Everyone buys the same Tuesday

The price of a thousand impressions in Saudi Arabia is climbing this week, and it will keep climbing until next Tuesday.

I have watched this from the platform side for years and the shape never changes. From about now, every advertiser in the Kingdom decides to be seen on the same day, in the same feeds, in front of the same people. The auction does what auctions do. The cost rises into the holiday, peaks on the day, and collapses the morning after, when the flags come down and the budgets go with them.

Nobody plans this. It is what happens when every plan says the same thing.

Seen in bulk, the accounts separated on one thing: when they found out. The accounts that grew had National Day in the plan since the summer. They bought the week around it, put their reach out in the days when it was still affordable, and were already in the customer's head by the time the auction went vertical. On the day itself they spent lightly, because the work had been done at last week's prices.

The accounts that stalled discovered National Day when the auction did. Same day, same audience, the top of the market, and a creative signed off on Monday night.

The customer's attention on Tuesday is free. Nobody charges a family to feel proud, to be at home, to open the phone and look. The advertiser is paying the highest price of the month for that same minute, and paying it in a crowd.

That is the cost of the free thing. The holiday is scarce for exactly one party in the exchange, and it is not the customer.

The accounts that are never surprised by the price have the region's calendar built into the plan, and the plan was written on a day when nobody else was bidding.