‘Most Black Friday ads fail to resonate with shoppers’

Black Friday may be one of the most crowded weeks of the year for advertisers, but much of the content available to them is likely be a poor fit for the customer watching it, with brands being urged to discover where their ads resonate to have any chance of driving outcomes.

That is according to the Black Friday Resonance Report from Parallel, which examines how well ads fit the content people are watching to score different combinations of customer, ad and content.

Parallel tested seven publicly-available 2025 Black Friday ads from major brands – Currys, O2, EE, Ralph Lauren, Wayfair, Asos and Gymshark – against 300 pieces of YouTube content, using a UK panel of 60 human-calibrated digital twins which generated more than 125,000 simulated responses.

It found that every ad has a large share of content where it does not resonate. For each of the seven ads, a third to half of the content scored below 5 out of 10.

Moreover, contextual category is a poor predictor of where an ad resonates. For instance, within Home & Garden content, the same ad scored 8.6/10 in one piece of content and 3.1 in another. Healthy Living content produced scores ranging from 1.0 to 8.7. The content itself matters more than the broad category it sits in.

In addition, most high-performing content is shared between competing advertisers. Across any two of the seven ads, 44% to 81% of the content where either ad resonates also works for the other. Every ad also has content where it resonates more strongly than any of the other six. This was true for at least 20 of the 300 pieces tested for each ad.

The study links these differences to the customer’s need state: the underlying reason someone is watching a piece of content. All seven ads resonated strongly when customers were deciding what to buy or treating themselves, while scores were much weaker when they were winding down.

For advertisers, that means looking beyond broad contextual categories to identify the content where an individual ad resonates – particularly where it outperforms competing ads.

For brands planning their Black Friday activity, the report recommends:

– Prioritise content where an ad resonates and avoid content where the ad consistently scores poorly.

– Look for areas of competitive advantage; content where an ad resonates more strongly than competing ads offers an opportunity to differentiate media buying.

– Value shared inventory according to the level of competition. Where several advertisers resonate with the same content, brands can assess how much of that inventory they need and what it is worth to them.

–  Plan around customer need state, not the contextual category. All seven ads resonated when customers were deciding what to buy or treating themselves, while scores were weaker when they were winding down.

– Finally, use multiple creatives where appropriate. Different creative can resonate in different content, potentially increasing the range of inventory where an advertiser can compete effectively.

Industry research shows that ads with strong creative-to-content fit see 4x higher unaided recall, 2x greater favourability and 1.5x higher receptivity.

Parallel chief executive Rob Hall said: “Brands need to know where their ads resonate, stay out of the content where they don’t, and give themselves the best chance of driving outcomes.

“The content where an ad resonates is often also relevant to competing advertisers. Digital twin simulations give brands a way to identify those overlaps, as well as the content where their ad has a stronger fit, before they spend – and to optimise against those signals in real-time.”

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