Ad revenue seasonality affects publishers throughout the year. Experienced publishers must be aware that ad revenue is impacted by various factors. The optimal way to optimize ad revenue is to focus on such factors and optimize your website accordingly. One of the major factors that affect ad revenue is ad revenue seasonality.

Every publisher might have noticed that during some months, your revenue increases or decreases. This is because of ad revenue seasonality.

Publishers may not be able to control the seasonality effects, they can surely optimize their website revenue to some extent. In this blog, we will help publishers to understand seasonality trends and how to deal with them.

What causes seasonal fluctuations in ad revenue?

Many publishers may have noticed that their CPM increase before Christmas for several countries which include the US and UK or before Diwali in India. This is because the advertisers spend more money on their campaigns during this period and also the number of users on websites especially e-commerce and social media increases. These two factors provide publishers with an opportunity to generate a higher revenue than they do usually.

Similarly, publishers may notice revenue drop and decreased traffic during the months of January and July. This is because of drop-in ad spending, as advertisers are busy setting new goals and quotas and planning different strategies. The user behavior changes as well, as they get back to a normal routine.

These seasonal changes may affect publishers but strategic planning can minimize the damage.

What are Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4?

Most of the businesses divide their year into 4 quarters:

Q1- January, February and March

Q2- April, May and June

Q3- July, August and September

Q4- October, November and December

The following points are mentioned to educate publishers about different quarters and what they can expect during these different quarters.

Q1

Advertisers spend less money in this quarter as they are busy creating new strategies and quotas. Also, the purchasing behavior of users changes and they are less interested in buying after the shopping spree for Christmas, New Year, and other events.

Tips for publishers to optimize revenue during Q1

This is the quarter when the earnings are mostly low. This is the best opportunity for publishers to consider optimizing their ad inventory. Publishers should try experimenting with different ad units, ad sizes, and placements.

Publishers should focus on their website content. By prioritizing content you are encouraging users to spend more time on your website and increase engagement.

Publishers should opt for private marketplace deals in this quarter, since programmatic auctions may not provide you with the expected results. Publishers should also reduce floor prices to get a better fill rate.

Q2

This quarter is much better for publishers than Q1. Since in this quarter advertisers spend all their leftover budget on ad campaigns, publishers get a chance to serve more ads.

Tips for publishers to optimize revenue during Q2

Publishers experience better performance than the last quarter, which means this is the time to improve your ad revenue. If a publisher was able to handle Q1 in a fine manner, you would observe that the traffic and engagement rate has increased in Q2. Publishers can get the benefit from this situation by increasing the floor price of their inventory to earn more ad revenue.

Publishers must check and compare the results of the ad sizes, formats, and placements which they experiment with in the last quarter and do further changes accordingly.

Q3

Publishers might experience some decrease in revenue or a slum during Q3. However, this slum is not as bad as the January slum. Most of the advertisers start their financial year in this quarter and keep busy planning different strategies for the rest of the year. Which results in fewer ad campaigns than the previous ad quarter and low CPMs for publishers.

Tips for publishers to optimize revenue during Q3

Performance of websites in this quarter is not as bad as Q1. Publishers will again have to focus on important factors in this quarter. They must reduce and increase floor price as per the condition.

Q3 is the time when you should prepare for Q4. In order to this, you must optimize your ad inventory. At the end of Q3 you must have figured out which ad sizes, formats, and placements work better with your website. You can try PMP deals in Q3 as well.

Q4

The last quarter but most probably the best and profitable quarter for publishers is Q4. The number of online users rises during the end of the year due to the high number of cultural holidays during this period. This attracts advertisers to invest more in ad campaigns. Publishers can earn higher revenue than usual during this period.

Tips for publishers to optimize revenue during Q4

This quarter is probably the most beneficial for publishers. Make sure that you are aware of different events in this quarter even if the event is not celebrated in your country you must take action to optimize your ad inventory accordingly. This is because the users may belong to that country where these festivals are celebrated.

Test your website important working properly or not. Use tools such as google analytics and google ad manager to keep an eye on your website engagement and performance.

Publishers must increase the floor price in this quarter to maximize their revenue.

Closing thoughts

Publishers must be prepared for each quarter for smooth and profitable ads monetization. If you face a revenue drop in any quarter you must do necessary changes to increase revenue during the next quarter. Focusing on the above-mentioned points can help publishers to take benefit of ad revenue seasonality.

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