About Advertising Cycles

January 13th, 2007 by Chris

This comes up all the time, it gets to a certain time of year and multiple people start posting about how they’re suddenly earning less, and a few of them may incorrectly theorize about the cause of their woes. If this coincidence happened at a place like WebMythWorld it might grow into some sort of “January 1st” penalty we all must worry about. However, at most places the new website publishers are just given a quick lesson in ad cycles. Said quick lesson begins below.

Small advertisers may start and stop advertising on a whim, but larger companies work within monthly, quarterly, and yearly budgets. Some companies do not end their fiscal year on December 31st, but rather at a different time during the year, so if you rely specifically on a single advertiser you may not notice the same trends. However, most business stick to the standard calendar.

Also, advertising networks and agencies posses neither Superman’s speed nor his strength. When campaigns end they do not have the resources to instantly replace them.

So while campaigns may start randomly all throughout a cycle, they all typically end on the same day.

The end result of this are drops in earnings. It will happen at the end of a month, it will happen at the end of the quarter, it will happen at the end of the year. Considering early January is the end of all 3 it would be one of the worst advertising times of the year, were it not for the fact that people are indoors a lot at that time, and there are all the end of the year retail clearances going on.

These drops aren’t necessarily traffic drops, but rather they are CPM or eCPM drops as a result to there being less advertisers out there for the time being.

So, when you experience these drops, do not fret, do not panic, they are normal, they happen to everyone, and they happen every year.

Posted in: Ad Networks » by: Chris