How to Boost your Black Friday Banner Ads

The season of Black Friday is upon us once more! Though it was once a mere one-day sales event, it now extends over four days immediately after US Thanksgiving to include Cyber Monday as well. Initially a US-based shopping event, Black Friday has become a key event for online and brick-and-mortar retailers worldwide making it necessary for brands to have mega-deals that they tastefully splash across the millions of device screens of their target markets.

It’s no secret that mega amounts of people are in line to spend mega amounts of money during the Black Friday blitz. But just how much and how many people?

Well, it’s estimated that over 164 million people are already planning to go shopping Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday and are slated to spend over $90 billion. Of that, it’s estimated that over $12 billion will be spent online—a 25% increase from last year. Cyber Monday alone surpassed $7.9 billion in the US, setting a new record and showing a staggering increase from 2017.

Based on these figures alone, it’s no wonder that global brand participation in Black Friday and Cyber Monday has risen swift and steep as more and more consumers show a nearly insatiable appetite for deals on their favourite brand names, new and covetable tech pieces, and holiday gifts. According to eMarketer, “online traffic in France on Black Friday was 129% higher than the daily average during October 2018, and sales were up 265% on Black Friday 2017 . . .”

There’s little question left as to if brands should be involved with Black Friday/ Cyber Monday, but how they should be. Digital assets and other campaign materials come under intense scrutiny as shoppers check for the best deals, analyzing digital ads perhaps more thoroughly than they normally would. And so, it’s pretty imperative to have some screen blastingly good creatives if you’re looking to capitalize on this multi-billion-dollar shopping bonanza and leave Q4 in the blackest of black—hence Black Friday! How do you create stunning Black Friday banner ads? You know us, we’ve got a list that has you covered.

Brand Consistency

We know it’s called Black Friday but that doesn’t mean your banners have to actually be all black. Straying from your usual branding and established colour palette can do more harm than good in your online ads, even for something as big as Black Friday. Rather than altering your brand aesthetic, instead opt to keep your brand recognizable and add surprising elements that herald your Black Friday sales and products. By adding an element of surprise, you’ll draw attention to your creative rather than have people skim past because it isn’t familiar.

Utilize Animation and Rich Media

Banner ads have been free of their static image limitations for quite a while now and Black Friday/Cyber Monday is the time to set them free! Animated ads and video garner more interest and views than other banner formats. Rich media offers the option for consumer interaction whereas video has a much higher retention rate than other banner ad formats. Either way, you can’t go wrong!

Feed your ads with relevant information

It seems pretty techy but connecting your banner ads to an XML feed is extremely doable. This XML feed can update your Black Friday banner ads in real-time, displaying up-to-date sale prices, stock levels, discount percentages, or various product offerings. This is especially great for larger brands with multiple locations around the world. This approach would allow for different product offerings in different locations, as well as more personalized and targeted featured products. Get the breakdown on more complex banners like this on our Dynamic campaigns page!

Show your products in all sizes

Some formats of creatives can be challenging to show in a skyscraper (160×600), DMPU (300×600), and leaderboard (728×90) but with just a few tweaks and layout amends, you can have many more sizes of your Black Friday banner ads that can be published onto the world wide web. Having multiple sizes of your creative gives you flexibility when buying your media placements. The more flexibility, the more options for them to be served and seen. Get your creatives out there in any size possible!

Manage your retargeting

Retargeting is one of those things where you can do it well and get great results or . . . get not great results, maybe even annoying your target audience! No one wants to invoke any sort of negative feelings in the very people they are appealing to. This makes it crucial that if and when you retarget, you don’t do it with a creepy static ad that follows people around the internet like some kind of shadow or annoying neighbour. We advocate for a different creative route (that’s animated of course!) rather than a static retargeting unit or showing the same unit over, and over, and over . . .

Check your language

Your brand might not use the most prominent or strong language regularly, which is completely fine. But for your Black Friday/Cyber Monday creatives, you want them to convey the urgency and short lifespan of the killer deals you’re laying down, so you might have to crank up your messaging a notch or two! Think outside the box on things like your call-to-action as well. Maybe ‘Learn more’ isn’t going to cut it so why not try something like ‘Shop the Sale’, ‘Start saving’ or something a bit cheeky like ‘Gimme!’ And speaking of language, don’t forget about translating your Black Friday banner ads so even more people can shop your site!