Weekly counts of UK ads that mention Black Friday, early Black Friday and Cyber Monday, from Meta's public Ad Library, each set against the same week of 2025. Black Friday is 27 November and Cyber Monday is 30 November.
For last year's full season, including the offers brands ran and how deep the discounts went, see Black Friday Ads on Meta: What Last Year's Campaigns Show.
Ads live in the week of 26 October to 1 November
Next edition: Tuesday 10 November
Edition 1, Sunday 1 November 2026. 4 weeks before Black Friday week.
Black Friday ads went past 50,000 in the week of 26 October, the most the library's counter shows. Last year they passed it in the same week, four weeks before Black Friday week. Ads saying "early Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" are both up 49% on the same week of 2025. That's slower than our control phrase "free returns", up 104%, so the holiday rise doesn't yet stand out from the general rise in ads. Among the ten brands, Simba Sleep's live ads nearly doubled in a week, from 76 to 149.
| Ads mentioning | This week | Same week, 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
Black Friday “black friday” | 50,000+ | 50,000+ | Both above 50,000 |
Black Friday, image ads “black friday”, image ads | 1,894 | 3,064 | Down 38% |
Early Black Friday “early black friday” | 12,503 | 8,406 | Up 49% |
Cyber Monday “cyber monday” | 1,985 | 1,333 | Up 49% |
| Control phrases, not about the holidays | |||
Free returns “free returns” | 26,544 | 12,980 | Up 104% |
Download the app “download the app” | 50,000+ | 38,192 | Up at least 30% |
The same week of 2025 is 27 October to 2 November 2025, 52 weeks earlier, so both sit the same distance from Black Friday. 50,000+ means more than 50,000, the most the library's counter shows. The control phrases show whether the library simply holds more ads than a year ago: when holiday phrases grow faster than these, brands are pushing the season harder. We pulled this week on 1 November, its last day, so its counts may still rise a little. The next edition pulls it again.
Each week of 2026 next to the same week of 2025. The 2025 bars beyond this week show where last year's season went next.
Exact phrase “black friday”, all formats
Exact phrase “black friday”, image ads only
Exact phrase “early black friday”, all formats
Exact phrase “cyber monday”, all formats
Weeks start on Monday. 50,000+ is the counter's cap. The 2025 weeks of 6 and 13 October are minimums, because some of their ads had already left the library when we saved them. A lighter blue bar was pulled before its week ended.
The ten UK-active brands from last year's study. These are all of each brand's ads that reached the UK, holiday or not. The ramp columns compare each week with the week of 19 October (2026) or 20 October (2025), the first full week we have for last year, so you can see whether a brand is building up sooner or later than it did.
| Brand | This week | Same week, 2025 | Change | Ramp, 2026 | Ramp, 2025 | 2025 peak |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gymshark | 1,290 | 263 | Up 390% | 1.1x | 0.8x | 981, 17 Nov |
| ASOS | 201 | 167 | Up 20% | 1.2x | 1.3x | 167, 27 Oct |
| The Ordinary | 45 | 56 | Down 20% | 0.9x | 1.3x | 91, 8 Dec |
| boohoo | 75 | 108 | Down 31% | 0.9x | 1.0x | 300, 24 Nov |
| Charlotte Tilbury | 222 | 168 | Up 32% | 1.0x | 1.0x | 209, 24 Nov |
| Argos | 90 | 215 | Down 58% | 1.0x | 1.7x | 215, 27 Oct |
| John Lewis | 189 | 324 | Down 42% | 1.1x | 0.9x | 689, 24 Nov |
| Myprotein | 258 | 57 | Up 353% | 0.9x | 1.0x | 214, 1 Dec |
| Lounge Underwear | 125 | 83 | Up 51% | 1.2x | 1.4x | 133, 1 Dec |
| Simba Sleep | 149 | 126 | Up 18% | 2.0x | 1.3x | 226, 1 Dec |
Ads live in the week, UK, active and stopped. Ramp is this week's count divided by the count in the base week. 2025 peak is the brand's busiest week from 6 October to 14 December 2025, with the Monday it started.
A new edition every Tuesday through 1 December 2026. Each one adds the week that ended on the Sunday before and pulls the week before that again, so earlier numbers on this page can move slightly.
Week of 26 October to 1 November
Week of 2 to 8 November
Week of 9 to 15 November
Week of 16 to 22 November
Black Friday week, 23 to 29 November
Source. Meta's Ad Library is Meta's public ad transparency tool. Anyone can search the ads running on Facebook, Instagram and Meta's other apps at facebook.com/ads/library without logging in. For ads shown in the UK, it keeps stopped ads for about a year after they last ran. We read it through SociaVault's Ad Library search and company ads endpoints, with no login.
What counts. For each Monday-to-Sunday week, every ad that reached the UK, was live at any point that week and contains the exact phrase. Active and stopped ads both count. Brand counts are all of a brand page's UK ads that week.
The 50,000 cap. The library's counter shows up to 50,000 results. Past that, all we know is “more than 50,000”, so the busiest weeks are a floor: the real number is higher than the one shown.
The same week of 2025. Each 2026 week sits next to the 2025 week exactly 52 weeks earlier. Black Friday is 27 November this year and was 28 November last year, so both fall in the matching week. The 2025 counts were saved on 19 and 20 October 2026, before most of last season's weeks reached the library's one-year mark.
Other ad libraries. We also checked Google's Ads Transparency Center, the LinkedIn Ad Library and TikTok's ad library through our API. None of them gives a weekly holiday count that lines up with the same week of 2025 the way Meta's library does, so they're not in this tracker.
The phrases, country and brands are the same as in our 21 October study of last year's Black Friday ads, so the two can be read together. More on how Labs works is in our research methodology.
The library's counter stops at 50,000. Black Friday ads in all formats first went past it in the week of 26 October this year and 27 October last year. From then on we can only say "more than 50,000" for either year. The image, early Black Friday and Cyber Monday counts stayed under the cap all through last season, so they're the ones to watch at the peak.
Phrase counts for a finished week creep up for a while. On 1 November, the weeks of 5 and 12 October counted between 2% and 7% more ads than when we first pulled them on 20 October. The three brand counts we had from then moved by 1% or less. Our best guess is that search reads an ad's current text, so an ad that adds "Black Friday" later counts in every week it ran. Last year's weeks were saved after the season, so the newest 2026 week may be slightly low next to them. Each edition pulls the previous week again.
The library keeps stopped ads for about a year after they last ran. We saved 2025 on 19 and 20 October 2026, when ads from the weeks of 6 and 13 October 2025 had already started to go, so those two weeks are minimums and aren't compared.
An ad counts only if its text contains the exact phrase. Ads that show "Black Friday" only inside an image or video, or say "BF sale", aren't in these numbers.
Image ads were 1.9% of all Black Friday ads in the week of 19 October 2026, against 6.0% in the same week of 2025. Black Friday ads overall are up, so a fall in image ads mostly reflects a shift to other formats.
A brand running 50 versions of one offer counts 50 times. The counts show how many ads were live. They say nothing about how much was spent or how many people saw them.
Counts are for ads that reached people in the UK, which includes many global brands. The UK library keeps a year of stopped ads, which is what makes a comparison with 2025 possible.
Every weekly count on this page, for both years, every phrase and every brand, is in one CSV. It's rebuilt with each edition. You're free to download and reuse it with a link back to this page.
Download the CSVHow to cite: SociaVault Labs (2026). Holiday Ad Tracker 2026, edition 1. https://sociavault.com/labs/reports/holiday-ad-tracker-2026
For another phrase, brand or country, or questions about the method, contact labs@sociavault.com. To run the same weekly counts yourself, the code is in our Black Friday ads post.
Every count here comes from SociaVault's Ad Library endpoints, at 1 credit a count. Start with 50 free credits, no card required.