The weather is inventory

Every year, around the end of October, out-of-home budgets in this market start moving to television. The stated reason is that nobody is outside. It is half true, and the half that is wrong is the expensive half.

People are outside in November. They are outside in a coat, in traffic that is moving more slowly than it does in July, at four in the afternoon when it is already dark and every lit surface is the brightest thing in view. What changes in winter is not whether the audience is there. It is how long they spend in front of each thing they pass.

Rates move the other way, because they are set by demand rather than by attention. So the months with the most dwell time per impression are also the months you can buy them cheapest, which is as close to an arbitrage as this business offers.

There are caveats and we will name them. Illuminated inventory is not optional in winter — an unlit board after five is a blank rectangle you are paying for. Production has to account for weather, and vinyl that has been up through two storms does not photograph the way it did on day one. And the effect is real for transit and street furniture, where people stand still, far more than for large-format on a ring road.

But the general shape holds: the season everyone treats as dead time is the season the medium works hardest. We have moved clients into November for four years running and not once had a reason to move them back out.