Black Friday video ads: lock the model id 36 days after Veo ends

Pick the video model for your Black Friday ads before Veo 3.1's preview ids end on October 22, then freeze it. Black Friday is November 27, 2026, 36 days after that date, and a model you have to change in November is a model you test during peak season. A short plan on Sume: 20 six-second drafts of gemini-omni-flash-1.1 at 360p for $4.50, then four ten-second finals at 1080p for $7.50, a total of $12.00.

The dates

Google's deprecations page sets October 22, 2026 as the shutdown for the three Veo 3.1 preview ids and names gemini-omni-1.1-flash as the replacement. OpenAI's Sora API ended on September 24. So any pipeline that still depends on either needs a new model before the holiday campaign is produced.

The arithmetic

Sume bills the provider list times 1.25 for each output second. Omni's rates are $0.0375 at 360p and $0.1875 at 1080p. Twenty drafts of 6 seconds are 120 seconds, and 120 x $0.0375 = $4.50. Four finals of 10 seconds are 40 seconds, and 40 x $0.1875 = $7.50. The total is $12.00 for 24 jobs.

Rendering all the same footage at 1080p instead would be (120 + 40) x $0.1875 = $30.00, so the draft step saves $18.00 before any second round of changes.

• Drafts: 20 x 6 s x $0.0375 = $4.50.
• Finals: 4 x 10 s x $0.1875 = $7.50.
• All at 1080p instead: 160 s x $0.1875 = $30.00.

What to freeze

Freeze four things: the model id, the resolution, the aspect ratio and the prompt template. Omni takes 16:9 or 9:16, so a campaign that also needs a square crop should plan that as an edit of the finished file, not as a new generation. Sume's Omni row keeps native audio on, so choose the music and voice plan with that in mind, and review every final with sound.

Keep one spare budget line. Re-rendering the four finals at 1080p again costs another $7.50, which is cheap compared with missing a launch because a model changed under you.

A budget line for the whole campaign

Add the work around the clips. If each of the four finals also needs a trim to length or a caption pass, those are separate Sume jobs with their own prices, so price them before you commit. The model cost here, $12.00, is the smallest line in most campaigns, which is why the date matters more than the dollars: the expensive mistake is a late change that forces every shot to be reviewed again.

What not to do

Do not plan to migrate during the sale. Do not assume a vendor's default will stay the same: Google now recommends Gemini Omni Flash as its default video model, and a default is a recommendation, not a promise about next month.