For Big Billion Days, plan ad budgets at three to four times your normal daily spend, start ramping four weeks before the sale, and set daily caps high enough that campaigns are still live at 8 pm. This guide covers the budget maths, the week-by-week ramp, Smart ROI versus CPC during the sale, and the reports to watch each morning.
Most sellers who lose money on Big Billion Days did not spend too little. They spent it at the wrong time. Flipkart Ads' own Festive Playlist (Ep 05, 'Don't run out of money') puts the cost of missing peak traffic at around 30% of potential sales, and the pattern is always the same: a daily budget sized for a normal Tuesday is exhausted by mid-morning on sale day, and the evening surge, when most orders happen, runs with the campaign paused.
Two forces push spend up at once. Traffic is several times normal, so the same bid buys many more clicks. And every competitor raises bids, so each click costs more. Agency playbooks (swcybernetics, Pinnacle Growth) quote CPCs at two to three times normal during the event. Multiply the two and a ₹2,000 daily budget can be gone in two hours.
Blooprint's Big Billion Days glossary entry covers the event itself, dates and seller registration. This page is only about the ad money.
Start from what you actually spend and what it returns today, then scale the parts that change.
| Line | Normal day | BBD day | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily ad spend | ₹3,000 | ₹9,000 to ₹12,000 | 3 to 4x, per agency playbooks |
| Average CPC | ₹8 | ₹16 to ₹24 | 2 to 3x |
| Clicks bought | 375 | 500 to 560 | More money buys only slightly more clicks |
| Conversion rate | 4% | 6 to 8% | Sale-day CVR lift is your own history, not a rule |
| Orders from ads | 15 | 30 to 45 |
The lesson from the table: a 3 to 4x budget does not buy 3 to 4x the clicks. It buys the same visibility at sale-day prices, plus a margin for the higher conversion rate. If you only double the budget, you buy fewer clicks than on a normal day.
Set the BBD ad budget as a share of the stock you can actually sell. If 200 units of a hero SKU are in FBF, and ads historically drive a third of orders, an ad budget that could sell 400 units is wasted.
Flipkart Ads' Festive Playlist Ep 03 argues that starting four weeks early captures the bulk of ad visibility, because campaigns with conversion history are favoured on sale day. Run CPC campaigns on the hero SKUs at normal budgets and fix listings that get clicks but no orders now.
Raise daily budgets to two times normal and raise top-of-search bids on three to five hero SKUs by 30 to 50%, as agency playbooks suggest. Watch ROI for two days before going further. Add PCA campaigns for brand-level visibility if you are eligible.
Move to the full 3 to 4x daily budget. Ensure the wallet, or your Advertise Now Pay Later limit, covers every sale day, not just the first. Check that no campaign has an end date inside the sale window.
Check spend at 10 am, 2 pm and 6 pm. Any campaign at more than 60% of budget by 2 pm needs a budget top-up before 6 pm. Any campaign spending with ROI below your floor needs its bid cut, not its budget.
Do not cut budgets to zero on the last night. Return traffic and late attribution keep orders coming for a few days. Step down over two to three days, then restore normal bids.
Smart ROI campaigns let Flipkart's system bid to a target ROI. During BBD this is comfortable but slow: the system needs sales history on the FSN, and if the target is high it will under-spend while clicks are expensive. Blooprint's guide on Smart ROI versus CPC campaigns explains the mechanics; the decision for the sale is simpler.
Use CPC campaigns for hero SKUs where you want guaranteed visibility at top of search and are willing to accept a lower ROI on sale day to win the volume. Use Smart ROI for the long tail, with the target ROI lowered by one or two points for the sale window and restored afterwards. Running both on the same FSN splits the data and makes the post-sale review harder.
One thing Flipkart Ads' festive playlist stresses (Ep 07) is that skipping PCA leaves a slice of visibility, quoted at around 20%, to competitors on sale day. If you sell a brand rather than a single listing, budget PCA separately.
Doing this by hand across 40 campaigns is the reason most sellers check once, at night, when it is too late. BlooprintAI's budget monitor and campaign health views show every Flipkart campaign's spend pace and ROI in one table, and budget changes can be applied in bulk with a summary before they go live.
The Flipkart and Shopsy workflow in BlooprintAI: bulk campaign creation, placement bids, keyword control and reports the seller dashboard does not give you.
Learn more →Enter ad revenue and ad spend to get Flipkart ROI, the matching ACoS and ROAS, and the ROI you need to break even at your margin.
Learn more →How much to set on a normal day, minimums, and how to phase spend for new and established listings.
Learn more →Agency playbooks quote three to four times normal daily spend. The reason is that CPCs rise two to three times during the sale, so a budget that only doubles buys fewer clicks than a normal day. Size the final number against stock you can ship, not against the multiplier alone.
Flipkart Ads' own festive playlist says four weeks before the sale. Campaigns need conversion history to be favoured on sale day, and you need those weeks to fix listings that get clicks without orders.
CPC for hero SKUs where you want top-of-search visibility regardless of a temporarily lower ROI. Smart ROI for the long tail, with the target lowered slightly for the sale window. Avoid running both on the same FSN.
It almost certainly hit its daily budget. Sale-day traffic and higher CPCs drain a normal budget in hours. Raise the daily cap before the sale and check spend at 10 am, 2 pm and 6 pm.
Not immediately. Attributed sales report after a delay, so ROI on sale day looks worse than the final figure. Judge the event once the attribution window has closed, then compare to your pre-sale baseline.
Yes, if you are enrolled. ANPL spend is recovered from your next payout, so check the limit covers every sale day, and remember that a big sale-day spend reduces the payout that arrives after the event.
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