Display sites get less traffic in December than in January, and earn a third more per visit
635 words · about 3 min
Across 99 display-only businesses, December earns 1.34x what January earns on each pageview, while getting only 0.95x the pageviews. So the Christmas bump is entirely about what advertisers pay. The traffic curve is quietly working against it. Each business is compared only against its own twelve months, so a business that was simply growing cannot make December look good.
- How it was measured
- We took every business, sold or listed, that makes its money from display advertising and nothing else, and that has twelve months in a row of both revenue and pageviews covering all twelve calendar months. People usually put a business up for sale while it is growing. Left alone, that growth piles up in whichever months sit at the end of the window — often December. So each business is first flattened against its own trend. What is reported is what is left over: the middle value for each calendar month, where 1.00 is that business's own normal level. Reproducible with scripts/measure-rpm.mjs --seasonality.
- Last checked
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Watch it plot 41s · narrated · the same figures as above
Everyone who sells ads knows the run-up to Christmas pays better. What almost nobody separates is whether that is more people or more money per person — and the answer decides what you should do about it.
The two curves move in opposite directions
Each business is scored against its own normal month, so 1.00 is that site's usual level and 1.142 is 14.2% above it:
| Month | Earned per pageview | Pageviews |
|---|---|---|
| January | 0.855 | 1.041 |
| February | 0.981 | 0.980 |
| April | 0.965 | 0.993 |
| July | 0.958 | 1.040 |
| September | 1.054 | 0.988 |
| November | 1.137 | 0.973 |
| December | 1.142 | 0.990 |
December is not a traffic month. These sites get about 5% fewer pageviews in December than in January, and still earn 34% more per visit.
The whole Christmas effect is what advertisers are willing to pay. The audience is quietly walking the other way — which means the revenue jump you feel is smaller than the price jump actually is.
What that changes
Publishing harder in December does not buy the premium. The premium is paid on each ad shown, and you get it on the traffic you already have. Work done in December buys ordinary traffic at an extraordinary rate; the same work in September buys traffic that will still be there when the rate arrives.
January is the real event, and it is worse than it looks. At 0.855 it is the worst-paying month of the year, and it arrives with the year's highest traffic. Every visitor is worth about a quarter less than in December. A site that plans its cash around Christmas revenue meets that six weeks later.
The comparison group, which limits the claim
Businesses that earn through Amazon, worked out the same way over 744 listings, show a December-to-January ratio of 1.303 for what each pageview earned — against display's 1.336. Nearly identical.
So "display advertising is unusually seasonal" is not supportable, and we are not claiming it. The Christmas price lift is a feature of selling online generally.
What IS specific to display is the shape. Amazon businesses get about the same December traffic as January (0.996), while display sites fall to 0.951. For an Amazon business the two curves point the same way. For a display business they point apart, and only one of the two is in your control.
Why flattening the trend matters
People sell a business while it is growing — that is when a buyer wants it. Take a plain monthly average across the window a listing covers, and that growth lands in whichever months sit at the end of it, which for a lot of listings is the autumn.
Publish that and you have reported a seasonal effect that is really an effect of who ends up in your sample. So each business is flattened against its own twelve months first, and what is reported is what is left over once the growth is taken out.
What would weaken this
Pageviews come only from listings that had analytics connected. So this is the checkable part of the market, not all display sites. Revenue is what the seller reported and the broker vetted, not an export from the ad network. The flattening assumes steady growth, so a business that jumped once mid-window leaks a little of that jump into the monthly figures. And each business contributes one twelve-month window, so some calendar years are represented more than others.
Grade this B: the method is sound, it can be re-run, and the comparison group is real — but this is 99 businesses, and the inputs are the seller's own accounts rather than platform data.
Tracked as Q4-IS-RATES-NOT-TRAFFIC. If a number here looks wrong, tell us and we will check it against the source.