Your Google AdSense seasonal guide

This guide is here to help you learn about the importance of seasonality as well as provide you with tips on how to get more from your Google AdSense account and site during peak seasonal traffic. This guide is filled with easy, actionable insights you can start implementing today.

Here’s a sneak peek of what will be posted over the next couple of weeks to prepare you well for this busy time of the year. Let’s get holiday season ready!

• Pre-holiday season: How to prepare? 
• During the holiday season: How to maximize the opportunities 
• Post holidays: Looking at 2020 

Defining seasonal periods 

What is seasonality?

Any predictable fluctuation or pattern that recurs over a calendar year is defined as seasonality. It can be categorized into 3 types of events and holidays:

1. Cultural (e.g. Ramadan, Thanksgiving, Christmas) 
2. Commercial (e.g. Black Friday, Singles’ Day, Mother’s Day)
3. Ad-hoc events (e.g. Olympics, Elections, TV series) 

By spotting events and holidays impacting your audience, you can identify your seasonality opportunities to increase revenue and attract new users.

What drives seasonality? 

Publisher revenue is driven by two interlinked factors: RPMs and traffic.

Advertisers are willing to pay more for inventory, leading to higher RPMs. Increased traffic leads to more impressions. These two factors drive seasonal spikes and dips in publisher earnings.

Why is it important for publishers?

Seasonality offers publishers opportunities to attract new audiences and maximize revenues. The upcoming holiday season (October - December) is the biggest annual seasonal opportunity. Let’s explore why!

1. Large increase in internet traffic (higher query opportunity)
   Over the past 5 years, the holiday season internet traffic has grown as users flock online to purchase gifts for themselves and others.
   

2. Higher competition between advertisers (higher query opportunity)
   The holiday shopping season is the busiest retail period of the year. Advertisers spend more during this time to ensure their products and brands are well-positioned at key events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. For example, consumers around the world and especially in Asia reportedly spent more than $1 billion in the first 90 seconds of Singles’ Day in 2018. Advertisers are eager to be there for moments like this.

Starting the holiday season marathon

Let’s focus on the upcoming season. The October-December period is a global seasonal marathon offering the greatest annual opportunity to maximize your earnings. In fact, this seasonal opportunity is increasing all over. In 2018, the average global interest in Black Friday grew more than twice over the previous 5 years. 

Get your calendar open and mark the following dates:

Let’s see what you can do to make the most out of your site and AdSense account before, during and after the holiday season.

In the blogpost next week we’ll provide you with tips on how to prepare your site and AdSense account for the rush of the holiday season.