4 - Manual Bidding during Black Friday

Q4 2026 WORKSHOP - DAY 2

Manual Bidding During Black Friday

1. Manual Bidding options
2. Should you re-test your bids?
3. How to use manual bidding to scale

Manual Bidding options

1. Low Cost Cap (underbidding)
   
2. Low Bid Cap (underbidding)
   
3. High Cost Cap (overbidding)
   
   
4. High Bid Cap (overbidding)
   
   
   
   
5. Maximize Value (increase the AOV + reach new audience)
   
   
   Does the AOV really increase?
   
   
   

So this makes sense → CBO_BFCM_(Bundles)_MaxValue

Then we also have the “ROAS goal” or “ROAS target” but honestly it has never worked for me.

Should you re-test your bids?

Retest if → You haven’t used manual bidding in >6 months.

Retest if → Your winning bid is very close to your AOV.

AOV = $50

Winning Cost cap = CC40-60

• This scenario doesn’t guarantee that a normal CBO and a CBO CC50 will not overlap

As during BFCM, competition will increase a lot.

If you use overbidding, no need to retest.

How to use manual bidding to scale

Very simple, horizontal scaling (just duplicate).

Example:
Automatic bidding: Ad spend $21k

Manual bidding: Ad spend +$23k

Apart from “just scaling”.

We want to use manual bidding for another reason:

Remember the 3 phases:

• Testing
• Building and scaling the Scaling Campaigns
• BFCM: Hyperscaling

During phase 2, we are no longer testing ads, we are testing what campaign type scales better.

Approximately this will happen from November 20th to November 26th.

It might look like:

🧪🚀 CBO_(BFCM)

🚀 CBO_USA_(BFCM)_(Direct Conversion)_CostCap150

🚀 CBO_EU_(BFCM)_(Direct Conversion)_CostCap150

🚀 CBO_USA_(BFCM)_(Bundles)_MaxValue

🚀 CBO_EU_(BFCM)_(Bundles)_MaxValue

🚀 CBO_USA_(BFCM)_(Generate Desire)_BidCap200

🚀 CBO_EU_(BFCM)_(Generate Desire)_BidCap200

• And we realize that:
• Bundles with max value only works in the USA,
• Bid Cap works much better than Cost Cap,
• Cost Cap is very unstable

So BFCM I want to hyperscale this:

🧪🚀 CBO_(BFCM)

🚀 CBO_USA_(BFCM)_(Bundles)_MaxValue

🚀 CBO_USA_(BFCM)_(Generate Desire)_BidCap200

🚀 CBO_EU_(BFCM)_(Generate Desire)_BidCap200

Remember to duplicate a few days before BFCM.

And have 5-10 ad sets per CBO, to have creative AND spend diversification.