "Hey, for the next hour we're doing..." You know, like there's just so many ways that the, the, the bar is being raised for what the content that exists out in the world- And how to make it interesting that I think the, the only way to be able to solve for that is, like, how we think about creative diversity, is you have a diversity of production sources.

[00:20:01] You need to- Yeah ... you need to di- you need to be able to diversify away from the single or the, you know, the group node at the center to find new ways of expressing yourself in interesting, in an interesting fashion.

[00:20:12] Richard: Yeah. Cool. Well, I mean, I think that that kinda covers those two. Th- anything else that comes to mind that feels like a important implication of this overall phenomenon we're talking about?

[00:20:22] Luke: It Hasn't been defined in a way that we've seen very clearly, but there's a tension in all this of like being true to your brand- Yeah ... and your brand guidelines and the messaging that, that for many, like, I think a good example of this is with Tribe. The, the, the guys that run Tribe Lucas and with his brand and like the-- what they'll say is like, don't-- You can put a brief into Tribe when you do a campaign and like give all these details, and they're like, "Don't."

[00:20:49] Yeah. Like, you know, maybe add a sentence or two if you have like health claims about the product, but like it's not-- They're not really gonna read it. Like y- Right ... you have like a s- 10-page Google Doc about all these things, and like you don't really want that. Like it's going to result in a, in a much more narrow expression of the thing.

[00:21:04] So I think, I think that's gonna be the challenge and the opportunity for brands is, is being, being able to relinquish some of the this is how I see myself and my brand to like- Yeah ... okay, I have a really good product, and that's like the core of what, what this is, right? And there's some s- there's primarily financial guidelines in terms of what makes sense and how we make money on that, right?

[00:21:28] That like the incentives that we pay out and the raw start we operate at, et cetera. But outside of that, how do I equip people who are really, really good at creating content- Yeah ... and selling product to do so in really unique and interesting ways that could be very different than anything you have in your mind or have expected or seen before.

[00:21:49] And so I think in all of this, the the simplifying down as much as possible to the essence of the thing. This is our product. Yeah. This is the core of the thing. How do we get that in the world and let other people sell that and bring it to life in really, really unique ways in their individual communities is the challenge and the opportunity.

[00:22:07] Richard: Yeah, indeed. Well, I, I did, did-- What came to mind is that like the struggle between branded content and UGC has been a thing forever since I've been here, which has been like nine years. And the, the issue of sort of brands not wanting to relinquish creative control of how their brand presents in the world.

[00:22:22] But it feels like this year more than any, like the rubber's really hitting the road and people are going to have to embrace it because ultimately the reason UGC works is that you are relinquishing your control of the brand message, and you are giving people a chance to see what your product, quote unquote, "really looks like in the real world."

[00:22:39] And that's the power of it, and I feel like this now more than ever, that's exactly what you're going to have to do to win. So, cool. Unless there's anything else you wanna hit? No, no.

[00:22:50] Luke: I don't, I don't think we need any more wild, wild ideas here.

[00:22:53] Richard: That's right. We tapped it out. All right, cool. Well, thanks for joining us, Luke, of course, and thanks to all of you for listening.

[00:22:59] Of course, Black Friday's coming up. If you're interested in having somebody help build this out for you, of course, we are there, cometthreadco.com. Hit that hire us button, let us know you're interested in talking about creative or our full service offering, any of that stuff. We would love to have a chat with you.

[00:23:13] All right, folks, thank you again for listening. Take care, everyone.