TL;DR: Seasonal trends in PPC are predictable—plan ahead to maximize results and avoid wasted spend. Use historical data, Google Trends, and analytics to identify peak dates, then adjust budgets, bids, and creative assets in advance. During busy periods, increase budgets and loosen bid targets to stay competitive; in slow times, tighten targets or reallocate funds without shutting off campaigns entirely. Leverage automation for scheduling, budget shifts, and promo rollouts, and sync ad copy with seasonal offers. Monitor performance without overreacting to short-term dips, then review results post-season to refine future strategies. Proactive, data-driven adjustments will keep your Google and Microsoft Ads campaigns profitable year-round.
Most businesses experience seasonal fluctuations, characterized by peaks and lulls. Tax services are slammed from January to April. Gyms see a surge in resolutions in January, and e-commerce websites ramp up promotions for the holiday season. These patterns are predictable, which means your PPC campaigns should be ready to adapt and capitalize.
If you’re running Google Ads or Microsoft Ads without factoring in seasonality, you’re either overspending during quiet periods or missing out when demand is high. Here’s how to properly prep your campaigns before peak season hits.
Understand Your Seasonal Patterns
To plan, start by looking at your data. If you’ve been running campaigns for years, historical PPC performance can also be a valuable asset. Please note that platforms, strategies, and bidding behaviors have evolved over time. Look at things from a high-level view, not just last-click conversions.
Organic search trends are often a good indicator of what to expect from PPC. Pull historical reports from Google Analytics and Search Console. You’ll likely see recurring spikes that align with key shopping or service windows.
Google Trends is also a valuable tool for exploring broader search behavior. You can look up key terms and see when people typically start searching for your products or services each year. This helps guide when to ramp up spend and when to pull back.
Once you’ve identified your key seasonal dates, build a calendar with ramp-up and ramp-down timelines. Set reminders to prep your creative assets, adjust bids, and update budgets in advance.
Adjust Budgets Strategically
When you know traffic is coming, your campaigns need the room to take advantage of it. If your daily budget is too low, Google and Microsoft Ads might start throttling your impressions by mid-morning.
If you’re using automated bidding, increasing the budget a few weeks ahead of time gives the algorithm more data to work with. Don’t wait until the week of Black Friday to triple your budget and expect things to go smoothly.
In slow seasons, you may want to reduce your spending. But instead of shutting campaigns off completely, consider tightening your Target Cost Per Acquisition (tCPA) or Target Return on Ad Spend (tROAS) targets. This naturally lowers spend while still allowing you to capture high-intent traffic.
Reallocating your budgets should also be part of your ongoing account maintenance, but it becomes even more critical during seasonal shifts. Ensure that your best-performing or most seasonally-relevant campaigns receive the majority of the budget.
Optimize Bidding Around Seasonality
Budgets control how much you can spend. Bids control how competitive you are. Both need to be adjusted during seasonal changes.
During peak periods, everyone is bidding more aggressively. If you’re not increasing your bids, you may start losing impression share and slipping down the page. On manual bidding, this means manually increasing your max CPCs on top keywords. If you’re using Smart Bidding, consider relaxing your tCPA or tROAS goals slightly to give the system room to compete.
In the off-season, it’s the opposite. You can reduce bids or tighten goals to stay efficient. For short-term events like flash sales or holiday weekends, use Google’s Seasonality Adjustments to let Smart Bidding know performance is expected to spike. Microsoft Ads offers similar tools as well.
If you’re not already using tROAS or tCPA during slow periods, it’s worth testing. They help control spending while still optimizing for return. (Just make sure you have at least 30 conversions per 30 days in order to give the algorithms enough data.)
Use Automation to Your Advantage
Automation can save a significant amount of time when juggling multiple seasonal campaigns. If you’re launching new ad copy or promos, use automated rules to enable and pause ads on specific dates.
You can also create rules to increase or decrease budgets based on the calendar or performance triggers. For example, if your monthly budget cap is $5,000, you can set a rule to bump your daily limit once you hit a certain threshold mid-month. Another idea is to raise budgets by a percentage as long as the prior day’s ROAS hits a certain goal.
Ad scheduling (dayparting) is another helpful tool. Let’s say weekends don’t convert as well for your business. You could pause ads on Saturday and Sunday and shift that spend into weekdays. That change alone could increase your weekday budget by 30 to 40 percent.
For larger accounts or agencies managing multiple clients, scripts can help automate more complex logic. You can use them to pause campaigns, adjust bids, or even alert you when specific metrics are off. ChatGPT is an excellent resource for generating these scripts if you’re not a coder.
Sync Campaigns With Promotions
Seasonal promos should be baked into your PPC plan. If you’re running a sale or discount, reflect it in your ad copy and assets. Time your budget increases to line up with the start of the promotion, and don’t forget to scale back once it ends.
Ad customizers and countdown timers are helpful tools here. They can add urgency and improve click-through rates during time-sensitive sales.
If you’re planning to run several unique promos during a peak season, map out when each one starts and ends. Use automated rules to manage this so you’re not scrambling to update ads at midnight the night before a sale goes live.
Monitor Performance and Stay Flexible
Even with all the planning and automation, you still need to monitor performance closely. But don’t overreact too quickly. Conversion lag is real. What looks like a slow day might turn out fine after a few days of data.
Make minor tweaks if needed, but avoid making significant changes unless you’re confident there’s a larger issue. And remember that not every year will look the same. Buyer behavior is unpredictable, especially during peak seasons.
Once the season ends, review and analyze your performance. What campaigns worked? Which keywords underdelivered? Use this insight to improve your strategy for next year.
Industry Examples
- Retail: Ramp up heading into November. Add urgency and deals to your ads. Without a promotion, you will likely get outbid and outperformed by competitors offering discounts.
- Travel: Summer and holiday travel can be planned well in advance. Budget accordingly. Most travelers book, rather than buy, in early spring and fall.
- Fitness: January is the prominent peak, but be aware of other patterns, such as spring resets or gym churn periods. Align your messaging and spend to match those windows.
- Tax Services: January through April is the entire season. Go big during that stretch, and then scale back hard the rest of the year.
Final Thoughts
Peak seasons are predictable, but PPC success depends on being prepared. Don’t wait until the traffic spikes to adjust your strategy. Start weeks in advance, give your campaigns time to ramp up, and continue to monitor them throughout.
Whether you’re on Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or both, the approach is the same. Be proactive. Automate where it makes sense. Adjust based on performance. And always build your plan around real, historical demand.
If you’re not adjusting for seasonality, you’re either missing opportunities or wasting budget. Get ahead of it, and you’ll set yourself up for consistent wins all year long.
