Seasonal Trends in Ad Tech Explained
As a publisher, you may notice that your ad revenue fluctuates during the year. This is due to seasonal trends in digital advertising. In order to benefit from the most profitable season (Q4), we put together 6 tips.
What is Seasonality?
Seasonality refers to any predictable variations or trends that occur within the same time period each year.
There are three main types of seasonality:
- Cultural (e.g., Easter, Christmas, New Year)
- Commercial (e.g., Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Singles’ Day)
- Ad hoc (e.g., World Cup, Olympic Games, presidential elections)
What are Seasonal Trends?
Seasonal trends are changes that happen every year, usually related to the calendar or to commercial events. Seasonality in digital advertising is divided into four quarters, each with its own trends and opportunities.
Advertisers usually monitor their budgets on a monthly or quarterly basis, which means that publishers will see a decrease in CPMs at the start of a quarter and an increase at the end of a quarter.
5 Tips to Prepare Your Website for the Largest Selling Holidays
- Use the best performing ad formats
This is your chance to experiment with different types of ads other than standard ad formats that could potentially increase your ad revenue. These ads typically have higher CPM prices than standard ads.
More ad placements mean more ad revenue, but don’t overcrowd your website with ads. Finding the right balance between a maximum number of ad placements and a good user experience is important.
- Make sure your site has great UX
Google recently updated its ranking algorithm to consider “page experience” – how users perceive the experience of using a particular web page.
This of course means your ranking will be lower if Google thinks that page provides a poor user experience.
Therefore, it is crucial that your website is fast, mobile-friendly, and responsive. Use Google Search Console to see your search performance or alternative tools to detect errors and improve your website performance. - Update your existing content
Search engines prioritize fresh, updated content, which helps improve ranking. Be sure to regularly refresh your existing content.
In addition, ensure your website interface is sleek and consistent. To optimize your content for SEO, follow best practices for on-page optimization, including writing SEO-friendly titles, subheadings, and meta descriptions, and structuring your content around user intent. - Try a more advanced monetization solution
Your ad inventory will become more attractive for premium advertisers during Q4 and the bid density will grow. This is caused by the expected increase in website traffic for the final season of the year.
Publishers can now sell ad inventory at the highest possible price thanks to increased competition among 28 SSPs in the top season, which has prompted even more interest in header bidding and resulted in record-breaking eCPMs.
You will never achieve your revenue potential in Q4 if there is no competition between demand partners (such as Google AdSense). - Use ad refresh
As people spend more time online before winter holidays, publishers can make more money from refreshed ads. This can’t be done with Google AdSense, but you can achieve this with the help of our tools.
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