Eleven months dark

Three days before 11.11 there is a tell on the platform side that no advertiser can see from inside their own account. The accounts that have been silent since last November are switching back on.

They are easy to spot. A campaign that last spent in the final week of November a year ago. A pixel that has recorded almost nothing since. Creative uploaded this week, still called final. A daily budget that is, for one fortnight, the largest the account has ever carried, set by someone who has decided this is the year it works.

Everything about that account is cold. The system has no recent memory of who buys from it, so the first days of spend go on finding out, at November prices, which are the highest of the year. The audience has forgotten the brand, because the brand went quiet for eleven months, so the ad has to do the introduction as well as the sale. And the offer, the one thing the account is relying on, is the same offer as every other window in the region.

So the most expensive impressions of the year are bought by the accounts least able to use them, for people who have to be reminded who is speaking.

Next to them, on the same platform, are the accounts that never went dark. A small budget in March. A little in the summer, when nobody else was buying and the prices were the lowest. A steady trickle through September and October. Their November spend is not much larger than their May spend.

Their pixel is warm. Their audience knows the name. Their ad this week does not have to introduce anyone, so it can get on with selling.

The dark account is paying for the eleven months it did not spend, all in one week, at the worst rate of the year. The cheapest November impression was bought in September, by an account that stayed boring all year.