Day 82: Black Friday CPM Spikes and New Video Ads

Day 82 – Rising CPMs, Black Friday Pressure, and My First Beginner-Focused

Follow my daily journey to $240K as I build, test, and scale profitable funnels.

Daily Summary

Today marks Day 82, and we’re edging close to the end of the first three months of this journey.

The last few days have brought some strange patterns in the ads account, and I’m beginning to suspect that Black Friday is playing a major role.

With bigger advertisers ramping up budgets, auction pressure increases, and smaller advertisers like me get pushed to the margins. The result is weaker traffic quality and reduced visibility among my ideal buyers.

Yesterday closed at 466, and I knew straight away it would be a losing day.

With the extra spend on the new funnel and the core campaign also softening, the trend has definitely shifted downward over the last few days.

Total ad spend reached £420, or $549, giving me a loss of 83 dollars. Losing days never feel good, but they’re part of the territory when running multiple campaigns during volatile seasonal shifts.

Despite the challenges, there were bright spots.

The new beginner-focused funnel brought in two sales today, sitting around a 4 percent conversion rate.

That early traction is encouraging, even though the funnel is still deep in its learning phase and operating at significantly higher CPMs than my main campaign.

This afternoon I’m also working on a completely new style of video ad—one where I step in front of the camera myself to speak directly to beginners.

It’s a new angle, and it feels a bit uncomfortable, but it could open up a powerful new direction for creative.

As of 3 p.m., the day sits at 337.

It’s shaping up to be another quiet one, but I’ll likely let everything run until the end of the day before making decisions about scaling budgets down or redistributing spend between campaigns.

What You’ll See

• The effect of Black Friday on overall campaign performance
• How large advertisers push CPMs up and reduce conversion quality
• A losing day with 466 in revenue against $549 in ad spend
• Four active campaigns, including two low-budget engagement tests
• Two new sales from the beginner funnel despite learning-phase instability
• Major CPM differences between the main campaign (£7) and new funnel (£17)
• Thoughts on pausing or reducing Facebook budgets temporarily
• Retargeting setup based on 15-second video views
• Early tests of a video-based retargeting sequence
• Creation of a brand-new video ad featuring me as an “average guitarist”
• Positioning strategy: relating to beginners rather than posing as an expert
• End-of-day expectations and budget planning for tomorrow

Strategy Breakdown

The biggest strategic challenge right now is the spike in CPMs.

Black Friday brings massive competition, and when large brands flood the auctions, smaller advertisers get pushed out or forced into lower-quality segments of the audience.

That’s likely why my ads are spending but not converting at the usual rate.

The new funnel in particular is being hit hard: at £17 CPM, its traffic costs are more than double the £7 CPM of the main, fully optimised campaign.

This difference highlights the impact of the learning phase. The main Riffs campaign is highly optimised, consistently generating conversions and giving the algorithm the data it needs.

The beginner funnel, however, is still new, still unstable, and still gathering signals.

Higher costs are expected, but with seasonality piled on top, the gap widens even further.

That’s why I’m considering temporarily pulling back £50 from its daily budget or shifting some of that spend toward the optimised campaign to stabilise results.

On the creative side, I’m pushing into a new direction by appearing in an ad myself.

Because Andy, the course creator, can no longer film new content due to arthritis, the challenge has always been producing fresh ads featuring a “human element.”

My skill level sits somewhere in the “average guitarist” bracket—not a complete beginner, but nowhere near expert-level.

For the beginner funnel, this might actually be an advantage.

Beginners may relate more strongly to someone who is only a few steps ahead rather than someone performing advanced techniques that feel unreachable.

This creative repositioning could open up new possibilities.

If the ad resonates, it gives me a flexible way to produce a large volume of relatable, non-expert creatives—something Facebook’s current AI-driven environment heavily rewards.

With more creative variation, I can shorten the learning period, lower CPMs, and push the funnel toward profitability faster.

Parallel to this, I’m testing a two-stage funnel: one low-budget video campaign to identify people who watch at least 15 seconds, and a second retargeting campaign to show those engaged viewers an offer.

Both campaigns are running at minimal cost for now, but if they prove viable, I may scale them into a more robust retargeting structure.

Focus

Today my focus is on managing budget around Black Friday volatility while launching the first beginner-focused video ad to help the learning-phase funnel stabilise.

Insight

Seasonal ad pressure is a reminder that not everything in this game is within our control.

When CPMs spike and conversions wobble, the worst thing you can do is panic and overhaul everything at once. Instead, you pause, observe, and adjust with intention.

Sometimes the answer is to pull back budgets temporarily; other times it’s to introduce new creative that cuts through the noise.

The key is staying calm, watching the numbers, and making decisions based on signal—not fear.

My marketing software: https://systeme.io/?sa=sa005182666557b5ccf999dfc8d9877207dc47da35

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