FREE MOBILE GROWTH PLAYBOOK

The Ultimate Black Friday & End-of-Year Mobile Growth Playbook

Free playbook for app teams: prepare Black Friday, launch in Black Week and extend to Q5, with real CPA, CVR and CPM data from Scalebay campaigns.

Cover of the Scalebay playbook Beyond Black Friday: Winning Strategies from the Holiday Season to Q5

Prepare for peak season Plan earlier, prioritize the right channels, and set up for scalable growth.
Convert demand into revenue Turn holiday interest into high-value users with proven tactics.
Keep growing through Q5 Extend momentum after the holidays to drive sustained performance.

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What's inside the playbook

Black Friday is won before Black Friday. Beyond Black Friday: Winning Strategies from the Holiday Season to Q5 is a 41-page playbook written by Scalebay's co-founders for founders, growth and marketing teams at mobile apps. It follows the season in order, before, during and after the peak, with first-party campaign data, partner benchmarks and real cases you can apply this quarter.

1. Before Black Friday: prepare the machine

Think full funnel, fix tracking, attribution, deep links and ASO before you buy a single impression, and build the audiences you will reactivate at the peak. Includes a four-workstream countdown (tech and data, CRM, acquisition media, ASO) and how to build an offer that deserves the traffic. A dedicated Black Friday offer converted at 6.0% on Google Search, against 2.1% for a regular October promo.

2. During Black Friday: trigger demand

Owned channels fire first, then paid UA scales on CPA and ROAS rather than CPM. Meta CPMs rose 78% in Black Friday week, yet Meta CPA fell 75% and Search CPA fell 29%. Launching the offer 7 to 10 days early made Black Week the most efficient week of the quarter: 9.4% conversion rate and a €14 CPA. Plus our 10 growth hacks for paid campaigns and a retargeting timeline.

3. After Black Friday: measure, learn and extend to Q5

How to run the post-mortem on profit rather than volume, check cohort quality, flag annual renewals, keep profitable campaigns live through December, and use Q5, when CPMs fall back, to turn promo users into long-term value.

4. Tips to go: what makes sense and what doesn't

Which apps really benefit from Black Friday (e-commerce, annual subscriptions, news and media) and which should aim for Q5 instead, a four-question go/no-go check, and a printable do's and don'ts checklist.

5. Appendix: Black Friday paywalls

Six live paywalls (trial timeline, free vs plus, bonus bundles, price anchoring, two plans, visual-first) and how to turn each one into a Black Friday paywall.

Written by Jean-Christophe Stienlet, co-founder and Head of Account Growth, and Lorenzo Paccagnini, co-founder and Head of UA, with insights from Purchasely, AppsFlyer, Adjust, MoEngage and Customer.io.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Black Friday playbook free?

Yes. Fill in the form and we email you the full 41-page PDF straight away. No call, no credit card.

Who is this playbook for?

Founders, growth and marketing teams at mobile apps of any size, especially subscription, e-commerce, and news and media apps planning Black Friday, Cyber Week, December and Q5.

When should a mobile app launch its Black Friday offer?

7 to 10 days before Black Friday. In our Q4 2025 data, the week before Black Friday converted at 9.4% with a 14 euro CPA, against 5.3% and 30 euros during Black Friday week itself.

Should every app run a Black Friday promotion?

No. Black Friday pays when a real offer meets purchase intent on a funnel you can measure. Ad-monetized and free apps usually do better skipping the peak and investing in Q5, when media is cheaper.

What is Q5 in mobile marketing?

Q5 is the period from Christmas to mid-January. Retail advertisers pull back, CPMs drop to their lowest seasonal levels, and people spend more time on new devices, which makes it a strong window for acquisition and retention.

Free playbook for app teams: prepare Black Friday, launch in Black Week and extend to Q5, with real CPA, CVR and CPM data from Scalebay campaigns.

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