How was your Black Friday approach? Were you playing for the moment or composing a masterpiece of continuous improvement?
For many retailers, Black Friday is a frantic sprint. It's all about reacting to the moment, scrambling to optimise, and making sure nothing is missed. But is this short-term focus holding you back from achieving long-term growth?
Seven years ago, as a retailer and more recently with an agency hat on, I witnessed how media management was a manual grind—a patchwork of siloed strategies, campaign tweaks, and endless optimisation routines. We relied on keyword research, bid rules, and A/B testing, juggling multiple tools to squeeze performance from fragmented data.
Today, the landscape is unrecognisable. With advanced solutions like Google’s Performance Max (PMax), we’re no longer restricted to manual processes. PMax offers a powerful alternative - a platform that thrives on continuous learning, real-time adaptability, and seamless integration across Google’s ecosystem.
I like to think of PMax as a symphony conductor, guiding an orchestra through an evolving piece of music. At every moment it’s listening for the interplay of consumer behaviours - what’s trending, what’s converting, how audience intent shifts. Every click, search, and purchase acts like a note, shaping the next movement.
Over the course of a month, PMax doesn’t just react to daily events; it anticipates and adapts. It tests media surfaces, audiences, and creatives, identifying which combinations create the most harmony. Where performance resonates, it allocates more budget. Where results fall flat, it pulls back.
It’s not about isolated moments. PMax treats the entire month as a cohesive performance, using insights from one movement to refine the next. A mid-month sale might reveal high buying intent from certain audiences. Instead of filing this insight away, PMax builds on it, amplifying these opportunities in the weeks that follow.
For example, recurring patterns like payday search surges or Black Friday spikes don’t just trigger a flurry of reactive adjustments. They become contextual cues, helping PMax fine-tune its tempo and focus. By the end of the month, it’s not just a campaign - it's a masterpiece, every interaction feeding smarter decisions for the next phase.
Preparing for Black Friday is no small feat. Thousands of SKUs, tight budgets, and evolving consumer demands require more than gut instinct and experience. Yet, for many, the default approach is still to micromanage. A tweak here, a nudge there, in the hope that these adjustments will bring everything into tune.
But here’s the problem: interrupting an AI like PMax mid-performance doesn’t always optimise - it often disrupts. It’s like an over-enthusiastic audience member leaping onto the stage, demanding louder brass or a faster tempo. In retail terms, that might look like insisting on better ROAS on a Tuesday or reallocating budget for a Friday push.
The result? You could break the flow, derailing the very system designed to deliver the best outcomes. Surely, it’s better to trust the conductor and let every note, section, and cue blend seamlessly into the bigger picture?
At Upp.ai, we’ve been advocating for this approach since the deployment of PMax. For over three years, we’ve seen how powerful AI campaigns can be when they’re left to do what they do best.
Our clients achieve better results and find peace of mind. They’ve avoided the reactionary micromanagement traits, instead focusing on providing strategic inputs - setting the stage for AI to compose its best work. As one client put it:
“With Upp.ai and PMax we’re not just hitting numbers anymore - we’re orchestrating growth.”
Every product -whether newly launched, discounted, or high-converting - is flagged, prioritised, and fed into the AI in real time. With PMax and Upp.ai, budgets are dynamically reallocated, and subtle item-level adjustments are gracefully prompted. PMax leverages its creatives to amplify the products that resonate most with the audience. By treating every SKU as part of the symphony, campaigns didn’t just hit their notes - they soared.
Similarly, during mid-month sales, Upp.ai identified untapped buying intent among deal-seekers. Instead of waiting for end-of-month reporting, our system acted in the moment, reallocating spend and refining targeting instantly. By the time the sale ended, the insights weren’t just stored - they had already shaped the next phase of performance.
Black Friday YoY Revenue Performance - Total Market
Source: IMRG
The performance of the total retail market for Black Friday Week was exactly in the middle of two cohorts; 2018-20 and 2021-23. Although there was some YoY growth the expectation from a slow run up to Black Friday week was for better and more exciting results.
Upp.ai customers performed significantly ahead of the market this year when compared to Black Friday 2023 with 18% increase in ROAS performance, but critically 110% uplift in revenue.
So, how was your Black Friday approach? Did you play for the moment, or compose a masterpiece of continuous improvement?
The truth is that the future of digital advertising lies in harmony. Retailers must shift their focus from micromanaging campaigns to orchestrating growth. By trusting AI to handle the complexity, and focusing on strategic inputs, you’re not just running campaigns - you’re conducting a symphony.
The question posed to many marketers now is "Are you prepared to step back and trust that an uninterrupted AI system, like a conductor allowed to lead his orchestra, is far more effective than one which is prompted inappropriately."