‘You don’t want to be discounting so much’: Confessions of a media buyer on the challenges of an extended Black Friday Cyber Monday
Over the last few years, Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) deals — and the ads promoting them — have creeped up earlier and earlier. The extended sales window can be difficult to manage for brands and media buyers. In the latest edition of our Digiday Confessions series, in which we exchange anonymity for candor, we hear from a media buyer on how the extended sales window means brands need to get more creative and the challenges of deeper discounting.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Some brands you work with are having to extend some BFCM sales longer than they planned on this year. Tell us what’s going on.We got some direction on Amazon’s Black Friday sale [earlier this month]. If you wanted to participate in the deals, you had to run the deal starting on the 21st for the 12 day period. They pulled forward and basically they started their Black Friday sale on the 21st. So then all the brands had to follow so if you wanted to get that elusive Black Friday deals sticker on your products, which by the way has a lot of conversion impact, you had to participate for the full duration, which is the 21st through December 2nd. Not all brands were planning on having their Black Friday discount and go for that long and then on top of it, you have to have a certain threshold [of ad spending].
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