Seasonal Transitioning in Paid Ads

This refers to the changes in consumer behaviour, product demand, and other market factors from patterns that occur each year. There are a number of reasons for this, including weather changes and cultural dates of the year. 

It’s not surprising that gloves are going to sell better in colder months of the year, and sunglasses are going to sell better in the warmer weather, but these patterns should be considered when creating ad copy and creatives.

 I’ll take you through some key user insights that have shaped the past year, and some tips on transitioning your campaigns between seasons like clockwork.

This is a broad example of how consumer behaviour patterns change when it comes to B2C markets in the UK. B2B might have some different cycles, with more competitive periods over summer when a lot of people go on annual leave.

The start of the year. We’ve just binged a load of sweet treats and spent a lot of time with friends and family, and we are on our way back to work.

We’ve all been there and subscribed to a new gym, thinking, ‘this is going to be the year’. 

Right? New Year, New Me. Sounds cliché, but a lot of people focus on self-care. So much so that the pharmacy, health, and beauty sector saw its strongest performance in almost 3 years, with the renewed focus on wellness. 

We’re gearing up for the summer. The weather’s taking a turn for the better, and you can feel it – this year’s going to be a good one. 

But the house needs to be in order. People begin to focus on ‘Spring Cleaning’ or a house refresh through the sales of DIY, homeware, and gardening goods. Spending increases. You book that holiday, that concert, that spa day, that Centre Parcs trip. Discretionary spending increases are driven by clothing and footwear for the season changes (which translates to getting that new Spring/Summer glow-up).

Summer Season = Impulsive Spending. 

‘It’s sunny, let’s go have that cheeky pint after work by the docks.’

Retailers noted increased unplanned spending during the Spring and Summer months, attributed to factors such as improved weather, more social activities, and time-of-year sensitivity. In July 2024, 88% of adults in the UK reportedly made at least one impulse purchase. 

But the experience economy is growing and growing, with entertainment and travel outperforming retail in recent years. Below is a graph of average spending over Summer 2024.

For those of you with children, I am sure this time of year screams getting ready for back to school, where Brits spend 1.2 billion GBP across uniforms, shoes, stationery, and more. 

Merry Christmas…and a Happy New Year. And Black Friday. And Cyber Monday. 

Christmas seasonality isn’t just about retail, deals on presents, and peak shopping season (although that’s a big part of it). In October to December 2024, ONS reported an increase in spending for the hospitality sector, with a 1.3% increase following Q3. 

Think Christmas parties: with work, with friends, with family. 

Peak season refers to the time of year with heightened demand and increased consumer spending during key seasonal periods. However, this year, there is a drop in consumer confidence, with more people taking into consideration where and how they spend, due to the rise in living costs, inflation, and ongoing global uncertainty. 

We’ve covered how you can prepare for peak season with your paid ads here. 

This rises and dips with demand, for example, Peak Shopping season is full of increased competition with everyone pushing to be the go-to product within their category, but in Q1, for the January sales and decline in consumer spending, the CPC’s drop and competition is less fierce (but that doesn’t mean you can’t capitalise on those periods). 

B2B and B2C are different when it comes to seasonal trends. From a B2B perspective, summer is when competition can really heighten. With a lot of potential customers on annual leave, the pool of in-market users shrinks, and as a result, the auction becomes more constricted. Typically, we see CPCs rise as people within the auction are having to pay more to gain the attention of the dwindling audience pool. 

Here are some other ways that seasonality can affect your Paid Ads.

Google has been pushing broad match keywords, and because of this, we’ve noticed an interesting shift in how auctions work.

Competitors who lean heavily on broad match terms often end up appearing in brand-related searches without intentionally targeting those brands. For example, in the clothing industry, searches such as ‘[Brand Name] Clothing’ can trigger ads from competitors who are simply broad matching, ‘Clothing.’

This unintentionally turns into a competitor campaign, increasing competition in brand auctions, driving up CPCs, and ultimately reducing conversion volume for the brand being targeted.

Different times of year are going to have different emotional language and calls to action. From Meta’s Maximise Peak Performance Event (which Will has covered in this blog post), we know that copy should be amended from pre-Christmas to post-Christmas. 

In Q4, the copy is full of gifting language, like getting the perfect gift for your family, giving a gift that means something, or making this Christmas the one to remember. Some examples could be ‘Christmas presents for Mum’ or ‘Best speakers to gift.’

This would transition post-Christmas into treating yourself, as the January sales emerge, examples including trying something new, focusing on New Year’s resolutions, or simply getting that discount as you enter the New Year. 

When preparing your copy, think about how the user is going to be feeling and the intent behind their purchases. 

Winter is going to have a lot of urgency to it in the business of Christmas, so encouraging consumers to get something before it sells out to make someone’s Christmas, whereas in Summer, you’re going to be using more adventurous wording, focusing more on experiences, and leisure. On the other hand, Autumn might look more like comfort, and preparation – especially when it comes to Back to School campaigns.

I’ve mentioned that Peak Shopping Period is the most competitive time of the year, with increased demand and spending, but there are also off-peak opportunities throughout the year that you can capitalise on. 

You could test AI Max. This will help you better understand what users are searching for and expand on keyword structures, or possibly build out ads groups with areas you may have overlooked. 

Gaining as much information as possible about what it is that your users are searching for will be key to making sure your account is set out for success. You could test brand awareness traffic goals in demand gen campaigns ahead of peak shopping season, to gather a large group of potential customers that you could then remarket with a conversion goal campaign when peak seasons begin. 

Don’t underestimate these, including the power of Q5, and take advantage of the dip in CPMs by running campaigns after the shipping cutoff. According to Meta at their, ‘Maximise Peak Performance’ Event, value optimisation in Q5 is where advertisers have seen the most gains.

What happens when the seasonal peaks end? You just stop doing ads? Definitely not. 

This is the time when you can focus on building more brand awareness in preparation for the peak shopping periods. Costs in off-peak marketing periods will be lower, and you can use this to your advantage.

Building a campaign before peak seasons will help Google to gather historical data that will then help the algorithms to better inform your strategy, such as understanding what type of users will convert, and as a result will deliver more efficient campaigns. 

The worst thing you can do is launch a campaign way too late, and risk it being in learning and the early stages of data gathering, where it will likely underspend and underperform. 

Try planning the next quarter at the mid-point of the current one. That way you can take the time to pull together audiences, copy and creative that you need. Plus, it gives you time to properly setup campaigns and check everything, instead of rushing to put them together.

Repeating what you did last year means no room for growth. You should have some data from your previous campaigns to show what worked and what didn’t, so use that to influence your ads for the following year. 

Trends change, so just slapping on the same copy from the year before might not cut it this year.

You can’t just set them and forget them, and copy and paste the same ad sets each year, but there are some things you can do to make the following year smarter and more efficient. 

Give yourself something to work with. You don’t have to start completely from scratch each year – keep some templates from your Black Friday Sale, Valentine’s Day, and more. Which leads me to my next point…

Keep a note of campaign performance from this year, so when it comes to next year, you know what to avoid and what to capitalise on. You could even filter this into your assets and save the best performing from each quarter to your brand toolkit to optimise and refresh each year. 

Seasonal transitioning isn’t just about slapping a snowflake on your ad with surface-level copy that feels robotic. 

It’s about aligning your copy, targeting, and spend with the shifts in consumer mindset.