If you have seen CPCs climbing in your Google Ads accounts over the past two weeks, it is not random. Major e-commerce platforms, Trendyol most visibly, have sharply increased their spend ahead of Black Friday 2025, mostly in fashion but also in home and decor. It shows across the category: higher bids, a bigger share of impressions for the largest advertisers and more expensive clicks for everyone else.
Why Black Friday 2025 is different
Black Friday auctions get noisy every year. What changes in 2025 is the scale: a few very large international platforms see Greece and its neighbouring markets as a growth priority. When Trendyol, Temu, Shein and others of similar size pour serious budget into the same two-week window, local auctions shift faster than a mid-size advertiser can react. That is why preparation starts weeks earlier.
What we see in the accounts
In the accounts we manage we see:
- CPC increases in fashion from 30% to more than 100%, depending on how narrow the category is.
- Lost impression share on keywords that were comfortable until recently (brand and category terms).
- Pressure on conversion rate, because competitor offers appear in almost every search.
The brands that hold performance in this window are not the ones trying to outbid the giants. They are the ones that avoid head-on auction fights and win with structure, targeting and creative, sending budget only to the products that can win.
What working smarter looks like right now
Three levers consistently make the difference in accounts we are managing through this year's surge:
- Timing: Budget front-loaded into the two weeks before Black Friday week tends to produce better ROAS than budget spent during the peak itself, because CPCs during the pre-week are still manageable and the audiences built in that window pay off during the peak.
- Targeted, not broad: Broad Performance Max and generic Shopping campaigns get crushed by the big-budget players. Tightly structured campaigns with clear audience segmentation and negative keyword discipline keep performance defensible.
- Creative that justifies the click: In a SERP packed with deep discount offers from international platforms, the offers that win are specific, credible, and tied to a concrete reason the user should buy from you rather than the cheapest option. Vague “Black Friday sale” creative gets ignored.
Black Friday is not just a sprint. It is a strategy.