Black Friday Advertising: How Brands Win the Shopping Season

Every November, Black Friday advertising takes the stage. A moment of excitement, anticipation, and exclusive, limited-time offers that signal the start of the holiday shopping season. Yet in 2025, it’s no longer just about discounts and doorbusters.

Black Friday has evolved into a full-scale retail experience where entertainment, technology, and emotion intersect. Shoppers aren’t only hunting for deals, they’re engaging with stories, content, and brands that feel relevant to their world.

For advertisers, this transformation has created a new era of retail media, one powered by context, emotion, and precision.

According to Seedtag’s latest insights, Black Friday advertising trends are now driven by the convergence of tech innovation, consumer intention, and neuro-contextual advertising. From streaming and gaming to sports and shopping, audiences are interacting across digital environments that reveal what captures their attention, inspires emotion, and motivates action.

The result? Unprecedented opportunities for brands to connect meaningfully and make every impression count.

1. The Context Behind the Click: What People Really Do on Black Friday
2. Beyond Discounts: Why Emotion and Context Drive Sales
3. How Brands Use Black Friday Ads to Drive Sales
4. The Rise of AI in Black Friday Advertising
5. What Publishers Can Learn from Black Friday Advertising
6. The Shift Toward Intentional Shopping
7. The Emotional Economics of the Holiday Shopping Season
8. Smarter Context, Stronger Impact
   

Black Friday Advertising Trends Takeaways

• Black Friday has evolved from discounts to discovery: It’s no longer just about price, it’s about emotional connection, entertainment, and contextual relevance across the holiday shopping season.
• Technology dominates consumer attention: Over 31% of Black Friday content revolves around technology and computing, with audiences engaging heavily in AI-powered deal trackers, gaming devices, and smart home tech.
• Emotion drives engagement and sales: Successful Black Friday ads go beyond “limited-time offers”. They align with consumer emotions such as excitement, nostalgia, and anticipation to build lasting brand affinity.
• Publishers can win through contextual intelligence: By matching content like reviews, streaming line-ups, or gaming guides with contextually aligned Black Friday ads, publishers can boost CPMs, monetise high-intent traffic, and even earn affiliate commissions.
• Early access defines success: The pre–Black Friday period is now crucial. Consumers research and plan weeks ahead, meaning early storytelling and contextual engagement are key to conversion.
• Black Friday and Cyber Monday form a connected ecosystem: While Black Friday triggers emotional, in-store, and lifestyle-led buying, Cyber Monday amplifies online conversions — both are powered by content-rich, AI-driven experiences.
  
  

The Context Behind the Click: What People Really Do on Black Friday

Black Friday advertising isn’t about offering the biggest discount anymore. It’s about understanding what people are doing, watching, and feeling when they shop. Our analysis of 8,655 articles and over 1.6 million total visits shows that conversations around Black Friday extend far beyond e-commerce. They flow through entertainment, sports, and lifestyle, the digital equivalent of a buzzing shopping mall where every moment tells a story.

At the center sits technology and computing, representing 31.3% of all Black Friday-related content. Consumers are drawn to gaming laptops, consoles, smartphones, VR headsets, and TVs, but just as important are the price-tracking tools and AI-powered deal finders helping them make smarter choices. This year, AI isn’t just powering ads; it’s shaping how consumers compare, decide, and buy.

Engagement intensity also varies across categories, with technology and gaming articles generating the highest average visits per article, showing where consumer curiosity peaks during Black Friday.

Next comes shopping, accounting for 12.4% of the conversation. Audiences are diving into comparisons between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, tracking early access deals from major retailers like Walmart and Dyson, and planning purchases with precision. 

The data shows that pre-Black Friday engagement spikes earlier each year, proving that timing and contextual presence drive conversion.

Sports also play an unexpected role. With 11% of content linked to sports gear, fan apparel, and NFL promotions, advertisers are aligning their Black Friday advertising with cultural events, turning fandom into commerce.

Beyond Discounts: Why Emotion and Context Drive Sales

The biggest Black Friday advertising wins aren’t necessarily the loudest. They’re the ones that tap into emotion, grabbing consumers' attention by the heart. This season’s data shows how brands like Sony, Fender, and Xiaomi leverage nostalgia and exclusivity with limited-edition guitars, collector devices, and premium bundles to turn products into experiences.

That emotional connection is what makes contextual advertising so powerful. Imagine a smart TV promotion appearing beside a Netflix review or a PS5 bundle ad within a gaming walkthrough. When the environment reflects the user’s mindset, engagement rises naturally.

In Seedtag’s data, entertainment and streaming categories, including Netflix, Disney+, and Paramount+, dominate attention during the holiday season, underscoring how Black Friday advertising thrives where people feel most inspired.

How Brands Use Black Friday Ads to Drive Sales

So how do brands translate interest, intent, and emotion into action? Through retail media, the new powerhouse of Black Friday advertising.

In 2025, retail media networks have become more than conversion platforms; they’re contextual ecosystems connecting audiences at the moment of consideration. During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, these ecosystems merge first-party retail data with AI-driven contextual signals, helping brands deliver ads that feel timely, relevant, and human.

For example:

• Microsoft, Samsung, and Apple lead with tech-focused campaigns tied to early-access launches.
• PlayStation and Alienware dominate gaming spaces, aligning Black Friday ads with entertainment content long before consumers reach retailer sites.
• Disney+ and Hulu use exclusive bundle promotions to merge content consumption with retail conversion.
  
  

The result: advertising that aligns emotion with availability, creating authentic connections during the most competitive retail moment of the year.

Learn More

1. Consumer Trends: What’s Driving Shopping Fever This Season
2. Consumer Trends in the Automotive Industry: What’s Driving Change
3. How to Advertise on CTV: Streaming Into the Future for Brands and Publishers
4. Digital Marketing Musts for Publishers: Locking in Monetization with Brand Safety
   
   

The Rise of AI in Black Friday Advertising

The next chapter in Black Friday advertising trends is powered by AI, not as a buzzword, but as a bridge between data and human behaviour.

From dynamic creative optimisation to neuro-contextual advertising, AI helps brands interpret not just what consumers read, but why they engage.

Our proprietary Neuro-Contextual AI, Liz, decodes interests, emotions, and intent in real time, ensuring Black Friday ads appear where users are most receptive. When a reader browses gaming setups or smart-home articles, Liz detects emotional cues like curiosity or anticipation; then it delivers matching creatives, such as a limited-time TV offer or early-access console deal.

This approach transforms advertising from interruption to interpretation. It’s not about pushing harder. It’s about understanding better.

What Publishers Can Learn from Black Friday Advertising

Publishers are essential to the success of Black Friday advertising. With audiences seeking inspiration, recommendations, and deal insights, content environments become prime retail media real estate.

By combining editorial content with AI-powered context, publishers can:

• Align Black Friday ads with high-intent moments.
• Increase CPMs through relevance and engagement.
• Turn review articles, gift guides, and product comparisons into interactive purchase journeys.
• Leverage affiliate programs to earn an affiliate commission from Black Friday sales, maximising the value of high-intent content.

The Shift Toward Intentional Shopping

One of the defining patterns of Black Friday advertising 2025 is the rise of intentional shoppers. Today’s consumers plan earlier, compare smarter, and buy faster once they identify the right deal.

Our data reveals that planning behaviour starts weeks before the Black Friday season, driven by curiosity around exclusive offers, free gifts, and early-access sales. Brands that engage during this pre-period, through emotional storytelling and contextual alignment, can build familiarity and trust that pay off once purchase decisions peak. 

If you wanna know more about how brands are adapting, explore our blog article new marketing trends. 

The Emotional Economics of the Holiday Shopping Season

Even as Cyber Monday extends the momentum online, the heart of Black Friday advertising remains emotional. It’s about belonging, celebration, and the thrill of discovery. Categories such as music tech, streaming, and gaming consistently outperform because they offer participation, not just promotion.

Campaigns like Spotify Wrapped, Netflix holiday premieres, and Disney+ bundles show that the most successful Black Friday marketing campaigns combine storytelling with utility, a reflection of how modern retail media turns attention into intention.

While Cyber Monday drives significant online traffic, with 1,446 related articles and over 320,000 visits, its focus remains largely on tech and streaming deals, complementing the broader, more emotional narrative of Black Friday.

Smarter Context, Stronger Impact

Black Friday advertising is evolving into something far more sophisticated than a weekend of markdowns. It’s becoming the pulse of modern brand strategy — where interest, intent, emotion, data, and AI converge to drive measurable impact.

Seedtag’s neuro-contextual approach, powered by Liz, helps brands understand audiences more humanly, connecting messages to mindsets across every stage of the journey.

Because in 2025, the brands that win won’t be those shouting the loudest, but those that understand the moment best.

That’s the power (and promise!) of Black Friday advertising in the new era of contextual connection.