Updated August 4, 2025: This post has been refreshed with the latest data, seasonal strategies, and revenue insights to help you prep for Q4 and beyond.
Wondering why your ad revenue ebbs and flows throughout the year? That’s because ad revenue is deeply affected by seasonality.
Advertisers adjust their spending based on predictable annual cycles of consumer behavior, popular shopping seasons, economic factors, elections, and their own quarterly goals.
In this post, you’ll learn what drives these changes and how to optimize your content strategy to make the most of the high- and low-revenue periods.
So what causes these shifts?
First, many advertising agencies see December or June as the end of their fiscal year. A fiscal year is a 12-month period that organizations use for budgeting and forecasting. Typically, budgets set for any fiscal year need to be used before the end of the fiscal year, which is why we see a huge dump of advertising money into the market in June.
Second, advertising budgets are often increased when they can make the biggest impact on the consumer. CPM and fill rates skyrocket around annual holidays like graduation season, Mother’s and Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas because this is also when people have reasons to spend money. This is why we can always count on Quarters 2 and 4 to be the highest-earning quarters.
Third, brands tend to spend the least at the beginning of a new month or quarter and more towards the end of the month or quarter. Advertisers’ budgets are tied to months, quarters and fiscal years, so they tend to spend any excess budget at the end of whatever time period their budget is tied to.
Before we get into seasonal ad revenue trends, let’s define a couple of terms — CPM and fill rate — two metrics that fluctuate in sync with key seasons. Knowing these will help you understand the trends throughout the year.
Fill rate is the number of delivered ads divided by the number of total ad requests. For example, if 100 ads were requested on a page in a day and only 90 were filled, that would mean the fill rate for that day was 90%.
Fill rate = # of delivered ads / # of total ad requests
When advertisers spend more during busy months, say around Black Friday or Christmas, we see fill rates skyrocket. This is because there is increased advertiser demand during these times and only a finite amount of high-quality advertising supply on the web. This increased demand means more ad requests are filled, resulting in a higher fill rate.
During slow months, the opposite happens. Advertising demand drops off significantly, making it easier for brands to fill their lower ad budgets.
Keep in mind that, at Mediavine, we don’t want 100% fill. 100% fill sucks. (Here’s why.)
CPM is an industry term that stands for cost per mille (cost per thousand). This is a pricing structure used to define the cost of 1,000 advertising impressions. For example, if an advertiser is willing to pay a $3.00 CPM, that means they are willing to pay $3.00 for every 1,000 times an ad is shown.
When advertising budgets are high, we see a higher CPM as more advertisers compete for the same limited ad space and are willing to pay more to get their ad in front of a limited pool of users.
During slower months, we see the CPM drop off as there is less competition in the marketplace– advertisers won’t have to spend as much to get the space they want on your site.
Now that we’ve defined those, let’s examine typical trends we see in ad revenue throughout the year.
We took the average CPM (eCPM) from each month and multiplied it by the fill rate to show how advertising spend changes month to month.
You may have noticed a pattern from the annual overview: brands tend to spend less at the start of a quarter and increase their spending as the quarter progresses.
Now, let’s examine each quarter to better understand what influences spending in each period.
January typically sees the lowest CPM and fill rates. Advertisers have exhausted Q4 budgets, and spending slows dramatically in the new year.
February through March remains sluggish. Although budgets reset, many advertisers delay spending, awaiting quarterly performance results.
Fill rates drop, as fewer ads meet minimum price floors.
Q1 action item: Optimize your inventory by tweaking ad placements and formats.
Spending begins to climb. April sees moderate improvement, followed by stronger performance in May and June, driven by events like Mother’s Day, graduations, and wedding season.
CPM and fill rate peak at the end of Q2, marking a high point for publishers.
Q2 action item: Publish seasonal content early, including Mother’s Day guides, graduation tips, summer travel, and more.
As June passes by and we enter the dog days of summer, the advertising industry sees what we like to call the “summer slump,” as consumer attention shifts away from screens.
Ad spend rebounds in August through September with key events and holidays like back-to-school, Labor Day, and early holiday prep, collectively raising CPM and fill rate again.
Q3 action items: Produce summer content early (e.g., recipes, travel, and outdoor activities) and post back-to-school content in mid-July, ahead of classes starting.
Q4 consistently ranks as the highest-earning quarter, when the glorious quarter 4 budgets roll in and we see the highest spending of the year.
Aided by key events like Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year’s, CPM and fill rates surge, especially in November and December. Advertisers race to spend remaining yearly budgets, pushing competition and CPM to record highs.
Q4 action items: In early October, publish holiday gift guides, sales roundups, recipes, decor ideas, etc., and promote your top seasonal content on social channels, newsletters, and website banners.
So what can I do to stem the pain that July and January bring? Our advice is to stock up on wine at the end of December and June. (Just Kidding. Maybe.)
Actually, there are steps you can take to help minimize the pain of those lower-revenue times of the year.
Sites that are optimized according to our site health checks see the best earnings in both good and bad months.
The goal is to make your advertising inventory as attractive as possible at all times of the year, not just during the good times.
Go through your top 10 most trafficked posts and make sure they meet all of our recommended guidelines. Sometimes it’s as easy as adding a new paragraph of content or splitting up a larger paragraph into smaller paragraphs that can make the difference.
Create a calendar for seasonal content — for example, Mother’s Day in Q2, holiday shopping in Q4, etc. — and update evergreen posts accordingly. Leverage our “best CPM days” calendar to benchmark monthly performance.
Maybe you have an old post related to healthy living that hasn’t seen much traffic lately. Late December would be a perfect time to update that post (think New Year’s resolutions) and push it into heavy production on your social media channels as soon as January begins.
Maybe you have a great 4th of July recipe or party idea. Make sure it’s updated and optimized, and start pushing it hard towards the end of June, right through the 4th.
It’s all about appealing to the limited pool of users that are attractive to the advertisers who are still bidding on your inventory.
Faster pages mean a higher fill rate. Every. Single. Time. No matter what time of year.
Slow page load times will affect fill rates especially for Mediavine publishers, who are heavily focused on viewability.
Faster pagespeed means a higher percentage of ads loading on your pages and less of a hit on your wallet during the slower months.
Check out our pagespeed resources for some more tips.
Ad revenue follows a predictable cycle each year in response to advertiser budgets and consumer behavior. As a publisher, use these strategies to help maximize revenue.
By anticipating these patterns (and not reacting in the moment), you can build a sustainable source of revenue. Prepare early, continually refine, and enjoy smoother sailing all year long.
The good news is that we are always here to help you optimize your site and maximize your earning potential.
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