How to Train Your Ads Before Black Friday (So You Actually Like What You Buy)

New survey data and 140 years of memory research show that what shoppers will want on Nov. 27 is taking shape now, and how to get ads that point you to exactly what you’re looking for.

By Arnaud Blanchard, Vice President of Product at Vibe

Black Friday falls on Nov. 27 this year. Much of what shoppers will want that day is taking shape right now.

It usually goes like this. An air fryer you looked up in October shows up in a feed on a Tuesday. Again during a streaming break on Friday night. Once more the following week. By Black Friday, you know which one you want and what a good price looks like.

For most people, that’s how discovery works now, and it mostly works. In a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults commissioned by Vibe, 74% of people who bought something they first noticed in an ad were satisfied with it every time or most of the time.

Most also try to steer it. 84% took steps in the past year to shape the ads they see, and 61% of them did it on purpose, representing roughly half of everyone surveyed. Those deliberate shoppers are more often satisfied with what they buy.

Why the weeks before Black Friday matter most

Most ads are forgotten almost as soon as they’re seen. In the 1880s, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus memorized lists of nonsense syllables and tracked how quickly they faded from memory. By the next day, he had to relearn about two-thirds of them. A single exposure rarely makes a lasting impression.

Repetition at the right moment is what makes an impression. See something again too soon and nothing changes. Wait until it has partly faded, and the second look can have a stronger effect. Psychologists call this the spacing effect. In a classic 1959 study, ads mailed every four weeks were remembered long after weekly ones had been forgotten, and more recent field experiments found people are more likely to buy when ads are spaced out rather than bunched together. Which pattern works better depends on when you need to remember, and Black Friday’s date is fixed.

Repetition has limits. Past a point, the same ad stops helping and starts to annoy. Timing matters more than volume.

That’s why, by the time the doorbusters arrive, many shoppers already know what they’re hoping to find.

Half of shoppers are already steering

Shoppers who take control do it in simple ways: browsing several stores’ websites for the same kind of product, searching for something more than once, or leaving an item in a cart they aren’t ready to buy. Nearly half of the people who tried tactics like these (48%) said their ads became more relevant.

The effects can show up after checkout, too. The study calls these deliberate shoppers “curators.” Compared with “non-curators,” who took similar steps without setting out to shape their ads, curators were more often satisfied with things they first saw in an ad (77% vs. 69%) and nearly twice as likely to buy from the same brand again (38% vs. 21%). The survey doesn’t prove one causes the other, but the findings fit how memory works: when the ads people see reflect what they went looking for, what sticks is what they actually wanted.

A Black Friday countdown

Because memory works on a schedule, the smartest moves do, too. Prefer fewer personalized ads? The same settings let you turn them down.

The products that stick in shoppers’ heads this Black Friday may get there the same way the air fryer did: through a few well-timed sightings over a few weeks. Spend a few minutes shaping your ads now, and the ads you see may be more relevant to what you plan to buy.

Vibe surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults via Pollfish who use ad-supported websites, search engines, social media platforms, video platforms, mobile apps or streaming TV services. Purchase outcomes reflect respondents who bought a product or service after first noticing it in an ad. Full methodology available here.