Black Friday just got more interesting.

While most brands were bracing for skyrocketing ad costs and fierce competition, something unexpected happened during BFCM 2025—and it's reshaping how smart brands should approach next year's holiday season.

In this jam-packed episode, OMG Commerce CEO Brett Curry sits down with four of the agency's top strategists—spanning Google, YouTube, Amazon, and retention marketing—to dissect what actually worked (and what flopped) during one of the most surprising Black Friday weekends in recent memory.

You'll also get the 2026 prep checklist, including why AI is about to eliminate every excuse you have for not planning year-round promos, how to break down channel silos that are costing you sales, and the exact timing strategies that separated winners from everyone else.

Whether you crushed it this BFCM or are wondering where you went wrong, this episode gives you the data, insights, and tactical playbook to make next year your best yet.

Featured experts:

1. Bill Cover, Google & YouTube Director
2. Luba, Amazon ABM Strategist
3. Barry Bowman, Amazon Ads Specialist
4. Nick Flint, Retention Marketing Director

—

Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!

—

Chapters:

(00:00) Intro

(02:06) Meet the panel

(05:52) Google/YouTube: weekend “plateau” + CPM/CPC drops and why it happened

(08:50) Amazon: expanded event length, strong YoY, and the “off-Amazon” halo effect

(12:28) SMS surpasses email + why brands still underuse it

(13:47) What worked across all channels

(19:33) Save Money and Connect Your Marketing Channels with Channable

(20:35) Top-of-funnel and offer strategy

(24:02) What didn’t work on Amazon: skipping promos, waiting too late, and thinking margin over LTV

(27:42) Best brands vs. struggling brands

(42:22) Playbook for next year

(47:02) Channel strategy + 2026 planning

(51:00) Final thoughts: AI’s impact on creative + planning

(53:11) Fast Funding the Way You Need It with Wayflyer

—

Connect With Brett:

1. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/
2. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce
3. Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/
4. Request a Free Strategy Session: https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact

Relevant Links:

1. Keranique: keranique.com
2. Sponsor Offer | Channable (Mention Ecommerce Evolution): https://www.channable.com/
3. Sponsor Offer | Wayflyer: https://wayflyer.com/en/partners/omgcommerce

Hey, this episode is brought

to you by OMG Commerce.

That's the agency that I get

the privilege of running.

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dominate with YouTube ads. Well,

hello and welcome to another edition

of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast.

I'm your host, Brett

Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce.

And today we are unpacking Black

Friday Cyber Monday and/or the

Cyber Five, Cyber Week, Cyber 12, Turkey

12, whatever name you want to give it.

We're breaking it down. We're

letting you know what we experienced,

what we observed.

We're going to unpack some of the data

behind the weekend or behind the period,

but more importantly, we're going to

talk about what worked, what didn't,

and what lessons you should take

as you start thinking about next

holiday season. And so you can tell

by looking here, if you're watching,

there's a lot of folks on this call,

not just me today.

I always usually have one guest,

but today there are four guests. So we got

the five amigos here on the pod,

but I'm going to do quick intros,

just have you guys kind of

give a wave and a, "Hey,

what's up?" And then we'll dive

right in. So we got Bill Cover, OMG,

Google director. What's

up, Bill? How's it going?

Great.

Yeah, excited to talk some Google,

YouTube nerdiness and goodness here as

we go and some recommendations there.

So that's going to be fun. We got Luba.

She is the supreme Amazon ABM

strategist. She launches big brands.

She helps people just scale to

20 million plus a year on Amazon.

She knows her stuff. So Luba, how's

it going? It's going great. Okay,

good. Off to a great start.

I love it. I love it.

And then we got Barry Bowman. This

dude lives, eats, sleeps, breathes,

Amazon ads, but not only that,

he's runn his own businesses.

Dude just knows his stuff.

So Barry, how's it going.

Man? Very good. Glad to

be here. Thank you, Brett.

Yes, indeed. Excited to get your

insights on this. And last but not least,

Nick Flint runs our retention

marketing department,

going to talk email and

SMS. What's up, Nick?

What's up? I've been staring at Klaviyo

and Slack for the last two weeks,

so it's nice to be out of those and

seeing some people in real life-ish.

Yes. I stared at Shopify.

I stared at Google Ads

dashboard and Slack. Yeah,

that weekend was a marathon.

Super fun. It's our Super Bowl.

It's our top performance. It's just the

most hectic weekend, super, super fun.

You're wearing a Bucks hat right now.

How are you feeling about your

Bucks as we're hitting record here?

You know what? We're leading

the division at the moment.

We got three games left in the

year, two against the Panthers.

If we can sweep then,

then we're moving on to the playoffs

and we'll have that first round exit.

I love it. I'm going to have to live

vicariously through other people.

As a Chiefs fan, this is something I have

not experienced in a long, long time.

We're not even making the

playoffs. It's a sad, sad day.

But that's okay because what's better

than NFL? It's the game of business.

It's a game of e-commerce.

And so let's dive right in.

I want to highlight a couple things

here before we get into some specifics

and some takeaways and

some lessons. Globally,

this was a good Black Friday

Cyber Monday. If we all remember,

leading up to Black Friday, Cyber Monday,

there was a little bit of

chatter on D2C Twitter/D2CX

that waters were looking

a little bit choppy.

Consumer sentiment was

down for a little while.

There was renewed talks of tariffs,

tariff madness kind of stringing

up, which that causes PTSD, I think,

in the hearts and minds of most people

in D2C. There was also the government

shutdown, which depending

on the category you sold in,

that caused negative consumer sentiment.

Even people that are affluent looking

at the shutdown thinking, "I don't know,

maybe it'll pull back a little bit."

Once that all cleared up leading up to

Black Friday,

Cyber Monday kind of paved the way

for really what was an excellent,

excellent weekend. And

so we're happy to report.

OMG clients outperformed

the industry standard.

Shopify showed they were up 24 to 30%

depending on the day for the weekend.

OMG clients were up more than

that on average, which is awesome,

which we really love to see.

And what's also interesting,

so Cyber Monday,

biggest day of the weekend globally,

but Black Friday almost always biggest

for our clients and for most D2C brands.

We saw 20% of our clients have bigger

Cyber Monday than Black Friday,

which is super interesting. So yeah,

something kind of crazy. And in fact,

that'll be a good little segue. Let's

talk first about what were your surprises?

What was surprising this

weekend that you did not expect?

I'll kick things over to

you. First, Bill Cover,

what'd you see that surprised

you on the Google YouTube side?

Yeah, you bet. Well,

and actually a couple.

So one surprise was that Saturday

and Sunday looked more like a

plateau.

Usually it reflects almost like

a Cathead with a Black Friday.

And then Saturday, Sunday, I turned

it down and then a Cyber Monday,

like two ears.

But this year was more like a plateau

where Saturday and Sunday performed

really, really well compared to years

before. But my biggest surprise.

Was- They were still down

over the other group. Yeah,

I'm exaggerating a little bit.

So what's interesting though is that

Saturday and Sunday grew at a much higher

percentage, lower numbers,

but Saturday and Sunday grew

tremendously year over year. Yeah.

Yep. Yep. 100%.

So one of the biggest surprises

was CPMs and CPCs were down

and it was noticeable. So

we ran the numbers. It is.

It is. We ran the numbers and demand gen,

which powers most of our YouTube VACs.

That was down quite a lot.

So it was in 2024 on average

1795 CPMs.

And then this year for Black Friday

So a drop of $7 and

change on the CPM side.

And then there were drops across all of

our channels, search, performance max,

standard shopping. Or I'm sorry, standard

shopping went up just a little bit,

but the rest were down. So yeah,

so that was really interesting.

Yeah. I mean, you can pretty much book

it, go to the bank, just expect it.

CPCs and CPMs over the weekend,

they're going to go up. Amazon,

Meta, Google, doesn't matter.

They're going to go up 10, 15,

25% in some cases. And yeah,

we saw CPMs down across a lot

of channels. Search was down.

To your point, yeah, CPMs on demand gen,

which is how we run YouTube down 40%.

And so a few potential reasons there.

It did seem like there were

more advertisers this year

opting for a little more

efficiency over the weekend.

So they were ramping up.

A lot of our clients did this as well,

ramped up in the months and weeks

leading up to Black Friday Cyber Monday,

and then they were able to be kind

of conservative during the weekend.

And so just a moderate spend

increase maybe year over year,

which less inventory pressure,

less auction pressure on ads,

which actually resulted in CPCs decreasing

a little bit and CPM's decreasing

a little bit. So hey, we probably can't

book that or plan on that for next year.

You never know, but I'll take

that as a pleasant surprise.

So Barry, on the Amazon ad side,

or just as you observed Amazon and

manage our teams and our clients,

what surprised you for the weekend?

I'm always kind of wondering when

they keep expanding this event,

it's four days and now it's

seven days, now it's 12 days.

Is it just going to dilute the

entire event? Year over year,

we were way up over last year.

So the sales were super strong.

The first day the event was a strong day,

and then it still looked

like Black Friday,

Cyber Monday were still our two

other biggest days of the event.

Kind of Bill's point, the weekend,

it was actually pretty low.

It was still good year over year, but it

was still just comparatively speaking,

it was just low compared to that

Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

And then the other thing that we've just

kind of been seeing all year long is

just the brands who are really

focusing off marketing offline,

off of Amazon. Those brands,

huge wins, huge wins for them,

the ones who didn't and the ones who just

waited to run promos during the event

that they were way behind. They were

way behind their competitors who got way

ahead of the game just by advertising

offline, getting their events ready,

doing top of funnel activities. So.

Yeah, it was a strong.

Year.

Yeah. Amazon continues to encourage

merchants to start their sales earlier and

earlier, which we see that. Even though

when that happens, like this year,

Black Friday, Cyber Monday still crushed

a little bit. And yet that final point,

Barry,

just had this happen recently

with a giftable product

food product that we sell,

tremendous product, doing

a lot on YouTube for them.

They've been scaling YouTube. They

just pulled back a few days ago,

I don't know, five days

ago, something like that.

And they just got access and they're

like, "Hey, Amazon sales are down.

Let's ramp YouTube back up." It's one of

those things where you always know that

there's a halo, you believe it. There's

certain ways you can measure it,

but sometimes when you really see it

when you turn those dials down on top of

funnel and so- 100%. ... saw that

across the board. Yeah. Awesome. Luba,

what else on the Amazon side

surprised you this year?

I would have to agree with everything

that Barry said because for most of our

clients, we handle both brand

management and PPC management.

So Barry and I work very closely

together with just few exceptions

of the clients who only have

advertising. But in majority of cases,

same sentiment, brands that

did not ... Well, first of all,

brands that did not work off

Amazon did not succeed on Amazon.

I would say 15 years ago,

even a little bit less than 15

you could launch Amazon-only

In some instances, $100 million, but a

mistake that a lot of those brands did,

they never really built brand equity.

They remained Amazon only brands,

and those are the brands that did not

have successful Q4 and Black Friday,

Cyber Monday.

It's such a good call. We've been

talking about that for years, haven't we,

that, hey, you've got to build a brand.

If you want long-term success regardless

of the channel and ideally your

omni-channel where you're selling D2C

and Amazon and other marketplaces and

retail stores, you got to build a brand.

And so those that live and die by Amazon

having a tough go of it for the most

part. And even during

Black Friday, Cyber Monday,

if you're not building a

brand outside of Amazon,

you're probably on a decline,

which is not where you want

to be for sure. So Nick Flint,

what about you on the retention

side, email and SMS? What surprises?

I would say this is the first year

that we can definitively say SMS has

surpassed the email as far as revenue

and engagement goes. No way. Yep.

Looking at revenue, looking at clicks.

So the brands who are

focused on it year round,

actively collecting emails and SMSs,

we're to getting more

action on the SMS side.

I think people are just more likely

to see those texts come through,

especially towards the end of the day.

If it's like a last call at 6:00 PM,

then I might not see that

email. I will see that text.

And the secondary surprise here is that

brands still aren't fully utilizing

this. Even some brands that

we're currently auditing

and pitching, they're like,

"Yeah,

I'm not sure about SMS." And we see

these backend numbers of it crushing it.

So surprised that it finally surpassed

email for our clients and then secondary

surprise, not everyone is fully utilizing

it yet because it's so powerful.

Man, that is amazing.

And just underscores you

got to lean in to SMS

rather to compliment

email. And I noticed it.

I noticed for the few of the brands that

I was following and a few of the brands

that I bought from over the

weekend, even on Thankssgiving Day,

some people were messaging then.

I was more likely to notice it.

Those late in the evening ones, I was

more likely to notice as well. So awesome,

awesome call out. Okay. Let's talk about,

because one of the things I really

want to underscore here is, hey,

how can we extract learning

to apply to next year?

Let's talk about what worked

and what didn't. And so Nick,

I'll actually start with you. What worked,

what didn't with the clients you observed?

So one tricky thing here that you just

said is comparing it year over year,

because there's just so many

factors 12 months apart.

You're trying to remember back to

last year, what were we launching?

How was the total sales looking?

How was the economy looking?

Was there a different president in

office? All those things come into play.

So the way we're trying to look at it

for our clients is calling it like a sale

playbook versus just a Black Friday

playbook. So we get this strategy,

this process, the system dialed in for

hyping up the sale, running the sale,

analyzing the sale while it's going on,

and then having that debrief after to

see what works and what doesn't work.

And then that same playbook,

you can now tweak for your St.

Patrick's Day sale coming up, your

summer sale, your next product drop.

So looking at this as more of a specific

sale that you can continue to iterate

and test on a few months

apart versus a year apart,

it's one of the biggest things.

It is just a sale, right? It's biggest

sale of the year, but it is just a sale.

I like that.

Still putting it in a playbook so you can

duplicate that and apply that not just

next Black Friday, Cyber, Monday.

Awesome. What worked and what didn't then?

I know we're thinking email SMS here,

but what really worked is when brands

have their marketing strategy dialed

in across the board, yes, I can

be sending out those texts. Yes,

I can be sending out those emails,

but what does the messaging

look on your website?

What kind of ads are you running on Meta?

What does your organic social talk about?

The brands that saw the most success from

email and SMS had their system dialed

in and they were hitting their customers

everywhere where their customers are at

to remind them about the

sale that's going on.

Yeah, it's so important.

And I think one of the things underscore

is you don't want to make people work

and you don't want to make people have

to try to remember because they won't.

And so everything needs to be saying

the same thing needs to be consistent

across the board. And I'm actually going

to bounce over to you really quick,

Luba,

because I love a point you made as we

were prepping and kind of chatting on

Slack and stuff internally

getting ready for this.

You talked about the fact that people

don't read during Black Friday Cyber

Monday, and I actually

totally agree with you,

but talk about what you meant by

that and then tie that into what

works and what doesn't

during this time period.

People don't read, period.

They don't.

And we've run multiple tests.

We've run tests where we

would be conducting video

surveys of people shopping

on Amazon product detail page.

We'd be asking people questions

on what matters to them,

what would make them buy the product,

what they would've changed in the listing.

And one thing we notice test after

test after test is eight out of 10

people who we survey do

not go below the fold,

so- called below the fold on Amazon.

So if your main image

wasn't attractive enough to

make them click on the main image,

you're probably going to lose the sale.

If your second image didn't

immediately convey to the customer

what problem this product

itselves, because remember,

people who shop online, they're

driven by problem and solution.

So what was the problem? How we solve it?

The true conversion happens

by image number three.

Everything after image number three

is a graveyard. So unless you have the

content really tied

in main image, above fold infographics,

easy to read title and easy

to read bullets, less is more,

that's the winning recipe.

Sellers tend to- It should become.

Instantly clear, instantly

clear why I should choose this.

Yeah. Yeah.

The entire new Amazon ecosystem

is geared towards solving

a problem that the consumer may have.

Yeah.

And it makes sense because still

most people shop on Amazon by search.

And so they're searching for a solution

or this particular need they're

trying to satisfy. And so

it totally makes sense. So

what did you recommend people do then in

preparation for the event? Anything to

capitalize on that fact

that people aren't reading,

they're just kind of scanning quickly?

I don't treat Black Friday Cyber Monday

as one of, just like as Nick was saying,

it's just one of the sales.

And treating Amazon channel as if

you only had two major events a year,

Prime Week in July and Black Friday,

Cyber Monday week in November

is going to set you up for loss.

What you need to do is

you need to develop,

just like you develop in direct to

consumer, just like you develop on Google,

on YouTube, in email,

you develop an evergreen marketing

promotional calendar that you constantly

nurture. That's the first

shift brands should do.

The second shift is constantly

testing and optimizing both backend

and front end content on Amazon,

because backend is going to

determine who will see your ad.

Front end will determine

who will buy your ad.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's both optimizing to

increase visibility through ranking,

optimizing to increase conversion rate

by making that listing more appealing,

and you got to do both.

Totally, totally makes sense.

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started, no strings attached. Bill,

what about for you? What worked,

what didn't across the clients you

observed and Google YouTube specifically?

Yep. So

an amazing correlation between success

and killing it year over year. I mean,

for our clients across the board,

we were up 31% year over year

for Black Friday Cyber Monday.

This is great. So above the average, a

few of those clients were up like 80,

100%. But the average, we beat the

industry average, which is awesome.

We did. And when you break it

down to a per client basis,

we were up 22% per client.

What we noticed was a strong,

very strong correlation between

running YouTube, top of funnel,

awareness level marketing and success for

Black Friday Cyber Monday and starting

those efforts early. And you

might be wondering, well,

VACs or VBCs.

Yes. We.

Have examples of both.

Maybe explain the difference because

I think some people will know,

but what's a VVC, what's a

VAC for those non-verbals?

Yeah, you bet. So a VAC,

a video action campaign,

you're telling the smart bidder

that I'm aiming for a conversion,

I'm aiming for that event. On a VVC-.

That's all through demand. That's

all through demand gen now.

So not technically a VAC, but that's

what a lot of people still call it. Sure.

Yep.

Thanks to Google who I think they aim to

make things more confusing every year.

It's not run.

Out of- Let's change the name

every year or less, please.

And then a VVC, you're

aiming for the view.

And so your strategy might be to

do some CTV or something like that.

That would be part of that. And so

just to give you a picture of that.

View based, view as the goal

versus conversion as the goal,

that's how you're setting up

the campaign. Totally makes.

Sense. Yep. And so we

have examples of both.

So if you ran YouTube top of funnel and

had an awareness or consideration level

effort to get new customers, you

did very well this Black Friday.

Yeah. That's awesome.

Love that. Any other call

outs, what worked, what didn't?

Yeah, you bet. So a couple things.

If you want to get your

pen and paper handy,

here's the playbook for next year.

Site-wide discount.

If you can afford it on your margins,

10 to 20 is kind of the standard,

but if you can go 25, 30, do that.

If you can't afford it on your margins,

create a premium such as, I don't know,

you buy the product for X and then

you add on some sort of premium,

personalizations, the

hat or the ride along,

discount out of the premium if you can't

afford to cut into your margins on the

main product. So clever discounting.

I would say also have a whole system,

a whole plan. Start in August.

I like what Luba said after Prime

Event in July, start planning,

get everything together and

launch your promo in November and

run it long. Start early, run long,

and have holiday assets and

content. So Holiday Landers,

we used AI on our PLAs to switch the

backgrounds to holiday. Maybe you

have some sort of MSRP restrictions or

map pricing where you can't discount

very much,

but you can at least change the background

on your PLAs to make them stand out

amongst other retailers.

So you can run little tactics

like that to stand out.

Yeah.

That's excellent. I love it. I think it's

fantastic. I do like starting earlier.

If you can capture a

share of wallet sooner,

that ensures that you get the sale

and don't get squeezed out by another

merchant. And so all those

really good takeaways. Barry,

what about what you saw, what you managed

on the Amazon ad side? What worked,

what didn't?

Well, sort of echoing some

of what Bill said. I mean,

I'll tell you what doesn't work,

not running a promo during the

biggest event of the year. I mean,

you're going to make some sales, but

your competitors are running promos.

So the sales likely to go to them. I mean,

for some of the people I've

spoken to, they talk about margin.

I don't have the margin to do this,

but then I try to take the conversation

to LTV, lifetime value, like, well,

let's look at getting this

customer at a discount.

Then what does the LTV of

that customer look like?

And that's where I think a

lot of people are missing.

They're just worried about their

margins right then and there.

So that's number one. That's

what's not working. Number two,

it's not really working is waiting until

the event to start running your promos.

The brands that did very well

that OMG currently manages,

we were pumping bids about a month before

because a lot of people knowing that

this event's coming up, they're putting

in their cart. It's in their wishlist.

So they're doing their research.

They're adding it to their cart,

but they're not buying because

they know the discount's coming.

So why not pump your bids hard in advance,

do the top of funnel activities as well?

Because there's even a lot of brands

that they're looking more for the

KPIs, hitting their tacos, hitting

their A cost levels. But I'm like,

prior to this event, they're going

to be higher. They should be higher,

but that's just getting

you brand equity out there.

You're getting your name in front

of people. Come time of the event.

They've probably already got your product

in their cart and they're going to

purchase it and your conversions are going

to be off the charts during that time

period.

Super interesting. And actually, one

thing that I wanted to underscore,

because this kind of ties into

several points that were made.

I think there legitimately

are some brands that are like,

"I can't run a discount

because discount, ads,

I don't make any money." You're probably

playing the wrong game then, right?

That means you probably aren't charging

the right price most of the time.

You haven't built brand

equity, you're playing a price,

you're fighting a price war throughout

the year rather than building a brand.

And so likely a few things that

need to shift right there. But Luba,

I think you've got something on

your mind you want to share with.

Us. Yeah.

I just want to add on top of it on

the whole margin and ads conversation.

This is going to be totally

non-scientific observation based on

running multiple direct to consumer

brands on Amazon for years,

but anytime we increase

promotional amount,

we saw decrease in total

acquisition costs on Amazon.

There is a reason why Amazon

puts deals, promotions,

coupon,

and any other promotional activity

as part of their advertising

console.

So what I always recommend

brands is come up with a maximum

percentage you can spend

on consumer acquisition.

That percentage should include Tacos,

total cost of advertising, plus

promotional discount on a catalog club.

Excellent.

That's going to be your max

that you comfortable with.

Increased promotions, Tacos goes down.

Decreased promotions, Tacos goes up.

Just based on my own observations

over the last 15 years.

Yeah. Yeah. Really good call out. Yeah.

So lump discounts in with some

of your ad spend and yeah,

your ad spend is going to be more

effective. You can have better A cost,

better Tacos if you have discounts

there, but all the math's got to work.

Awesome, awesome point.

Let's talk about what you saw the

best brands doing versus what you saw

those that struggled doing. And

one of my observations here,

because I was watching Shopify like a

Hawk hitting refresh almost obsessively,

right? We were Slacking all weekend. I

was looking at the Amazon dashboards.

But one of the things I

noticed, only a few clients,

only a few were down year over year

struggled. And do you know who they were?

They were clients or brands that

have been struggling all year.

Failing to find momentum,

just not getting the right offers going

throughout the course of the year.

Something in their business slipping,

inventory issues that have

plagued them all year.

And so I think it's really important to

underscore if you don't have momentum

going into the weekend or any sales

event, you're going to underperform.

You just are.

And so the greatest time to win for

holiday is starting probably like

January or summer prepping for holidays.

So momentum coming into the weekend can't

overstate how important that is. But

what did the best brands do

versus the rest? Nick Flynn.

Why don't you go? The best brands,

other than having that game

plan coming into the season,

they had some very specific points they

were hitting throughout this pretty long

stretch. And I'm even looking at the

data post Black Friday Cyber Monday.

So instead of saying,

"Hey, Black Friday is here,

come shop our site." They had early

access for their VIPs and they made that

very clear who is a VIP and how you

can become a VIP before that timeframe

actually hit. They have the

general access of Black Friday.

They shifted the offer when Cyber

Monday came around and they had the

last calls on Black Friday,

early access and Cyber Monday.

So some very clear differentiated

offers and timeframes.

And then the Soar the Magic comes in,

they then shifted that when

they exited Cyber Monday,

now we're looking at the gifting season

and how they can apply their marketing

to that.

Then the holiday cutoff,

we're hitting that right now like

December 15th through 17th order now,

so it arrives in time,

you get the people who get their money

for the holidays and then you can run

that end of year sale. So

having some very segmented,

targeted timeframes that

You clearly communicate.

That goes from Black Friday

to the end of the year.

That's what the best brands are doing.

Love it. So having that early access

for VIPs, main part of the sale,

last call for the different

segments of the sale.

It is really important to note,

and when we saw this play out

definitely with some of our brands,

that Black Friday, Cyber Monday, often

people are buying for themselves.

I was buying supplements and stuff

that I was not going to give as a gift,

but they were deals. And so I

was loading up, stocking up.

So a lot of times we buy for ourselves

for Black Friday, Cyber Monday,

not exclusively. The gift giving

really kicks in after that.

And we see that with

our most gifted brands.

They have the bigger Decembers than they

do Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekends.

And so having that seamless

transition to Nick,

I love that from one part of

the sale to the next. And hey,

throw in a little SMS for that

final call or SMS early and off,

and I'm thinking you would probably say.

So awesome.

Who wants to go next?

Yeah.

I was just thinking about what Nick was

saying about how SMS passed up email

this year. And I think

you said it too, Brett,

true of my own behavior

in looking at brands.

And I think there's a takeaway there,

and that's that this is the

time to aim for new customers.

And you want to give new

customers every ability to scan.

As Luba was saying, they scan, they

don't fully read everything, but scan,

show an interest, get on your

SMS or email and/or email list,

and then come back later in the day or

come back the next day and buy because

they're scanning, they're on

social media, they're shopping,

they're doing comparative

shopping and that stuff.

They may not be sure that

they want to buy right then,

but give them the ability to come

back to your brand and purchase.

And I think the goal through this

holiday season is to aim for that

new customer acquisition. You can

certainly have a retention goal. In fact,

if LTV is part of your

strategy, more power to you.

But I think I would focus on new

customer acquisition if that's a need

for your business,

because this is the time when customers

are more likely to purchase from a brand

that they've never purchased

from. And as you said, Brett,

a lot of them are

shopping for self as well.

They're not necessarily

buying everything as a gift.

Those decision windows are compressed

from when I first hear about you to when I

buy potentially for the weekend.

So it's a great time to convert

new buyers. 100% agree. Yeah.

And what else did you see, Bill,

that the best brands did that

those that struggled did not?

Yeah, I mean, for sure,

I can't emphasize enough just doing

that top of funnel YouTube awareness,

but having also just a systematic approach

Going into it.

So looking at your sale or your promo and

understanding that this needs

to be communicated to customers,

but it also needs to be communicated

to different facets of your team.

You have different platform specialists

and growth strategists and everyone

working on your behalf. So think

of the utility that goes into that.

Give them the information as soon

as your brand can come up with it.

Allow them to start setting things

up early, preparing, say, "Ah,

I need this piece of creative," or,

"We need that link for the landing page."

And then also equip them to work on

your behalf. What's your source of

truth? What are your goals and KPIs?

Maybe that looks different for new

customer acquisition versus retention.

Give them as much information as you

can to allow them to work on your behalf

because they're making

decisions real time on Thursday,

Friday, Saturday, Sunday, cyber

Monday, all of those days,

which need decision making on

an hourly basis in order to

bring success through that holiday period.

Yeah, exactly. We saw that so much. "Hey,

our budget for this day is $150,000,

but I want you to be watching these things

and we're going to check in a couple

times during the day and

things like that. So yeah,

teams got to be on the same page

and well equipped for sure. Luba,

what about for you? What do the best

brands do versus those that struggled?

What do they do? What's the difference?

It's going to sound maybe cliche,

but the best brands

don't run out of stock.

Ever.

It's not as simple of a task on Amazon,

especially for brands with

large extended catalogs,

but Amazon specifically

punishes you in brutal ways for

running out of stock because

the minute you run out of stock,

you drop in organic rank.

And then when you go back in stock,

you have to pay premium dollars

through Berry's team to get

back where you were. So the worst

thing you can do is run out of stock.

From personal anecdotes,

I've had to fly inventory

overnight from China

just not to go out of stock because

the cost of flying inventory in

was minimal compared to

the losses we would have,

especially if you have the coveted

best seller batch in a category,

the minute you lose that spot,

it's taken over by other people.

Yeah. Then somebody like, " Well,

if I can't buy this product,

I guess we'll try a new one and now

you maybe lose that customer forever.

"It's just really, really dangerous.

So I would say the number one thing that

the brands who succeed do is stay in

stock, always stay in stock.

Not overstock, not under stock,

but just proper inventory

management. Clean catalog,

having correct attributes on the backend

can make a difference in Amazon Cosmo

environment. Yeah.

So talk about that a little bit,

actually, Luber, really quickly.

So we got Cosmo on Amazon, like the

AI shopper assistant sort of thing.

Did we see that shift the game any at all?

Think about it.

That's Rufus.

Yeah.

That's Rufus. Sorry. Cosmo's

the back end. But yeah,

how do we see AI play out or

did it impact Amazon this year?

If you shop on mobile versus on desktop,

and something to remember about Amazon,

any major change comes on mobile first,

and then within next 12 months

it shows up on desks up.

So when you shop on mobile,

the filters that allow

you to minimize number

of search results showing up in your feed,

the filters are very prominently

displayed on the top and majority of

those filters are based

on backend attributes.

And as an industry,

we used to use those backend

attributes for years very

frivolously using them to type stuff in

that we wanted to get into the listing.

The game changed. You need to have clean

dropdown values in those attributes.

And I see that the brands where

the catalog is clean on the backend

outperform inefficiency on the front end.

You cannot not play that game anymore.

And the rest of your content,

which is now all scannable,

you have to have premium A. You

absolutely have to have premium A on your

listings. You have to use as much

native text as only possible.

And I always say design above the fold

for the consumer and below the fold for

Amazon AI.

Nice.

Nice. Because that's where

the customers rarely scroll,

but that's where Amazon

reads every word. Totally.

Makes sense.

Lots but not least on a high level,

I would say combining

hard data from Amazon

with the real life consumer

perception studies like those video

reviews,

that's a project we've been working

in 2026 where we ask real

shoppers how they felt.

So combining the data with perception.

Yeah. Love it. Yeah.

Real Amazon data mixed with actual videos

of watching people shop your product

and getting that feedback

from real customers,

combining that quantitative and

qualitative data, it's real unlocked.

It's a real game changer for.

Sure. No, fair warning. It

can be extremely painful.

Painful because people are hard on

your product or just painful workshops?

People because.

People are hard on your product.

Painful because things that you

thought are state of the art are not

state of the art, things that you thought

... But here's the biggest discovery.

Discovering what you thought

matters to your customer,

not to matter at all and vice versa.

Yep. That's one of those

painful awakenings, but man,

do you need to know it when you think

these are the reasons people care,

these are the reasons people buy,

they don't even pay attention to that.

In some cases, you got to get-.

And you're surprised that the price

is usually not the major factor.

We've seen, and Bill,

which was very interesting when you

said that on a direct to consumer,

people had to run promos

up to like 35%. On Amazon,

a standard 20% promo did just

well if you had a visibility

going into the event.

Yeah. And just to clarify,

I think the sweet spot or our 80 / 20

when I looked across all of our promos was

10 to 20, but there

were certain categories,

probably more competitive ones,

ones with more margin

where they did 25 to 30.

So that's kind of the high

water market say is 30%.

But I really liked what you said about

the filters because I think that kind of

makes a lot of sense.

If I'm shopping for a gift

for somebody on Amazon,

I really need to know size and color

and whatever in order to find that

gift because ...

And it kind of also makes sense with

regards to price not being number one.

What's really painful is getting something

that doesn't fit somebody or you have

to return. That's more painful than

paying five more dollars for an item.

Yeah. I got to the point where I begin

with catalog backend optimization

long before we even touch

anything on the front end.

Yeah. Yeah, that's important

for sure. Love it. Barry,

what about from your perspective? Best

brands versus those that struggle,

what do they do different

on an Amazon ads level? I.

Mean, Luba touched a lot of points. For

me, it's like this whole conversation,

the keyword in my head is momentum.

And just thinking about these events,

instead of thinking about these

events as isolated events,

Amazon has the spring day deals, they've

got July Prime, they've got the fall,

October Prime, we've got Black Friday,

Cyber Monday, Christmas holiday.

And it's like, so instead of just

looking at this as an isolated event,

got to start early. You got to start

prepping for every one of those events.

Get your brand out there.

You keep touching on a bill

with top of funnel awareness,

getting your brand name out there,

getting exposed to this audience,

starting your ads early.

I touched on this earlier,

like getting out there about a month in

advance of the actual event and start

pumping your bids, getting

your name out there,

making sure that your brand comes to

mind when people are thinking about the

products to purchase. Those are

the best things I've seen most.

The inventory thing is just so huge.

Like Lifupa said, that is such a killer.

And the other thing I don't think people

understand about Amazon too is sales

velocity and conversions.

And so in order to really rank

well organically on Amazon,

you need those two factors. And you

need to be doing that all year long.

You shouldn't just be focused about,

what can I do during this event

or that event? It's all year long.

How do I get my name out there?

How do I get people to click on

my product detail page and put

it in the buy box eventually?

And so those are just things that need

to be thought of twenty four seven,

365 days a year.

Totally makes sense. Love it. Well,

as we kind of wrap up guys and just so

much good information here, good tips,

good tactics, good data. What's

going in the playbook for next year?

And now you guys have convinced me

too, this is not just about next year,

this is about the next

sale or the next event.

But what's shifting in that playbook? I

know we've talked about a lot of things,

so you can reemphasize something or

talk about something specifically that's

shifting here,

but what's going in the playbook for

the next sale and for the next Black

Fridays every Monday?

Yeah,

so definitely YouTube top of

funnel going into it and give

yourself enough of a pre

Black Friday Cyber Monday

holiday window to really ramp

that up in a meaningful way.

We talked about CPMs being down this

year. That was comparing year over year,

but CPMs still do climb

going into Black Friday.

Yeah. So take advantage of

those lower- And year over year,

CPMs always go up across

the whole year. So yeah,

you got to get better at

what you're doing for sure.

Right.

And so you can guarantee that as

you march towards that Black Friday

day, that CPMs and CPCs

are going to go up.

So use that time before October-ish to be

running some heavier

awareness level marketing.

And then as you get

closer to Black Friday,

just depending on what makes sense

for your brand and your strategy,

you kind of pull back a little bit on

some of that YouTube just a little bit,

just kind of tease it down and allow

that retention and demand capture

marketing to play its role

in getting those sales,

capturing those sales for your awareness

audience that's already aware of you.

So love it.

I will add from the PPC side,

so I've already mentioned this about

starting early, obviously top of funnel,

which Bill's talked about

multiple times as well.

But I know a couple of

my clients have really,

when we're looking through

the numbers this year,

it's really utilizing day parting

during this time as well and really

understanding the days of those

events that are just really cranking.

So we know for a fact Black Friday,

Cyber Monday continues to crush it.

Weekends are a little bit flatter.

So been having discussions already

with clients just like next year,

let's really pump the budget hard

on those two days just knowing.

So if we're increasing budgets 50% on

those days, next year, let's go 100%.

Let's really just make sure we own top

of search during these huge days of

these events.

Love that. Love that. Nick, what about

you? What's going in the playbook?

If your head isn't already spinning from

everything we've dumped at you over the

last 40 minutes, hopefully you

got room in there for three more.

We'll make them quick.

So one thing on the staffing side is

find a way to ramp up your staff or your

staff's output, especially for the

customer support and the fulfillment side.

I ordered some stuff during Black Friday,

which is almost two weeks ago that still

hasn't shipped out because I'm guessing

that 3PL or that warehouse is backed

up. So the faster you get out the door,

the better the customer experience.

Exact same thing with any kind of chat

on the site or any kind of email tickets

that come in. Someone has a

question about their order,

they put the wrong address in.

Let's go ahead and get those answered

super fast to make that experience better

for them. Get your staffing in line.

Next is that post-purchase journey.

It doesn't stop when I give

you my credit card information.

What does that order

confirmation look like?

What does that post-purchase

flow look like?

Tell me I just got the best deal of

the year. And then the post-purchase,

tell me to share this with

a friend because they're

going to love these savings

too. And then in the package itself,

you could slip some kind

of postcard/insert with a

second exclusive offer on a

specific product, specific collection.

That way that one-time sale on Black

Friday might turn into a second one

from their friend who

they passed it along to,

and a third from them opening up

their package and seeing that offer.

Ready for the last one? I'm ready. Ooh,

this takes a little bit of planning,

but if you can get a launch

stacked in there with the sale,

it gets a little bit more excitement

in there and gives them another talking

point. Just like Lubo was saying, people

scan, they're seeing 10% off, 20% off.

They're not seeing brand new product

launch for the first time ever coming from

every different brand.

So stack the launch with the

sale to add to the excitement.

So holiday exclusive, holiday

kit, new holiday release.

So launching a new product with the event.

I dig it, man. We saw a few brands

do that. Tougher to coordinate,

tougher to pull off, but can really

add fuel to the fire. I love it.

Luba, what about you?

What else are you adding to the checklist

or the playbook for next year and next

to sale?

Two very different advices.

One is for Amazon only brands and

one is for multi-channel brands.

Advice for Amazon only brands,

stop being Amazon only brand.

Start thinking big. Start developing

your brand equity outside of Amazon.

Your real brand. Yeah.

Yeah. Become a real brand.

Advice for omnichannel brands is start

breaking down silos between your channels.

The worst thing you can do for your

business is maintain this philosophy of,

I don't want my D2C customers to

know that I have Amazon listings.

I don't want my Amazon customers to know

that they can buy a product in retail.

A sale is a sale, is a sale, is a sale.

And I think one of the smart marketing

books once said that you have to touch a

customer six times, either through

a billboard ad, YouTube, ad, Amazon,

store six interactions with a

potential consumer that could lead to

sale. And

stop thinking that you're going to

force the consumer to buy where it's

convenient for you. The consumer is going

to buy where it's convenient for them.

And last thing, start

promo calendar on Amazon,

just like you would in any real

because we've got the boxing day,

that's the last holiday available

in Canada right now that

starts this week. We've got new

year, new you. Then we have ...

Amazon is shifting from two

large events to constant

retaining holiday promotion

practically every month.

Identify, let's say you

have a catalog of five SKUs,

five heroes, run a hero

on a promo at least.

Alternate them. Have

something interesting, fresh,

show up into today's

deal filter on Amazon.

I know about you guys,

but when I shop on Amazon,

there are two buttons that I filter

everything out. Prime and today's deals.

If your product doesn't get into

Prime delivery and today's deals,

I'm not going to see your product,

no matter how great it is.

I love it. I love it. Guys,

this has been phenomenal.

You got me all psyched and ready

for the next event. I mean,

maybe ready for a vacation first

because it's been a pretty wild season,

but excited about the next event for sure.

And if it's not already

overwhelmingly obvious,

these are some smart people.

And if you underperformed in any way

during Black Friday, Cyber Monday,

it's probably because you need some

OMG people working on your account.

On the Amazon side, hey,

it's merchandising, it's

marketing, it's promotion,

it's optimization, it's inventory

management, all those things.

We can help you with that.

You need people like Luba and Barry

growing your business on Amazon.

We've helped multiple brands

ramp up to 20 million,

30 million a year and

beyond on Amazon. And yeah,

maybe you didn't see things improving

for you on the Google side and maybe you

haven't tapped into YouTube or maybe

your Google shopping wasn't great. We

actually saw a bit of a renaissance

with Google shopping this year over last

year, which was super interesting.

You need people like Bill Cover and his

team running your Google and YouTube.

And on the retention side, man, you

got to be leaning into SMS and email.

You need some Nick Flint in your

life as well. So thanks everybody.

Any final thoughts? And you guys

all wrapped it up beautifully,

but if there's any final

thoughts that you did not cover,

I want to give you one final opportunity,

but if you're good, we'll sign off.

I am actually sitting here

thinking about 26 is going to be,

I think it's going to be a massive,

massive year in change with AI in

our world now. It will. It will.

And AI is going to

absolutely explode next year.

And so I think like Luba talks

about a promo calendar for the year.

And I think for a long time people sort

of stresses people out because it's like

all the effort it takes for

creative now, people with AI,

you give a prompt, you push a button.

It is absolutely mind

blowing what can be done now.

So there's no excuses anymore.

We've got AI on our side and

we should all be utilizing it.

Got to partner with AI.

There's AI helping people shop.

There's AI helping with optimizations.

We've got AI helping and assisting

with creative and unpacking things and

understanding data. And yeah,

we've got to be leaning in for sure.

Yeah, very specifically on the

creative piece. I mean, like I said,

landing pages that were

holiday focused did well.

There's strong correlation there and

we're able to get really creative with our

shopping PLAs. So in the feed,

we can use Google tools

to change the background.

And so you don't have to

hire a photographer anymore

to have your same product

be in front of some sort of

holiday themed background,

which helps it stand out amongst

competitors in the PLAs. Love that.

Yeah. If anything,

AI tools highlight the

importance of planning and

vision. If you don't plan for the year,

you're just going to run around the

latest AI tool and not accomplish,

I would say planning.

Dig it. Dig it. All right, guys,

thank you so much. This is tremendous.

I think one of my favorite parts about

what I do is I get to work with really

freaking smart people every

day. So thank you all so much.

And thank you for tuning in.

We'd love to hear your feedback.

What would you like to

hear more of on the pod?

If you think this would be helpful

for another merchant friend of yours,

another marketing friend of yours,

please share it. It would make my day.

And with that, until next

time, thank you for listening.

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