This guide covers how to build the schedule. For what each hour of the week actually looks like once it is running, see Black Friday Week on Amazon, Hour by Hour. For the full event plan, see the Black Friday and Cyber Monday Amazon Ads Guide.
If you have read our Prime Day dayparting guide, the logic here will feel familiar: an event changes when people buy, so the schedule that saves you money the other 50 weeks of the year costs you money during the event. The difference with Black Friday and Cyber Monday is the length and the shape. Prime Day is 48 hours that behave roughly the same way. BFCM is five days that each behave differently, which means one flat "run everything 24 hours" override is too blunt.
Here is how to think about each day, and how to build the schedule so it turns itself off.
Why a baseline schedule breaks during BFCM
A typical dayparting setup pauses or throttles campaigns overnight, say midnight to 6am, because that is when conversion rates are worst for most categories. During the week of Thanksgiving, three things change at once.
- Shoppers browse late. Thanksgiving evening into the early hours of Black Friday has meaningful purchase intent that does not exist on a normal Thursday night.
- Deals start at midnight. If your Lightning Deal or coupon goes live at 12:00am and your campaigns are paused until 6am, the first six hours of the deal run unpromoted.
- Daily budgets reset at midnight. During the event, campaigns that would normally coast into the evening can hit their cap by early afternoon, which makes the morning hours worth more than usual.
The fix is not to delete your baseline schedule. It is to layer a short-lived schedule on top of it.
The five-day shape
| Day | Date | Schedule shape |
|---|---|---|
| Thanksgiving | Nov 26 | Normal daytime. Lift the overnight pause from 8pm onward so midnight deals launch with ads live. |
| Black Friday | Nov 27 | Run all 24 hours. Full budget from midnight. |
| Saturday | Nov 28 | Run 24 hours but restore a light overnight throttle (reduce, not pause) from 1am to 6am. |
| Sunday | Nov 29 | Same as Saturday through the day. Lift the throttle again from 8pm so Cyber Monday opens live. |
| Cyber Monday | Nov 30 | Run all 24 hours, with budget protected for the evening. Adobe recorded the 2025 peak from 8pm to 10pm. |
| Tuesday | Dec 1 | Override expires at midnight. Baseline schedule returns automatically. |
Illustrative shape. Pull your own hourly data from last November if you have it and adjust the throttle windows to your category.
The reason Saturday and Sunday get a throttle rather than a pause is that weekend traffic during the event is still well above a normal weekend, just less concentrated. Pausing outright gives up sales. Reducing bids or budgets overnight keeps you present without paying peak prices for 3am clicks.
How to build it
Whether you are using Off Hours or another tool, the structure is the same. The specifics below are how it works in Off Hours.
Step 1: Leave the baseline alone
Open your existing dayparting rule and do nothing to it. This is the schedule you want back on December 1, and the cleanest way to get it back is to never touch it.
Step 2: Create the event schedule as a dated override
Build a new dayparting rule scoped to November 26 through November 30. Give it a higher priority than the baseline so it wins when both apply. In Off Hours this is an event rule with a dayparting action: it has a start date, an end date, and a restore step built in, so there is nothing to remember to turn off.
Step 3: Enter each day's shape
Use the table above as the starting point. The rule should carry a different hourly pattern for each of the five days, not a single pattern repeated. Thanksgiving and Sunday are "lift from 8pm." Black Friday and Cyber Monday are "run all hours." Saturday is "throttle 1am to 6am." If your tool only supports one pattern per rule, build two rules: one for the two peak days and one for the three shoulder days.
Step 4: Scope it to the campaigns that deserve it
Apply the override to your hero campaigns and BFCM duplicates, not the whole account. A long-tail campaign that barely converts on a normal Tuesday does not become a winner at 2am on Black Friday because the calendar changed. Those campaigns can keep their baseline schedule all week.
Step 5: Check the time zone
Amazon's daily budget resets and your schedule hours need to agree. If you sell in more than one marketplace, each one needs its own override in local time, or a midnight deal in one market launches at 9pm in another. Amazon ad scheduling across time zones covers the setup in detail.
Step 6: Set the expiry and confirm the restore
The override ends at 11:59pm on November 30. Confirm what happens at 12:00am December 1: the baseline schedule should resume on its own, including the overnight pause. This is the step that separates an event override from a permanent schedule change. If you cannot see a restore step in the rule, you do not have an override, you have an edit.
Overrides that expire themselves.
Build the five-day schedule once in plain English. Off Hours runs it from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday and hands your baseline back on December 1. 14 days free.
Start free trial →Pairing the schedule with budgets
Dayparting decides when ads are eligible. Budget decides how long they stay eligible. During BFCM both have to move together, or you get a 24-hour schedule attached to a budget that exhausts by 11am, which is the same as a schedule that ends at 11am. The 14-day BFCM playbook covers budget staging on T-7 and dayparting on T-4 for exactly this reason: budgets first, then schedule, so the schedule has something to spend.
A practical check for each hero campaign: if the planned event budget divided by the planned active hours is less than your normal budget divided by your normal active hours, the schedule is wider than the budget can support. Either narrow the schedule or raise the budget.
What to watch while it runs
- Thanksgiving evening: Did the 8pm lift fire? Impressions should climb into midnight rather than dropping off.
- Black Friday morning: Is budget pace tracking to last the day? If a hero campaign is on track to cap before 2pm, that is a budget problem, not a schedule problem. Release budget rather than editing hours.
- Saturday 1am: Did the throttle apply? Spend should step down visibly without going to zero.
- December 1, first thing: Is the overnight pause back? This is the single most important check of the week. An override that failed to expire is the most common way BFCM quietly bleeds into December.
Common mistakes
Frequently asked questions
Should I turn off dayparting for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Not turn it off: override it. Build a dated event schedule that runs on top of your baseline from November 26 to 30 and expires on December 1, so your normal overnight pause comes back automatically.
Should Amazon ads run 24 hours on Black Friday? For hero campaigns with the budget to support it, yes. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the two days where every hour carries purchase intent. The shoulder days (Saturday and Sunday) usually warrant a light overnight throttle rather than full 24-hour spend.
What time should I lift the overnight pause before Black Friday? Thanksgiving evening, around 8pm local time, so campaigns are live when midnight deals and coupons launch. The same applies Sunday evening ahead of Cyber Monday.
Is BFCM dayparting different from Prime Day dayparting? Prime Day is 48 hours that behave similarly, so one 24-hour override works. BFCM is five days with two peaks and three shoulder days, so the override needs a different shape per day and a longer window.
What is the most important check after Cyber Monday? On the morning of December 1, confirm the baseline schedule has returned and the overnight pause is active. An override that did not expire is the most common cause of elevated December spend.
Off Hours builds dayparting overrides as dated event rules with the restore step included, so the baseline comes back on its own. Describe the five-day shape in plain English, scope it to your hero campaigns, and let it run. Start a free 14-day trial.