Yep, what you experienced is actually pretty common on Black Friday. When everyone schedules their Amazon ads to go live at midnight, the system gets flooded, its like thousands of campaigns trying to squeeze through a tiny doorway at the same time.
So even though you scheduled your campaign for 12:00 AM, it probably got stuck in a queue while Amazon's servers processed all the others. That’s why it didn’t start serving until 3 AM.
Also, Amazon sometimes re-validates things like budget, bids, and targeting right when the campaign starts. On normal days, that’s quick. But on high-volume days? Delays happen.
Pro tip for next time: Try scheduling your campaign to go live a bit earlier—like 10 or 11 PM. That gives the system time to process and gets you in front of shoppers right at midnight when the real action begins.
So yeah, your setup likely wasn’t wrong. It’s just one of those Black Friday bottlenecks we all have to work around.
