Black Friday Shopping 2025: How to Win the Weekend with MAFO
Black Friday is no longer a single frantic day of doorbusters, it’s a weekend (and increasingly a month) of mobile-first, hyper-competitive commerce. In 2024 U.S. consumers spent a record $10.8 billion online on Black Friday, a 10%+ year-over-year increase, underscoring how digital channels now dominate the holiday shopping moment.
And it isn’t just dollars, it’s attention. The National Retail Federation estimated nearly 197 million shoppers participated across Thanksgiving weekend, making reach and timing as critical as creative and price.
Three trends shaped Black Friday last year, and they’ll matter even more in 2025:
So, how should brands and publishers plan for Black Friday 2025? Below are practical lessons taken from the data and how MAFO helps execute them.
1) Prepare for a mobile-first, AI-driven shopper
Shoppers will browse and buy on phones. That means speed, mobile creatives, and personalized offers are table stakes. Retailers should use predictive audience signals to serve the right message at peak moments.
How MAFO helps: MAFO’s AI and data layer create dynamic, high-value audiences and real-time KPI optimization so you can surface the right creative to mobile buyers when they’re most likely to convert. This drives higher CTRs and lower CPIs during peak hours.
2) Protect your Black Friday spend from fraud spikes, especially on big promo days
The more you spend, the more you attract bad actors. Left unchecked, fraud and fake post-install events eat margin at scale.
How MAFO helps: MAFO’s multi-layer anti-fraud system (proven to block up to ~98.6% of ad fraud in Mobupps’ deployments) inspects events, filters suspicious traffic, and applies event-level anomaly detection so you pay only for clean conversions. That protection is essential when budgets spike on Black Friday.
3) Avoid cannibalization, wasted bids and coordinate channels
When every network runs promos, the same users can be resold across exchanges, bid clashes and cannibalization inflate CPIs.
How MAFO helps: MAFO’s data layer detects overlapping inventory in real time and automatically prevents bidding into conflicting exchanges to avoid cannibalization, preserving incremental reach and maximizing true incremental ROI.
4) Pace budgets intelligently, don’t exhaust early
A common mistake: burn a big chunk of spend early and miss late-night or Cyber Monday opportunities.
How MAFO helps: MAFO’s budget optimizer paces daily/weekly investment, finds cost-effective windows and reallocates to best-performing channels in real time, ensuring you capture the entire conversion curve across the long Black Friday weekend.
5) Use premium inventory & CTV where it moves the needle
CTV and premium PMP placements deliver high viewability and cross-device lift, valuable for upper-funnel awareness that converts into app installs and purchases later in the funnel.
How MAFO helps: MAFO unlocks private marketplace (PMP) and CTV inventory with CPA options and cross-device attribution, letting advertisers mix high-quality reach with performance goals — a powerful combo during a multi-device shopping weekend.
6) For publishers, quality traffic is rewarded fast
Publishers that deliver clean, high-converting inventory need fast validation and payments to scale resources for the weekend.
How MAFO helps: MAFO’s publisher portal and rating system grant transparent reporting, early validations for top performers, and faster payouts, enabling publishers to scale clean inventory during peak demand. That makes MAFO a preferred partner for premium supply.
Quick tactical checklist for Black Friday 2025 (with MAFO)
Final word for this Black Friday Season
Black Friday 2025 will reward speed, precision, and trust. The data from the past year shows mobile and AI are the engines of growth, but they also amplify risk. Using MAFO’s combination of AI audience intelligence, multi-layer fraud protection, PMP/CTV access, and real-time budget/publisher controls gives advertisers and publishers a practical, battle-tested playbook to maximize revenue, and minimize wasted spend, across the entire Black Friday weekend.
Key sources:
Black Friday is no longer a single frantic day of doorbusters, it’s a weekend (and increasingly a month) of mobile-first, hyper-competitive commerce. In 2024 U.S. consumers spent a record $10.8 billion online on Black Friday, a 10%+ year-over-year increase, underscoring how digital channels now dominate the holiday shopping moment.
And it isn’t just dollars, it’s attention. The National Retail Federation estimated nearly 197 million shoppers participated across Thanksgiving weekend, making reach and timing as critical as creative and price.
Three trends shaped Black Friday last year, and they’ll matter even more in 2025:
So, how should brands and publishers plan for Black Friday 2025? Below are practical lessons taken from the data and how MAFO helps execute them.
1) Prepare for a mobile-first, AI-driven shopper
Shoppers will browse and buy on phones. That means speed, mobile creatives, and personalized offers are table stakes. Retailers should use predictive audience signals to serve the right message at peak moments.
How MAFO helps: MAFO’s AI and data layer create dynamic, high-value audiences and real-time KPI optimization so you can surface the right creative to mobile buyers when they’re most likely to convert. This drives higher CTRs and lower CPIs during peak hours.
2) Protect your Black Friday spend from fraud spikes, especially on big promo days
The more you spend, the more you attract bad actors. Left unchecked, fraud and fake post-install events eat margin at scale.
How MAFO helps: MAFO’s multi-layer anti-fraud system (proven to block up to ~98.6% of ad fraud in Mobupps’ deployments) inspects events, filters suspicious traffic, and applies event-level anomaly detection so you pay only for clean conversions. That protection is essential when budgets spike on Black Friday.
3) Avoid cannibalization, wasted bids and coordinate channels
When every network runs promos, the same users can be resold across exchanges, bid clashes and cannibalization inflate CPIs.
How MAFO helps: MAFO’s data layer detects overlapping inventory in real time and automatically prevents bidding into conflicting exchanges to avoid cannibalization, preserving incremental reach and maximizing true incremental ROI.
4) Pace budgets intelligently, don’t exhaust early
A common mistake: burn a big chunk of spend early and miss late-night or Cyber Monday opportunities.
How MAFO helps: MAFO’s budget optimizer paces daily/weekly investment, finds cost-effective windows and reallocates to best-performing channels in real time, ensuring you capture the entire conversion curve across the long Black Friday weekend.
5) Use premium inventory & CTV where it moves the needle
CTV and premium PMP placements deliver high viewability and cross-device lift, valuable for upper-funnel awareness that converts into app installs and purchases later in the funnel.
How MAFO helps: MAFO unlocks private marketplace (PMP) and CTV inventory with CPA options and cross-device attribution, letting advertisers mix high-quality reach with performance goals — a powerful combo during a multi-device shopping weekend.
6) For publishers, quality traffic is rewarded fast
Publishers that deliver clean, high-converting inventory need fast validation and payments to scale resources for the weekend.
How MAFO helps: MAFO’s publisher portal and rating system grant transparent reporting, early validations for top performers, and faster payouts, enabling publishers to scale clean inventory during peak demand. That makes MAFO a preferred partner for premium supply.
Quick tactical checklist for Black Friday 2025 (with MAFO)
Final word for this Black Friday Season
Black Friday 2025 will reward speed, precision, and trust. The data from the past year shows mobile and AI are the engines of growth, but they also amplify risk. Using MAFO’s combination of AI audience intelligence, multi-layer fraud protection, PMP/CTV access, and real-time budget/publisher controls gives advertisers and publishers a practical, battle-tested playbook to maximize revenue, and minimize wasted spend, across the entire Black Friday weekend.
Key sources:
