How To Optimize Website For Largest Selling Holidays - Understand Seasonal Trends In Ads¶

The best way to generate revenue from your blogging websites is by publishing ads. Bloggers plan out their content board with amazing headlines and content outlines. They plan out different infographics and images to get along with the content. Their main reason behind content preparation is to capture the attention of the readers. Moreover, you want to keep the readers hooked to the content for long.

Every website owner wants something similar to this. If you have an e-commerce website, you will want the customers to spend their entire time on recommended products and services. The business website owners and bloggers or vloggers want to make the webpage interactive. With increasing web page sessions and interaction, you can improve the ad revenue of your website. Besides, you have a better chance to improve the CTR.

The ad publishers focus on changing placement to increase viewability. In simple words, while reading the blogs or scanning thought the products, you can encourage people to check out the relevant advertisement. For instance, if you have an education website will tutorials and online courses, you can display ads with innovative projects and about the institutes that provide degree programs. It helps the readers as well as the ad publishers.

Although the ad publishers do not leave any stone unturned while placing the ads and getting the attention of the user, there is always a fluctuation in the revenue. Sometimes it is high and other times it is low. This creates a lot of confusion. These fluctuations happen throughout the year. Now how will you attribute it?

You can attribute the fluctuations to the seasonal trends that take place in the digital advertising industry. There are some months when you are making exorbitant high revenue. Whereas for some months, the revenue drops to the lowest numerical values. For every ad publisher, it is essential to understand the seasonality in advertising and how to overcome it. Well, in simple words, you cannot overcome it, you can optimize the ads and website accordingly. The optimization will help you to gain high revenue and make the best of it. While analyzing your ad revenue for the year, you may have come across the fact that the fourth quarter of the year is usually the most profitable. Through this article, you will get to learn everything about ad placement and how to increase the revenue of the websites.

Table of Contents:¶

• Overview
• Understanding The Seasonality Of Ad Revenue
• What Do You Mean By Seasonal Trends?
• How To Optimize The Website For The Fourth Quarter - The Largest Selling Holidays And Festivals?
• How To Improve The Overall Speed Of The Website On Desktop And Mobile?

Understanding The Seasonality Of Ad Revenue ¶

• Seasonality in ad revenue refers to the predictable variation or trends that occur during the same time period, year over year. In the business of gaining ad revenue, you have 3 major categories:
• 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)

Seasonality Examples¶

If you consider the statistics for the past 5 years, you will get to know that ad revenue reaches a peak during “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday”. According to a record of the year 2020, Black Friday advertising happened all over the world. It increased the sales of large and small businesses by 168% compared to October of the same year. You do not have to assume anything about the statistics, as the report has been generated by Criteo.

You might be thinking about why there are so high sales on Black Friday and low on other days. Well, these are based on public sentiments and religious holidays. These are the times when people actually get time to prepare for the holidays and festivals.

The ad publishers can take full advantage of this time and improve their position in the market. For publishers, you can consider this to be a beneficial way to record high CPM. Moreover, it is also possible to increase the traffic of the website during this time.

Oh, Wait!

Just assume that you will have a great ad revenue without the proper inflow of traffic. The revenues, CPM, CTR, and other parameters work only when you satisfy the basic thing - Website Traffic.

As per the expert data analysts and digital marketers, the seasonal opportunities will completely depend on the way the audience visits your website and indulge in interaction.

Another example of the seasonality can be observed during Christmas and New Year. These are the holidays, people tend to celebrate globally. In simple words, you will have a great way to enhance the revenue of the advertisement. The celebrations of the festivals can take different forms, but customer behavior remains similar across the country. You can influence the people by providing relevant ads and increasing the CTR of the websites.

People across the world celebrate New Year either on 31st December or 1st January. So you must prepare the website and blogs accordingly. Besides, the ad's relevancy and placement will also play a significant role in improving the ad revenue.

Now let’s understand the seasonal trends throughout the year.

What Do You Mean By Seasonal Trends? ¶

While analyzing and calculating the seasonal trends, you need to divide the calendar into different quarters. Experts define the year into 4 quarters based on the popularity of the commercial events. Seasonal trends have a direct reference to the calendar or commercial events that take place every year. You will gain an in-depth understanding of advertising and ad revenue by knowing the seasonal changes. Each quarter will provide you with different trends and its own trends and opportunities.

Advertisers have to manage their budget every year. It is essential so that they do not have to pay a high amount for minimal advertising. Therefore, the publishers will experience a dip in the ad earnings or revenue at the onset of the year. That is, the income from ads will be fewer in the first quarter. The revenue seems to increase in the final quarter. Apart from this, there is also traditionally a dip at the beginning of every month.

Now We Will Observe Everything That Takes Place In 4 Seasonal Quarters ¶

Understanding The Ad Revenues And Advertising In Q1¶

For the publishers, this is the most unbearable time of the year. You can also consider it the worst time of the year. According to the experts, this time of the year is the worst in terms of revenue. It is because the advertisers are busy with the new advertising plans, and budgets. They also have a brief understanding of customer behavior. In October, November, and December, they spend a lot on the holidays and festivals. In the first three months, customers are in no mood to make any further spending. Therefore, the advertisers keep it low on the promotion and marketing of the products and services.

Advertisers manage and control the ad inventory through programmed online platforms. When there is a drop in advertising and sales, you will observe a sharp decrease in the eCPM.

Understand eCPM (Make a Dialogue Box)¶

By the second and third quarters, you will experience that the CPM is trying to reach the normal level. It is a gradual process, and you will be able to observe the growth in CPM.

Understanding The Ad Revenues And Advertising In Q2¶

In this quarter, the advertisers are done with their planning and budgeting of the marketing department. It is the time they will start focusing on advertising and gaining customers. Advertisers are prepared to spend their budgets in the right direction actively. In simple words, the ad publishers will have a better opportunity to increase their revenue. However, the seasonal trends will keep changing. At this time, the publishers must concentrate on improving the sales of the business. Therefore, they increase the advertising platforms.

According to Global Media, the performance of Q2 in the year 2020 increases by 40 to 45 percent. Even if the business is affected by the pandemic, you will observe an increase in ad revenue.

Understanding The Ad Revenues And Advertising In Q3¶

If you consider the studies provided by experts, you will know that summers are not good months for generating ad revenue. People love to spend time outdoors and on vacation. You will not find them online for long hours. Therefore, the advertisers will adjust their ad inventory and budget according to the demand of the public. People consider summer to be a peaceful season with limited purchases. The advertisers will have a limited budget.

With this trend, you will observe the highest dip in the month of July. After this, you will witness an increase in the CPM.

Understanding The Ad Revenues And Advertising In Q4¶

With the onset of the 4th quarter, you will understand the profits you can gain during this period. This is the most profitable season for publishers and advertisers. In this quarter, the brands will compete with one another to get the best website to publish the advertisements. The quarter will have multiple festivals across the globe. Major holidays like Thanksgiving Day and Diwali begin in November, following the biggest consumer events–Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You will observe an increase in the CPM of the advertisement. It will continue till the month of December and January. It means the CPM will remain high till the first week of January.

Now you have understood the advertising plans and publisher ad revenue fluctuations. It is time to know how to optimize the website for the fourth quarter (the largest selling holidays).

How To Optimize The Website For The Fourth Quarter - The Largest Selling Holidays And Festivals? ¶

1. You Must Optimize The Website Design With Perfect UX And UI:¶

At the start of the year, you get to know Google rolled out an algorithm update “Page Experience” that focused on improving the page experience of the users. Earlier this year, Google completed the rollout of Page Experience Update. Based on the algorithm update, the Google search engine will rank the web pages of the websites by considering the user’s perspective. If you are spending more time on the webpage, the user experience is likely to be the best. By considering the data, the experts provide a ranking to the website. If the web page experience shooter is down, you are likely you have a lower ranking.

To optimize the website for the best user experience, you need a mobile-friendly, fast and responsive website. To check the web pages for the user experience, you can use tools provided by Google - Search Console and Analytics. These tools will help you to detect the errors on the website from the user’s perspective. Based on the report, you can make changes to your website. It will help you to improve the performance of your website.

For Instance,

Have you heard of a popular tool and website, Ahref?

It is one of the most essential and popular tools that help you to provide clear and consistent navigation to the website. You can have perfect search functionality, popular articles, featured articles, easy identification of home button, contact us page, about us page, etc. All these things contribute to enhancing the usability of the website.

2. Focus On Using An Advanced Monetization Solution¶

According to the US Digital Forecast conducted by eMarketer, it has been predicted that the overall expenditure on online advertisement will reach more than \$239.89bn in 2022.

It shows the graphical representation of all the 4 quarters. You will be able to analyze that the fourth quarter will have an increase in traffic as well as the ad revenue. The advertisers will be actively involved in improving the advertisements and promotions of their business. They will focus on becoming more attractive to premium advertisers, and the bid density will grow.

You can try out different monetization solutions that will help you to increase the revenue from the ads. Publishers can employ the technique of header bidding to sell the ad inventory at the highest possible price. The publishers will benefit from it due to an increase in the competition. There are many publishers who are ready to bid the highest to get the desired position for displaying their ads. At that time, the publishers can opt for displaying the ads from various partners. They will help you to create better and bigger competition.

If you are using Google AdSense, there will be no competition between the demand partners. In simple words, you will not be able to reach your actual potential of the ad revenue even in the fourth quarter.

3. You Can Try Refresh Ad Technique To Increase The Impression And Clicks:¶

If you compare the readers' and customers' behavior in the first and fourth quarters, you will get to know the difference. People are spending more time on online platforms in the last 3 to 4 months of the year. It is the time they are planning and preparing for the holidays. At this time, the publishers have the opportunity to generate better income or ad revenue with the help of ‘Refresh Ads’.

Note: You cannot achieve this from Google AdSense. They do not consider it to be a better way to get genuine revenue and therefore do not allow such techniques.

4. Focus On Updating The Content And Republishing It On The Website:¶

Your website must be having some great blogs, images, infographics, and illustrations. These helped you gain huge traffic on the website. But currently, they are old. You can update the high-performing content and republish it on the website. People and search engines provide priority to fresh and high-ranking content.

Besides this, you must ensure that your website has an elegant and sleek design/interface. If not, you can follow these points to improve the interface.

• You should follow on-page SEO best practices (it will help to optimize the content for better readability).
• You must write SEO-friendly titles, subheadings, and meta descriptions(It should include keywords in the right position)
• Learn to structure the content around user intent.

5. Employ The Best Performing Ad Formats¶

CoderzColumn Suggestion: Usually, people say that Q4 is the time to experiment with the ads. But We would suggest you experiment with ad formats in Q1, Q2, and Q3. Q4 should be the time to fetch as much ad revenue as possible. You can use sticky ads (interstitial) that will help you to spike your revenue from the website. These are some of the ad formats that will increase the CPM of the ads.

Along with this, you need to focus on the placement of the ads. If you include more ad placements on the web page or website, it will increase the number of impressions and clicks. Similarly, you will be able to generate better ad revenue by maximizing the ads.

Here Is A Bonus Tip From CoderzColumn:¶

While placing the ads, make sure you are leaving enough space between the website components. It might hinder the smooth navigation of the website and may cause accidental clicks. The advertisers will not consider the accidental clicks. If you are using Google AdSense, it can cause a penalty and may cause a drop in the CPM.

What Is Google’s Two Click Penalty?¶

Here is an example that clearly shows how the ad placement has been defined on the web page. It will be visible to the website visitors and do not cause any problems with the navigation.

6. You Must Focus On Improving The Overall Speed Of The Website:¶

Well, most people have a complaint that they provide better speed to the web page. It will help in gaining a good position in the Google SERP and website traffic. You should make sure that your website loads within the time span of 2 seconds. Beyond that, it is considered a delay in the overall speed of the website. The speed should remain within a specific range for both desktop and mobile. Before that, you should get data from the mobile and desktop views. It will help you to know how many visitors you have on both devices. Based on that, you can choose your preferred platform. For example, if you are having an e-commerce website, it is understood that the web traffic would be higher from mobile devices. Whereas, if the website deals with coding, teaching, learning, or gaining any hands-on experience, the visitors will be more from the desktop.

How To Improve The Overall Speed Of The Website On Desktop And Mobile? ¶

• Implementing Lazy Load Technique For Ads and Images; (Do Not Try Lazy Load For ad In Google AdSense. Or Else You * Will Have To Be The Part Of Penalty Group).
• Enabling Browser Caching.
• You Can Compress All Images Along With Various Media Files.
• Focus On Reducing The Number Of Internal Scripting.
• Minifying CSS, JS, and HTML.

Conclusion:¶

Everyone who is trying to gain revenue from the ad platform will observe the seasonal changes in the revenue. These changes and fluctuations are inevitable. The best way to compensate for the unprofitable months is to gain from the profitable months. It is essential to make some tweaks to increase the earnings in the fourth quarter. You can take the support of the ad tech partner to optimize the result of ads and increase your earnings through it.

These are some tactics that will help you to increase engagement on the website and the ads. You will be able to focus more on enhancing the visitors' perspective. If you have any doubt or want to know more about the ad revenue, reach out to the CoderzColumn team. You can provide us with some suggestions in the comment box. Till then, Stay Tuned!

Reference Articles Of Digital Marketing¶

• How Digital Marketing Creates An Impact On Businesses?
• What Is The Significance Of Content Writing In Digital Marketing?
• How Digital Marketing Will Change This Year?