Unicorn Orange Didn’t Just Optimise Bids. They Transformed Their BFCM Strategy.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) compress an entire quarter’s worth of competitive pressure into a handful of days. Traffic surges are sudden. Competitor bids spike without warning. Conversion windows open and close within hours.

In previous peak seasons, Unicorn Orange maintained close control over bidding strategy, often monitoring dashboards and making manual adjustments to ensure performance stayed tightly aligned with targets. The agency combines ex-Amazon platform knowledge with a finance-driven analytical approach. This level of manual control ensured performance stability, but during BFCM, it also meant senior specialists were tied up in tactical optimisation rather than broader strategic decisions. What they needed was the space to use it during the weeks when it counted most.

The team wasn’t simply looking to automate existing workflows. Instead, they wanted to evolve their approach, shifting from hands-on bid management to a proactive system that could respond to market signals in near real time.

Plenty of advertisers handle BFCM by cranking up bids across the board and hoping the math works out. Unicorn Orange took a different path, leaning into the data-driven discipline that defines the agency. The team designed a layered automation strategy built on two complementary Skai capabilities, informed by historical performance data, keyword- and product-level efficiency benchmarks, and conversion trend analysis.

The “inch up / inch down” logic that refined bid optimisation

The foundation was Skai’s Advanced Automated Actions, configured to make incremental bid adjustments at the keyword and product-target level based on ACOS performance thresholds. The team’s shorthand for this is “inch up / inch down.” No dramatic bid swings. Instead, the system nudged bids in small increments, tightening toward efficiency targets with precision that would be impossible to replicate manually across hundreds of targets.

What made this particularly effective during BFCM was the use of multiple lookback windows. Short-term windows captured real-time performance signals, which are essential during periods when conversion patterns shift hour by hour. Longer windows provided a stabilizing counterweight, ensuring bid decisions weren’t whipsawed by momentary volatility. Every adjustment was grounded in meaningful performance data, not noise.

A 2 AM click isn’t worth an 8 PM click

On top of the bid optimization layer, Unicorn Orange activated Skai’s AI-powered Dayparting to control when their budget worked hardest. The system increased bids during high-conversion, high-intent hours and suppressed them when traffic volume was high but conversion rates dropped off.

That distinction matters. During BFCM, traffic doesn’t stop at midnight. But the shopper browsing at 2 AM is fundamentally different from the one adding to a cart at 8 PM. Dayparting built that intelligence directly into the campaign’s operating logic, redirecting budget away from low-quality traffic windows and toward the moments when shoppers were most ready to convert.

What happens when both layers work together

Automated Actions handled the what: which keywords deserve more investment, which product targets need to be pulled back, and by how much. Dayparting handled the when, concentrating spend in the hours where it would generate the highest return.

The Unicorn Orange team implemented a system capable of continuously performing precise, rule-based optimizations, complementing the team’s strategic oversight and freeing them from constant tactical bid adjustments. In their words, the result was a “responsive and adaptive” bidding framework that could dynamically adjust to live performance signals without requiring someone to be watching a dashboard every hour.

That’s a meaningful shift for any agency. But it’s especially significant during BFCM, when the difference between catching a conversion surge and missing it is often measured in minutes.

The numbers told a clear story.

• ~30% increase in click-through rate
• 20% increase in ROAS

A nearly 30% increase in CTR reflected stronger ad relevance and improved engagement. The right products were showing up at the right times to the right shoppers. The 20% ROAS improvement showed that the added traffic was also more efficient and more profitable.

Conversion rates strengthened during peak traffic windows, specifically confirming that the dayparting strategy was doing what it was designed to do: concentrate budget in the hours when shoppers were most ready to buy and pull back when clicks were less likely to convert.

The operational impact behind the performance gains

For the Unicorn Orange team, the operational impact mattered just as much as the performance metrics. With tactical bid management automated, the team could focus on strategic budget allocation, creative monitoring, and cross-channel coordination during the most critical retail period of the year.

In previous years, the team’s BFCM experience required close monitoring and frequent bid management to maintain performance during intense trading periods. This year looked fundamentally different. Decisions were more systematic. Far less manual bid management was required. And the team had bandwidth to think about the bigger picture while automation handled the granular work.

Scaling an automation-first framework

The Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2025 results represent more than a seasonal win for Unicorn Orange. They’re proof of what’s possible when an agency moves from a manual, event-by-event optimization model to a structured, automation-first framework that scales across tentpole events, client accounts, and retail media channels.

But what Unicorn Orange proved is something the entire retail media industry is reckoning with. The agencies that will define the next era aren’t the ones that bid faster. They’re the ones that build systems smart enough to free their people for higher-value work. By combining Skai’s Advanced Automated Actions with AI-powered Dayparting, Unicorn Orange built that system. And it’s just getting started.

Unicorn Orange sits at the intersection of Amazon, retail media, and advanced advertising. Co-founded on a blend of ex-Amazon operational expertise and financial and data rigor, the team combines marketplace knowledge with analytical discipline. With over 50 years of combined experience across in-house roles, agencies, and Amazon itself, Unicorn Orange supports brands through full-service account management, advanced advertising, and strategic consulting, backed by proprietary tools and data-rich dashboards that enable smarter decision-making at scale.

Skai is the AI-driven commerce media platform for performance advertising. For nearly two decades, the world’s top brands and agencies have trusted our award-winning technology to bring retail media, paid search, and paid social together into a single, strategic commerce media program. With embedded AI, connected data, and automation throughout, Skai helps marketers move faster, make smarter decisions, and drive more meaningful growth.