Seasonal advertising: spend where and when demand peaks

Why seasonality fits a pay-per-view model

Seasonal businesses, from beach towns and ski resorts to holiday menus and summer terraces, earn most of their year in a few weeks. The usual problem with media is commitment: monthly plans and packages that keep running when demand has gone.

Here, spend only happens when someone actually sees the ad. Add a budget per campaign and a pause button, and the plan follows the calendar instead of a contract.

• Control of the window: activate when bookings open and pause when the season ends.
• Control of the place: spend only in the cities where demand comes from or where the season happens.
• Control of the message: seasonal creatives and limited-time offers are exactly what people deciding right now respond to.

How to set up a seasonal campaign

Create a banner campaign with a seasonal creative and a link to the offer. Banners are reviewed before going live, so submit a few days before the window opens. Choose cities, a country or worldwide, and add dish categories when the offer is about food, such as a festive menu or a seafood season.

Seasonal campaign ideas

1. 01

   Holiday menus

   Christmas, New Year's Eve, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day: set menus with a booking link, launched two or three weeks before the date.

2. 02

   Summer and winter seasons

   Coastal and mountain destinations target the cities their visitors come from as the season begins.

3. 03

   Harvest and produce seasons

   Truffle, oyster, grape harvest or asparagus season, restricted to the matching dish categories.

4. 04

   School holidays

   Family packages and kids' menus timed with the school holidays of the cities you target.

5. 05

   Last-minute availability

   Raise the bid for a few days to sell the remaining capacity, then pause.

6. 06

   Early booking before the peak

   A smaller budget before the season to catch planners, with an early-booking benefit. For hotels, see hotel advertising.

How to size a seasonal budget

Start from the window: how many days the campaign will run and in how many cities. Credits are prepaid, and each real view costs your bid (0.01 to 4.99 credits). In competitive weeks, a higher bid puts you ahead of other ads on the same page.

Packages come in 100, 500 and 1,000 credits (10, 40 and 70 in USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD, BRL).

Measuring a season and planning the next one

The dashboard's daily chart shows when interest started and peaked, and the breakdown by location shows which cities responded. UTM-tagged clicks (campaign, city, category) tie bookings or orders to each seasonal campaign.

Keep campaign names consistent from year to year, such as ‘summer-2027’ and ‘summer-2028’: the campaign name becomes utm_campaign, so the reports line up.

Seasonal checklist

1. 1Mark the window: start, peak and end.
2. 2Choose the cities where demand comes from and, if relevant, the categories.
3. 3Prepare the seasonal creative and submit it a few days early for review.
4. 4Size the budget to the window and launch at the start.
5. 5Pause at the end and write down what worked for next year.

Frequently asked questions