The November Scaling Dilemma
For paid media leaders, November is both a blessing and a curse. It’s the month where online traffic explodes ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. With so many consumers actively shopping, the instinct is to pour budget into campaigns. But scaling recklessly is dangerous.
When budgets spike overnight, if you are using automated bid strategies, the campaigns will often re-enter the learning phase, which can lead to instability in performance and a loss of efficiency. CPCs rise sharply with increased competition, and without guardrails, marketers burn through budgets without driving additional leads, orders, or revenue.
The challenge for Paid Media Directors and CMOs is: how do you scale responsibly in November, capturing demand without sacrificing efficiency or control?
Why Scaling Often Fails
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Budget jumps are too steep. A sudden 50% budget increase can disrupt campaign performance, confuse algorithms, and negatively impact efficiency.
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There isn't a creative test plan to address creative fatigue. November’s crowded ad environment means stale creative dies quickly, and you need to have a plan for rotating in new creative frequently.
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Depending on the current account structure and targeting, you may need to expand keyword or audience targeting to utilize the additional budget. If you haven't been planning for this type of expansion, you might end up going too broad and driving low-quality or irrelevant traffic.
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Reliance on automation alone. Performance Max (PMAX) and Smart Bidding can overspend without human oversight.
Scaling is not about throwing more money at the problem; it’s about scaling intelligently.
Strategies for Disciplined Scaling
Increase Budgets Gradually
Raise budgets in 10–20% increments every few days. This allows platforms to adjust without resetting learning phases. In my experience, you want to start your scaling efforts in October, depending on how much additional budget you plan to invest in the holiday period.
Segment High-Intent Audiences
In an ideal world, you would already have a solid structure with audience segmentation, but if you don't, you should create separate campaigns for:
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Branded and Non-Branded search: depending on your product or service, you will likely want to segment your non-branded search campaign further to allow more control over performance.
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Cart abandoners
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CRM lists and loyal customers
With proper audience segmentation, you can scale campaigns more efficiently.
Optimize by Time and Geography
If you can use dayparting, use it. Remember that not all automated bid strategies take bid modifiers into account, so double-check that the strategy you are using will consider the ad scheduling. Use dayparting to allocate more spend to hours and locations when conversions are at their peak and to pull back spend for low-performing times and regions to protect CPA or ROAS.
Refresh Creative Weekly
For display or social platforms, plan 3–5 ad variations per campaign in advance. Rotating creative content every 5–7 days helps prevent fatigue during the busiest shopping period.
Add Seasonality Adjustments
For a campaign in Google, if you are using automated bid strategies, you can apply a seasonal adjustment to signal to the algorithm that you expect your CVR to increase by X% during the following date ranges. This is a way for you to ensure your campaign scales during promotional periods. Don't use this for more than the first few days of an offer; using it for 5 days or longer can cause performance to fluctuate outside of normal ranges. Typically, we set this adjustment for the first 2-3 days of a promotion. It instructs the algorithm to be more aggressive because you expect a higher conversion rate as a result of the promotion running.
Control PMAX Carefully
Suppress branded queries so PMAX doesn’t inflate performance with cheap clicks. Structure asset groups by product line and apply value-based bidding tied to profit margins. Add your brand keywords as negatives to funnel Branded traffic to your Brand search campaign.
Continue to review performance and implement optimizations
All of the items mentioned above work best when you monitor and optimize performance daily and weekly. You'll still want to know how your scaling efforts are performing so you can catch any potential trends that might lead to inefficient spend scaling. Additionally, if you have expanded your targeting, you'll want to ensure that you conduct regular maintenance to ensure the new campaigns are effective and are driving relevant traffic.
Case Study: ACV Auctions
ACV Auctions, an online automotive marketplace, needed to efficiently scale lead generation. Their challenge: increasing spend without tanking CPL.
Strategy
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Segmented campaigns by audience type.
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Layered first-party data into targeting.
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Tested new channels like Microsoft Ads while optimizing existing ones.
Results
By scaling gradually and layering control levers, ACV scaled efficiently in one of the most competitive verticals imaginable.
Key Takeaways
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Gradual scaling preserves efficiency.
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Segmentation and creative refresh keep campaigns lean and effective.
- Add bid modifiers when possible & implement seasonal adjustments for the first few days of an offer.
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Platform automation must be paired with human oversight.
At (un)Common Logic, we help brands scale profitably during high-stakes periods like November. Contact us today to see how we can help!
FAQs
How much can I increase budgets safely?
No more than 10–20% every few days.
Should I run PMAX campaigns during November?
Yes, but with exclusions and structured asset groups.
What’s the biggest mistake brands make?
Doubling budgets overnight and resetting learning phases.
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