Step down, do not switch off

Monday was the last day of the promotional season, and on Tuesday morning a great many budgets went from their highest number of the year to something close to nothing.

Nobody decided that shape. The calendar did. The offer ended on the first, so the money ended on the first, and the December plan said reduce without saying how.

From the platform side you can watch what happens next across a great many accounts at once, and it is the same every year. An account that spent six weeks learning who buys at a November price and a November pace is suddenly asked to find a customer at a fraction of the spend, with no offer in the ad. The system does not know the account is resting. As far as it can tell, a new account has started. Delivery turns cautious, the auction narrows, and the cost of a customer in the second week of December comes in ugly.

Then the ugly number gets explained by the market. People are travelling, the season is over, nobody buys in December. Some of that is true. But part of what everyone is looking at is the shape of the cut, and the shape was chosen by nobody.

The way up was not a cliff. Budgets rose through November in steps, each one tested, each one given a few days to settle. The way down should look like the way up in reverse: a step every few days, creative changed before the spend is cut rather than after, and the floor decided in advance rather than discovered.

That takes a decision, which is the whole point. The default is to cut on the date, because the date is the one thing everyone can see. Stepping down means somebody choosing a Thursday and a number, then another Thursday and another number, through a month when nobody wants to be in the account.

An account remembers how it was left far longer than how it was run.