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Connection Between Black Friday and Affiliate Sales (12)

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Hi guys. I am seeing a drop in traffic and sales since last week. I believe it is related to Black Friday as my geos are USA, UK, Canada, and Australia. Even my TikTok ads have stopped receiving clicks. I am promoting ecom products from GiddyUp.

Is anyone experiencing something similar?

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I don´t see such issue myself but I also don´t run ecom offers.

I could imagine that because of Black Friday the bids got increased (alot) so that previously good working bids are just not competitive enough now.

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It should be quite the opposite, shopping activity increases during these major sales days. Just a thought, are you running BF branded ads or creatives? Most of your competitors are, so in case you're not, that might be the reason for the decline. Everyone is looking for discounts during this week and the previous one

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Noticed a bit of a drop in push traffic and sales too (sweeps).
It has been picking up for me again since yesterday.

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Well, clicks will get more expensive around Black Friday obviously... because so many companies are advertising heavily...

So its normal to see your traffic drop in volume if you have the same bids you did previously...

I'm not sure what the effect would be on TikTok... like if you're doing 'Lowest Cost' for instance... but I would guess reduced spend would be normal... and wouldn't be surprised at all at reduced performance...

One thing to note though, GiddyUp is unique in that they also pay affiliates for sales that later come in via Google Search and email and stuff like that... so its possible you may see a lot of delayed sales that are from people who clicked your ad around Black Friday but then ended up buying later after googling the product, or who abandoned cart but later came back and bought. I think its normally like a one week delay on those before they're attributed to you.

Anyway, for US stuff and Ecom/VSL's, I usually take off Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Dec 20th-Jan 3rd. Always struggled at those times.

Other than that though Q4 has always been pretty decent for me. Definitely clicks are more expensive though vs the other three quarters.

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This is very nice actually, didn't know they were doing this! This is definitely something that sets a good network apart from a bad one

Very good point Jack! Didn't think about this at all. I don't see such an effect in my main vertical (dating) but for ecomm it makes a lot of sense.

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Yes probably this was the reason. I was running creatives (no Black Friday stuff).

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Thank you so much guys for your replies @twinaxe @matuloo @jack_l @david-cc

My campaigns are back to normal. You guys were right as due to more competition on Black Friday, I was getting higher CPC and thus making some of the campaigns struggle to breakeven.

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Thanks Jack. You were right. Expensive CPC on Facebook, Pinterest and Google during Black Friday was the reason for pushing my campaigns to Red. I am still struggling with TikTok. I am always using 'Lowest Cost' but still it doesn't do the trick for me.

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Yeah December can just be brutal...

One more month though and we get to Q1 where everything gets back to normal

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When do you usually see everything being normal again in the verticals you are in? In dating, Christmas is down, new years too, the next few days are up and down and usually by the 15th Jan all is back to normal

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Hi asharjamil,

We always see a huge spike in traffic costs at the end of the year as the result of big companies spending the leftovers of their yearly budgets. Did you exclude the lack of traffic being the result of increased CPM’s?
Hope it helps!

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