BFCM 2026: 3 levers for paid media success, with ThruDark, Only Curls & Soar With Us

The paid media playbook for BFCM has changed a lot since last year, and as platforms automate more and more of the buying, the inputs brands feed them matter more than ever. 

We teamed up with ecommerce marketing agency Soar With Us for a webinar that unpacks what that means for peak. 

Olly Hudson, Founder at Soar With Us, and Wesley Hartley, CCO at Leaf, were joined by two brand leaders on the front line: Diego Fria, Ecommerce Director at ThruDark, and Chris Mikulin, Growth Consultant at Only Curls. They shared what they're seeing first-hand across the 3 core levers that shape paid media performance: creative, tracking and account structure.

Lever 1: Creative (more concepts, used with discipline)

Meta’s Andromeda update made creative the most talked-about lever of 2026, and both brands are producing far more of it than last year (Only Curls expects around 4 times last year's peak volume). The panel was clear, though, that volume on its own wins nothing.

Chris from Only Curls keeps evergreen ads running through peak, layering Black Friday creative on top. Those ads carry months of data and are already out of learning, which is why they often outperform campaigns built just for November. His advice:

“Don’t pivot away to strictly Black Friday campaigns. We have all of our learnings already going on our evergreen ads.”

For a premium brand like ThruDark, Andromeda's appetite for creative diversity creates real tension with brand consistency. Diego’s approach is to scale up without letting go of what makes ThruDark recognisable. In his words:

“We’re really growing not just the variations but also the concepts. While obviously staying within our brand philosophy and very aligned to our vision and ethos, we’re exponentially growing that output.”

Wesley added a reality check: spend still dictates how many creatives an account can support. A £10K/month account stuffed with ads that never get impressions makes it harder to scale the winners.

So what should brands do with all that creative this close to peak? Olly's advice was to get back to basics.

"Make it really simple. Get your offer up front, make the asset really easy to understand and send it to a really strong landing page."

Lever 2: Tracking (the targeting you can't see)

If creative is how the algorithm finds people, tracking is how it learns which ones are worth paying for.

The data your site sends back to Meta and Google decides who sees your ads, what the platforms bid and how big your retargeting audiences get. It's also the part of the mix most brands leave to a free app and hope for the best.

As Wesley says:

“Optimising conversion tracking is optimising your targeting.”

Every purchase event, device signal and product ID you pass back trains the bidding. Missing events or parameters mean the algorithm is learning from a partial picture, just as spend peaks.

For Diego, robust tracking infrastructure is crucial.

“I think of this as foundational for any serious business: having the right tracking ecosystem and the right data ecosystem is super important, especially as we’re growing really fast.”

He treats tracking as ongoing maintenance. Bot traffic, consent changes and iOS updates keep shifting the ground, so ThruDark leans on a dedicated team at Leaf Signal to keep its data close to the truth.

When the data is right, the payoff shows up in everyday decisions. For Only Curls, it has changed which ads survive. Chris explains:

“Sometimes the ad may have a low overall ROAS, but if you look at the big picture of the ad set and see that the new customers are actually coming in through that ad set, we can leave that ad on instead of turning it off.”

Server-side new-customer events give Only Curls a view that blended ROAS hides. Ads that look weak on average are often the ones doing the acquisition work, and that visibility stops them being cut too early.

Lever 3: Structure (control the budget before it controls you)

Left to optimise for one number (cost per purchase), the algorithm will spend wherever purchases come cheapest. At peak that often means people who were going to buy anyway.

Wesley called exclusions probably the most important setting in the account. Without them, budget drifts towards web visitors, existing customers and brand terms, and every channel ends up claiming the same buyers. As he put it:

“Your budget is being forced down towards the bottom of the funnel. It’s the wrong way up. It’s a pyramid instead of a funnel.”

Both brands are also making smarter use of what they already own. ThruDark is leaning on its CRM, carefully retargeting qualified leads and non-openers. Only Curls is overlaying Black Friday messaging on catalogue ads and tidying its product feed, as Meta puts more weight on catalogue signals.

Clever campaign hacks weren't the focus of this webinar. Olly's advice for brands entering BFCM: keep Meta simple and back what you already know.

“Take fewer big swings. You’ve spent twelve months learning. It’s now the time to deploy those formats, those vehicles, those things that have worked throughout the year.”

One thing to do before BFCM

Wesley’s one piece of advice going into BFCM was simple: audit your tracking. Olly called it the key takeaway of the session.

Creative and structure both depend on it. If the signals going into your ad accounts are incomplete, every optimisation you make at peak is built on a partial picture.

• Check your setup with a free tracking audit

• Watch the full webinar

• Read how ThruDark built enterprise-grade tracking with Leaf Signal