Black Friday shopping starts earlier, Captify UK finds
Ahead of the biggest shopping event of the year, new data from Captify (part of Verve), the leader in Intent Intelligence, finds that search interest in Black Friday is building from October as consumers increasingly use LLMs alongside traditional search to research ahead of the occasion.
Drawing on billions of real-time UK search signals, Captify analysed Black Friday search behaviour showing new trends across tech, travel and retail. It reveals gaming has overtaken TV and audio as the biggest tech battle, while retailers are facing a sharp last-minute surge in demand as shoppers are comparing prices, deals and vouchers a week earlier.
Key findings:
- Black Friday is becoming a longer shopping season: Black Friday intent starts building in October, with shoppers increasingly planning ahead before the sharp peak in the week before and week of Black Friday. While the overall shape of the season remains similar to 2024, October has become a more prominent period for Black Friday consideration.
- Retail remains a last-minute Black Friday battle but the comparison starts earlier: General retail search stays broadly flat through the season before spiking to more than 7x typical levels during Black Friday week. However, price-comparison and code/voucher searches peak a week earlier, suggesting shoppers are already working out where to buy before the wider sale moment begins.
- Gaming has overtaken TV and audio as Black Friday’s biggest tech battleground: Gaming’s share of Black Friday tech search rose from 26% in 2024 to 40% in 2025, while TV/audio fell from 38% to 31%. This shows the growing interest around current-generation consoles and their software slate.
- Black Friday makes travellers think bigger: Travel inspiration search peaks around five weeks before Black Friday-specific deal search, suggesting most travellers have already decided where they want to go by the time they start looking for an offer. Meanwhile, short-haul and city breaks account for 95% of travel searches at baseline, but their share falls to 66% around Black Friday. Long-haul rises from 3% to 22%, while cruise increases from 3% to 12%, showing that the discount moment is moving intent towards more aspirational, higher-value trips.
- Apple dominates Black Friday tech search but its grip is weakening: Apple accounted for 79.1% of Black Friday tech search in 2025, down from 83.7% in 2024. Its share is strongest during the biggest week of the season, suggesting an opportunity for competing brands to win consideration earlier, before preferences become locked in.
“Black Friday used to produce viral moments of people rushing through shop doors to grab a deal. And while that surge for deals hasn’t disappeared, the way people shop has definitely changed,” said Emma Welch, Head of Client Strategy at Captify (part of Verve). “Searches for tech and travel now happen online and via LLMs, stretched out over weeks and months as shoppers research, compare and decide the purchases before they see a deal. Winning consideration before Black Friday as a brand is as important now as showing up on the day. Shoppers may still wait for the deal to buy, but they’re doing their homework well before the rush.”
To request further insights into the data or schedule an interview with a Captify spokesperson, please contact: sales.team@captify.co.uk
Methodology: The analysis draws on anonymised UK search data collected by Captify, with the majority of findings covering Sep– Dec 2025, indexed weekly against the network average and compared year on year to see whether the season is shifting.
