Amazon Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2026: A Week-by-Week PPC Plan for Bids, Budgets and Keywords

Black Friday 2026 is Friday, November 27, and Cyber Monday is November 30. Amazon hadn't published its full event window when we wrote this, but deals in recent years have started well before Black Friday itself, so plan for a ramp, not a single weekend. The brands that win this stretch on Amazon don't just raise bids on the day. They spend the next five weeks making sure the right keywords, budgets, inventory and audiences are in place - so that when traffic peaks, every extra dollar lands on clicks that convert.

The Key Dates

• Thanksgiving: Thursday, November 26
• Black Friday: Friday, November 27
• Cyber Monday: Monday, November 30
• Cyber Week tail: through about Wednesday, December 2 at many retailers
• Amazon's early deals: expected in the weeks before Black Friday - check Seller Central for your marketplace's confirmed dates and deal deadlines

Weeks 1-2 (now to October 31): Clean Up and Build the Keyword List

This is the work that pays off later. Start with October's event data - but read it carefully. Sales from those two days are still being attributed until around October 21, so follow our guide on cleaning up search terms after Prime Big Deal Days before you cut anything.

• Harvest converting search terms from the event and the weeks before it into manual exact-match campaigns, so they build normal-week history before November.
• Negate only clearly irrelevant terms. Black Friday shoppers search broadly, and gift-style queries ('gifts for runners', 'stocking stuffers for dads') can convert well this time of year even if they don't in March.
• Group your Black Friday hero ASINs - the products you'll discount or that sell best as gifts - into their own campaigns, so you can raise their budgets without lifting the whole account.
• Check for duplicate keywords across campaigns. In peak weeks, two of your own campaigns bidding on the same term pushes up your own CPC. Our free Duplicate Keyword Analyzer finds these in one upload.

Week 3 (November 1-8): Inventory, Deals and Listings

Advertising can't fix a product that runs out or a listing that doesn't convert.

• Confirm FBA inventory covers the whole Cyber Week tail at peak sell-through, plus inbound delays. Running out on Black Friday also pauses the ad momentum you paid for.
• Lock in your offer: Prime Exclusive Discounts, coupons or deals, whatever your margin supports. A visible deal badge or coupon lifts click-through and conversion on the same ad spend.
• Check every hero listing: main image, first bullet, A+ content and reviews. Check titles too - since Amazon's 75-character title limit took effect, a lot of titles were rewritten by Amazon and nobody re-checked them.
• Set up Sponsored Display retargeting for people who viewed your products in October and didn't buy.

Week 4 (November 9-20): Set Your Bid Ceiling Before the Auction Gets Hot

Decide what a click is worth to you before the day, not during it. The simplest version:

Two more things to set this week:

• Placement adjustments: if top-of-search converts best for a hero product, raise the top-of-search placement adjustment rather than the base bid - you pay more only where it converts.
• Budget rules: use Amazon's schedule-based budget rules to raise budgets automatically from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, so campaigns don't run out at 2pm on the biggest day. Running out of budget on Black Friday is the most expensive mistake on this list.

Week 5 (November 21-26): The Early-Deal Ramp

• Raise budgets on hero campaigns gradually, as early deals go live and traffic climbs.
• Defend your brand terms with Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products on your own brand keywords. Competitors target branded searches hardest during events, and losing your own brand page to a rival ad is the cheapest sale you'll ever give away.
• Check budgets and spend twice a day. Pacing changes fast in the final week.

Black Friday to Cyber Monday (November 27-30): Watch Pacing, Not ACoS

During the peak, the biggest risk is campaigns going dark, not ACoS being a few points high. Check budgets in the morning, at midday and in the evening. Keep bids at or below the ceilings you calculated. And don't make keyword cuts on these days - you'll be looking at data that is incomplete and distorted in exactly the same way October's was.

After Cyber Week (December 1 onward): Step Down, Don't Switch Off

• Bring budgets back down over several days, not overnight. Gift shopping continues until Amazon's last delivery dates before Christmas.
• Keep retargeting running for a week or two after Cyber Monday to catch shoppers who added to cart and didn't buy.
• Wait for attribution to settle - 7 days for Sponsored Products, 14 for Sponsored Brands - before judging Black Friday search terms.
• Review TACoS, not just ACoS. If ads drove new-to-brand customers and organic rank, the true cost of advertising is lower than ACoS alone shows.

Bottom Line

Black Friday on Amazon is won in the five weeks before it: clean keyword lists, protected budgets, real bid ceilings, stock on hand and an offer worth clicking. Do those, and the peak days take care of themselves. Skip them, and you'll pay the highest CPCs of the year for clicks that never needed to be bought.