Day 89: Navigating Holiday CPM Spikes & Funnel Scaling

Today is Friday the 28th of November, Day 89 of this journey, and heading into the weekend I’m mainly reporting on the numbers.

I’ll be away for a couple of days, so no major changes are planned, but I wanted to give a clear snapshot of where things stand as the Black Friday pressure continues.

Once again, the overall pattern reflects what I’ve been expecting: lower sales volume, higher auction pressure, and a general squeeze in available ad inventory as big brands and e-commerce stores ramp up spend.

This behaviour will likely continue into December as the Christmas season takes over, meaning CPMs will remain inflated and the competition for attention will stay intense.

Yesterday ended at $634 in total sales—nowhere near the level I need considering my ad spend.

The retargeting campaign built around video viewers still wouldn’t deliver any impressions at all, despite multiple resets, duplicates, and toggles.

With only £3/day behind it and other work demanding attention, I shut both the engagement and retargeting campaigns off.

That experiment didn’t produce results this time, though I may revisit it later using the beginner funnel where it may be better suited to more top-of-funnel messaging.

Ad spend came in at £418, around $552, leaving a very small profit of $82. Not ideal, but at least still positive.

The new funnel continues to add sales—around six yesterday—and that movement is what matters most right now as I try to push it out of the learning phase.

With each conversion, the algorithm gathers more data, and once it reaches the 30–50 mark for the current window, the shift to active mode should help lower CPMs and stabilise performance.

Because of that, I nudged the new funnel’s budget from £100 to £110 today. The main Riffs campaign stays where it is after being reduced earlier in the week.

Performance there continues to hold, and I’m cautious about pushing it further until the market conditions calm down.

By early afternoon today, we were already at $500 in sales, putting us on track for a small but certain profit by day’s end.

What You’ll See

• Impact of Black Friday and holiday season CPM spikes
• Lower sales volume and more competitive auctions
• Yesterday’s $634 revenue against £418 ($552) spend
• Small profit of $82 despite tough competition
• Retargeting campaign failing completely with zero impressions
• Turning off both engagement and retargeting tests
• Rationale for revisiting video-view ads later for the beginner audience
• New funnel still adding consistent daily sales
• Budget increase from £100 to £110 on the new funnel
• Riffs campaign held at its reduced spend level from earlier in the week
• $500 in sales already by 2 p.m. today
• Expectation of a profit by end of day despite low margins

Strategy Breakdown

This stage of the journey is all about understanding how holiday season dynamics affect campaign performance. Meta’s auction is fiercely competitive right now.

Big retailers are throwing enormous budgets into ads, and their broad audience targeting means they frequently overlap with the guitar-interested segments I’m targeting.

As a result, impressions become more expensive, CPM rises, and conversion quality drops. In this environment, holding spend steady rather than fighting to scale is often the smartest approach.

Turning off the retargeting campaign was inevitable.

Despite the logic behind building a warm audience through video views and retargeting them with direct-response creative, the campaign simply wouldn’t deliver.

This could be due to audience size, optimisation conflicts, or learning-phase constraints, but the opportunity cost of troubleshooting didn’t justify the time—not during Black Friday week.

I’ll revisit this structure later using the beginner funnel where a broader top-of-funnel approach may be more effective.

For now, the priority remains the new beginner funnel.

Even with elevated CPMs, it continues to produce sales consistently, and every purchase inches it closer to leaving the learning phase.

Once the campaign hits that threshold, the shift to “active” should provide more stable delivery, lower CPMs, and clearer performance data.

That’s why I increased the budget by £10 today: a small nudge designed to bring in more conversions without destabilising performance or triggering volatility in the ad set.

The Riffs campaign remains unchanged after the earlier reduction.

Keeping it stable prevents unnecessary algorithm shifts while freeing up budget to fuel the funnel that currently has the higher long-term potential.

The broader strategy now is patience: feed data into the new campaign, keep everything profitable (even at low levels), and be ready to scale once December settles and January opens up a major opportunity window.

Focus

My focus today is on gently scaling the new funnel to accelerate progress toward exiting the learning phase, while keeping overall spend stable during the highly competitive holiday auction period.

Insight

Holiday advertising seasons are a test of discipline. When CPMs spike and competitors flood the market, the natural instinct is to force performance by spending more—but that almost always backfires.

The smarter strategy is to stay profitable, even at small levels, and continue feeding the algorithm data so that when the market resets, your funnel is primed to scale.

Progress during difficult weeks isn’t about big wins; it’s about positioning yourself to win later.