Scale of The Black Friday Season
202.9 million people in the United States shopped somewhere between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday in 2025, a number that beat the National Retail Federation's own forecast by roughly 16 million shoppers and set a new record for the five-day window. Deloitte expects that growth to continue into 2026, projecting total holiday sales up 4.0-4.8% year over year.
The season itself has stretched across weeks while concentrating its intensity into a handful of days that still decide who wins the quarter. That combination of long lead time and short decisive window is exactly the environment in which audience strategy either pays for itself or quietly erodes margin. And the data from the last two peak seasons increasingly points to a specific mechanism behind that erosion: not too many competitors, but too many competitors reaching for the same audience.
A Longer Season, A Sharper Peak
Heading into 2026, EMARKETER expects Black Friday and Cyber Monday alone to absorb 35% of the entire season's advertising budget. That's striking, given how much earlier the season now starts.
The concentration of spend around those peak dates is also increasing. According to EMARKETER, 71% of US marketers plan to raise their budgets specifically for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, compared with 57% a year earlier. As more advertisers focus their investment on the same few days, they also tend to compete for many of the same broad “in-market” audiences.
A longer season, in other words, does not necessarily mean that competition is spread more evenly. The peak remains highly concentrated, and the pressure around the most important shopping days is becoming even more intense.
The Same Pool, More Bidders
When many advertisers rely on the same familiar audience categories at the same time, those categories offer less opportunity to differentiate. The challenge during peak season is not only that more brands are competing for consumer attention, but that many of them are trying to reach shoppers through the same broad definitions of intent.
As the auction becomes more crowded, the ability to identify more specific and timely signals becomes increasingly valuable. Instead of relying solely on static segments such as “in-market for electronics” or “holiday gift shopper”, advertisers can look for signals that reflect what consumers are actually interested in at that particular moment.
What Makes Audience Segments Relevant?
Being seen and being relevant are not the same thing, and consumers clearly respond to that difference. Research by IAB Europe, based on 10,500 consumers across 12 European markets, found that 56% of consumers prefer ads that are relevant to them over random ads.
That does not mean audience categories themselves are the problem. The challenge begins when those categories remain fixed while consumer intent continues to change.
A label such as “holiday gift shopper” may describe someone who is generally likely to buy gifts during the season, but it does not tell us whether holiday shopping is relevant to that person at a particular moment. Two people can fit the same audience profile while being at very different stages of the decision journey, with very different needs and levels of purchase intent.
The same applies to Black Friday. Someone comparing prices across retailers in early November is showing a different type of intent from someone tracking a specific product the night before Cyber Monday, or checking store opening hours shortly before making a purchase. Grouping all of them under the same “Black Friday shopper” label removes distinctions that become especially important when competition for attention is at its highest.
This is why the way an audience is built matters. Rather than relying only on a static definition, contextual audiences can take into account what people are engaging with at a given moment - the content, topics and signals that indicate what is becoming relevant to them right now.
A signal-led targeting strategy in practice
Reading Black Friday this way, through signals rather than fixed profiles, only works if the underlying technology can keep up with how fast those signals change.
PrimeAudience Intelligence is a contextual engine that interprets what's actually relevant in the moment, rather than relying on keywords or a static user profile.
- Semantic, not keyword-based. It reads what a page actually means, not whether a Black-Friday-related word happens to appear on it.
- URL-level, not site-level. Two pages on the same site can represent completely different moments of intent.
- Continuously refreshed. A signal from a month ago says little about today, so relevance is reassessed as engagement happens, not assigned once and reused for weeks.
For marketers, this is what "connecting with meaning" actually looks like in practice: not a broader segment, but a more relevant one, built to deliver real value. The challenge, of course, is finding the right approach for an already packed Q4.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday Predefined Segments
In a season this intensive, teams often need something ready to activate the moment a brief lands. That's what PrimeAudience Predefined is built for.
Each Black Friday and Cyber Monday segment uses the same contextual logic but packaged as a ready-made audience rather than something a team has to configure on their own. The result is a set of segments that already reflect how purchase intent actually unfolds across the season, from early interest through to last-minute urgency, without sacrificing the real-time relevance that makes contextual targeting work in the first place.
[solution_block_predefined][/solution_block_predefined]
Available directly through major programmatic marketplaces, these segments can be selected and activated in the DSP of choice, moving straight from planning to execution. A few examples of what's available:
- Black Friday > Automotive Deals - People interested in Black Friday automotive deals are comparing offers on car accessories, maintenance products, and other automotive-related items to take advantage of seasonal discounts.
- Black Friday > Gaming Deals - People interested in Black Friday gaming deals are comparing discounts on consoles, games, accessories, and gaming hardware to upgrade their setup or buy gifts.
- Black Friday > Jewelry & Watches Deals - People interested in Black Friday jewelry and watches deals are comparing discounted accessories, gifts, and premium pieces to find special purchases at better prices.
- Black Friday > Clothing & Fashion Deals - People interested in Black Friday clothing and fashion deals are comparing discounts on apparel, accessories, and style essentials to refresh their wardrobe at lower prices.
- Black Friday > In-Store Shopping - People interested in in-store shopping are looking for Black Friday deals they can find in physical stores, often to compare availability and secure products directly.
- Black Friday > Wishlists - People interested in wishlists. tracking products they want to buy during Black Friday and comparing when those items go on sale.
And more.
When the Brief Calls for a Bespoke Approach
Not every campaign fits neatly into a predefined audience category. PrimeAudience Deals gives brands and agencies the flexibility to create audiences around specific campaign goals, niche target groups, or more tailored strategic needs.
Rather than choosing from an existing set of segments, teams can define the audience they want to reach and the context behind the campaign. We then translate that brief into a semantically aligned audience that can be activated directly in the DSP.
The process is simple:
- Define the target audience and campaign context.
- We translate the brief into a semantically aligned audience.
- Activate the Deal ID directly in your DSP.
[solution_block_deals][/solution_block_deals]
What Can Actually Change
Black Friday and Cyber Monday will continue to absorb a disproportionate share of Q4 budgets, and competition for impressions during those peak days is unlikely to ease.
What advertisers can change is how precisely they identify the audiences worth bidding for. An audience built around real-time contextual signals can reflect what is relevant to consumers in the moment, rather than relying on a static category shared by many advertisers. That distinction becomes particularly important when competition is at its highest and reaching the right person at the right moment can make a meaningful difference.
.png)