Spent by the thirtieth

In the last week of June a great deal of money leaves marketing budgets, and almost none of it is buying anything.

Everyone knows why. A line that finishes the half year unspent is a smaller line next year, so the unspent part goes out the door before the thirtieth. Not against a plan. Against a date.

From the platform side the date is visible from a long way off. Accounts that ran flat through May and the Eid tail lift all at once in the final days of the month, into the start of the emptiest stretch of the year for this region. The Gulf is leaving. The customer who is still here is booking flights, not browsing. And the auction does not get cheaper to match the quiet, because everyone else's half year ends on the same day. So the spike buys the worst week of the year at any price, and the July report says the money was deployed.

Deployed is the right word. Nobody says spent well.

What is actually being bought is next year's line: a number on a spreadsheet that will be argued over in October. That is the sunk thing. Money goes out today to defend a figure nobody has approved yet, on the theory that a line, once shrunk, never grows back. The theory is usually right, which is what makes the behaviour so hard to stop.

But the underspend is real money, and the second half has needs that cannot be bought in September. Production for the National Day work. The licence applications, which cost time rather than media. The creator who is free in July and will not be in the last week of August, when everyone wants the same three people.

The honest uses share one inconvenient feature: none of them shows up as media spend by the thirtieth.

The dishonest use is the one the incentive was built to produce, and the incentive is very good at its job.