Digital media industry trends, 11/20/20

It’s the week before peak RPMs — high advertiser spending and high traffic combine over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. But did you know that different verticals tend to see their highest RPMs on different days?

In today’s post we’re talking ad and traffic trends for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond. We’re also covering two great tools you can use to grow ad earnings and traffic: CafeMedia’s award-winning RPM by Page dashboard report, and our 2020 Holiday Insights Study.

Q4 ad spending and beyond

American Thanksgiving is next week and we expect most publishers to see their highest single RPM day for this year on one of three days: 

• Thanksgiving (November 26) 
• Black Friday (November 27) 
• Cyber Monday (November 30) 

We dug into our data from 2019 across all verticals and found some interesting patterns. While trends may differ a little bit from site to site, these three days typically see spikes in these verticals:

• Food sites tend to see their highest RPM on Thanksgiving itself 
• Most other verticals see the highest RPMs on Black Friday
• Finance, Technology, News, and Sports sites tend to see their highest RPMs on Cyber Monday

, 85% of readers are more likely to shop online this year than in stores. This means Black Friday will see increased online shopping this year and that Cyber Monday is also poised for massive participation from both brands and consumers.

Traffic spikes the day before Thanksgiving 

Looking at every moment from 2019, CafeMedia sites see the highest collective traffic on the day before Thanksgiving. 

In fact, our data team was able to trace this to the specific hour, minute, and even second where more people are spending time on CafeMedia sites than any other part of the year: 27 seconds after 6:15 pm EST on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Make sure you’re primed to take advantage of any traffic surges! Our ad performance experts have been reaching out to all CafeMedia publishers with customized suggestions for ad types, ad layouts, and site tweaks to maximize your ad revenue this holiday season. 

What happens next?

While we do believe the rest of this year will be strong, there is more and more uncertainty in the world. 2020 has been a roller-coaster year, with big highs and lows. 

Because of rising COVID infection rates, concerns for spikes in infections due to the Thanksgiving holiday, continued issues around the US election, and other challenges, we’re concerned that advertisers may reduce spending again. 

This likely won’t happen until early next year, but we’re keeping a close eye on things. If some of this uncertainty is removed (e.g., if infection rates start falling), that would provide a positive sign to advertisers, but if uncertainty continues, it could impact their spending plans for 2021.

No matter what, we’re actively out there telling the story of the AdThrive publisher and why our community is the best place for advertisers to spend their money.

CafeMedia wins the GCPP Innovation Award 

Our publisher dashboard took home the Innovation Award at Google’s annual GCPP (Google Certified Publishing Partner) Summit this week!

The Innovation award recognizes the launch of an innovative new product or service offering this year that publishers found very impactful to their business. 

This award acknowledges the reporting enhancements in our dashboard that were a direct result of publisher feedback. CafeMedia is always striving to improve insights and performance for our publishers.