The seller's year

Ramadan inventory for next year is being locked into annual deals this month, before most of the people who will brief the Ramadan campaign have thought about it.

From the buyer's chair that looks strange. Why commit the biggest month of the year in October, before the brief, before the creative, before anyone knows what they want to say?

Sit on the other side of the desk and it stops being strange.

A media owner in this region, a broadcaster, a publisher, an outdoor company, has one month that pays. The Ramadan premium is real, the audience is real, and for those four weeks the rate card is honest. The other eleven months are sold at whatever the market will bear, which in July and August is very little.

The premium is what funds the year. A seller who waits until January to sell Ramadan is waiting to find out whether the company makes it to the summer, and no finance director lets a sales team wait for that.

Which is why the sale has to close before the buyer knows what they want. Not out of cunning. Out of cash flow.

I planned media on the buying side long enough to see the two calendars collide. The buyer's year begins with a brief. The seller's year begins with a commitment, and the seller's year comes first.

Read it that way and the negotiation was never really about Ramadan. It is about whether you will carry the seller's quiet months, and what they will give you for carrying them. Position, first refusal, the rate, the make-goods when a spot falls off air. Those go to the buyer who brings a year.

The buyer who comes in October with a year sets terms. The buyer who comes in January with a month takes them.