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:

• Bill Cover, Google & YouTube Director
• Luba, Amazon ABM Strategist
• Barry Bowman, Amazon Ads Specialist
• 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: 

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

Relevant Links:

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

Transcript:

Brett Curry:

Hey, this episode is brought to you by OMG Commerce. That's the agency that I get the privilege of running. You ever feel like it's Groundhog Day when it comes to your marketing where every day's the same, you're still relying on the same channels, got the same ads you're leaning into? Maybe it's time to diversify. Maybe it's time to unlock new growth. That's what we specialize in. My guess is if you're like most brands, you're probably leaning heavily into Meta ads and long live Meta. We love it, but you're probably missing YouTube ads. And my guess is maybe Google is underleveraged as well. We've helped multiple brands go from zero to five, 10, 15, even $25,000. A day we helped Karenik a hair regrowth product go from zero to $1 million in YouTube ad spend in 90 days while hitting their CAC target. And we'd love to see if we could do the same for you.

So we'd love to chat, talk about what it takes to scale on YouTube and how ready you are right now. So let's chat and go to omgcommerce.com, click the Let's Talk button, and we'd love to help you 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?

Bill Cover:

Great.

Brett Curry:

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,

Barry Bowman:

Man? Very good. Glad to be here. Thank you, Brett.

Brett Curry:

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?

Nick Flint:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Nick Flint:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Bill Cover:

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

Brett Curry:

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.

Bill Cover:

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 Cyber Monday weekend, we were at 1091. 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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Barry Bowman:

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

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it was a strong

Barry Bowman:

Year.

Brett Curry:

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?

Luba Ilyasova:

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 years ago, circa 2015 through 2018, you could launch Amazon-only brand and scale up to 2030. 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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Nick Flint:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Nick Flint:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Nick Flint:

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.

Brett Curry:

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.

Luba Ilyasova:

People don't read, period.

Brett Curry:

They don't.

Luba Ilyasova:

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

Brett Curry:

Instantly clear, instantly clear why I should choose this.

Luba Ilyasova:

Yeah. Yeah. The entire new Amazon ecosystem is geared towards solving a problem that the consumer may have.

Brett Curry:

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?

Luba Ilyasova:

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.

Brett Curry:

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. This episode is brought to you by Channel, the number one feed management and advertising platform for savvy eCommerce marketers. Over 11,000 brands and agencies, including OMG commerce, use Channeble's powerful automation engine to sanitize, optimize, and advertise product data across the world's biggest channels like Google, Amazon, and many more. So save money, save time by switching to Channel's full service platform and get world-class support, plus month to month pricing. As an e-commerce evolution, listener channel is giving you a free feed audit for a channel of your choice, learn how you can improve your feed score and increase the visibility of your products. Sign up for free at channeable.com. Mention e-commerce evolution to get started, no strings attached.

Bill, what about for you? What worked, what didn't across the clients you observed and Google YouTube specifically?

Bill Cover:

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.

Brett Curry:

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.

Bill Cover:

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,

Brett Curry:

Yes. We

Bill Cover:

Have examples of both.

Brett Curry:

Maybe explain the difference because I think some people will know, but what's a VVC, what's a VAC for those non-verbals?

Bill Cover:

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-

Brett Curry:

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.

Bill Cover:

Thanks to Google who I think they aim to make things more confusing every year. It's not run

Brett Curry:

Out of- Let's change the name every year or less, please.

Bill Cover:

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.

Brett Curry:

View based, view as the goal versus conversion as the goal, that's how you're setting up the campaign. Totally makes

Bill Cover:

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.

Brett Curry:

Love that. Any other call outs, what worked, what didn't?

Bill Cover:

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,

Brett Curry:

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?

Barry Bowman:

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.

Brett Curry:

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

Luba Ilyasova:

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.

Brett Curry:

Excellent.

Luba Ilyasova:

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.

Brett Curry:

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,

Nick Flint:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Bill Cover:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Bill Cover:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Luba Ilyasova:

It's going to sound maybe cliche, but the best brands don't run out of stock

Brett Curry:

Ever.

Luba Ilyasova:

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.

Brett Curry:

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.

Luba Ilyasova:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Luba Ilyasova:

Think about it.

Brett Curry:

That's Rufus.

Luba Ilyasova:

Yeah.

Brett Curry:

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?

Luba Ilyasova:

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.

Brett Curry:

Nice.

Luba Ilyasova:

Nice. Because that's where the customers rarely scroll, but that's where Amazon reads every word. Totally

Brett Curry:

Makes sense.

Luba Ilyasova:

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 on in 2025 and we're rolling it out in 2026 where we ask real shoppers how they felt. So combining the data with perception.

Brett Curry:

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

Luba Ilyasova:

Sure. No, fair warning. It can be extremely painful.

Brett Curry:

Painful because people are hard on your product or just painful workshops? People because

Luba Ilyasova:

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.

Brett Curry:

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-

Luba Ilyasova:

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.

Bill Cover:

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.

Luba Ilyasova:

Yeah. I got to the point where I begin with catalog backend optimization long before we even touch anything on the front end.

Brett Curry:

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

Barry Bowman:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Bill Cover:

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.

Brett Curry:

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.

Bill Cover:

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.

Barry Bowman:

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.

Brett Curry:

Love that. Love that. Nick, what about you? What's going in the playbook?

Nick Flint:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Luba Ilyasova:

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.

Brett Curry:

Your real brand. Yeah.

Luba Ilyasova:

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 planning your entire 2026 promo calendar on Amazon, just like you would in any real business in December of 2025, 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.

Brett Curry:

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.

Barry Bowman:

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.

Brett Curry:

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.

Bill Cover:

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.

Luba Ilyasova:

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.

Brett Curry:

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. This episode is brought to you by Wayflyer. You've got demand. You've got ads that are converting. Without enough inventory, you're leaving money on the table. And when your bank doesn't get D2C, they won't structure funding the way you need it. That's why thousands of D2C brands turn to Wayflyer, fast, flexible funding designed just for e-commerce.

No equity, no dilution, no hassle. Trusted by 5,000 plus brands and backed by JP Morgan. Wayflyer has deployed over five billion to help D2C brands go. Visit wayflyer.com//omgcommerce. Learn how Wayflyer can help you and discover how you could get a 5% rebate off of your fees.

‍