Every June, the same DM lands in my inbox.
“Things have gone quiet. Should I just turn the ads off until September?”I get it. The inbox is slowing down. Holiday auto-replies are starting. There’s a voice in your head saying you’re throwing money at Meta for nothing.
Pause that voice. Don’t pause the ads.
Here’s what’s actually going on, and what to do instead.
Why summer feels dead (when it isn’t)
Customer behaviour does change in summer. People are away. Decision-making slows down. Bigger purchases get put off until September. None of that is in your head.But “slower” isn’t the same as “dead.” And the worst thing you can do is panic and switch everything off.
When you turn an ad campaign off, you lose more than just the live ads. You are losing:
- The retargeting pool of people who’ve already engaged that you can target when they are in the mood to buy.
- Insights on your creative so you can understand what is and isn’t working BEFORE you hit the busy period. If you can distract them whilst they are eating ice cream, you are onto a winner!
- Some sales/leads are better than NO sales or leads
Not only that but when you switch your ads off, it can take a minute for them to find their stride again. And sometimes, they never get going again! You don’t want to spend your peak period in ramp up mode when you were already there in June!
Why summer is often the cheapest reach all year
Here’s the bit nobody tells small businesses.Your CPM (cost per thousand impressions) is set by competition. The more advertisers fighting for the same audience, the higher your costs.
In summer, a lot of the big spenders ease off. Big retailers, financial services, even some big consumer brands. They know August is quiet for considered purchases, so they hold spend for autumn.
That means less competition for the eyeballs you’re trying to reach. Your CPMs drop. Your reach for the same budget often goes up. The ads are getting more eyeballs per pound… it’s just that those eyeballs aren’t buying as quickly as they would in October.
If you’ve already got a low-spend campaign warming up an audience, summer is genuinely one of the best value times of year to keep it running.
What to do instead of pausing
Here’s the practical version.**1. Lower your daily budget, don’t kill the campaign.**
If you’re spending £20/day, drop it to £8-£10. Keep the algorithm warm. Keep the data flowing. You’re still in the game.**2. Shift focus from “buy now” to “remember me later.”**
Summer is brilliant for top-of-funnel content. Reels-style ads, brand awareness, value content. People aren’t ready to buy a £400 service in July, but they’ll happily save your reel for September.**3. Build your retargeting pool.**
Every person who watches your video, visits your site, or saves a post in summer becomes someone you can re-engage in autumn when budgets and decisions come back. Treat summer as the audience-building season, not the conversion season.**4. Don’t panic-launch a sale.**
The temptation when things go quiet is to slap a discount on. Resist. Sales in summer often just pull forward purchases from your autumn customers and train your audience to wait for the next discount. Hold the line.
What about totally seasonal businesses?
If you genuinely sell something nobody buys in summer (wedding photography for autumn weddings is already booked; ski lessons; mulled wine), the rules are different.But even then, summer is when you should be building the audience for your next season. Run ads to grow your email list. Run ads on saveable content. Run ads to your blog. Pay now for the warm audience you’ll convert in October.
The honest answer
Most small businesses pause ads in summer for one of two reasons. Either they’re panicking about cash flow. Or they assume “everyone is on holiday” without checking what’s actually happening in their data.If it’s cash flow, lower the spend. Don’t kill the campaign.
If it’s an assumption, check the data first. Are clicks really down? Is the cost per click higher or lower? What’s your reach doing? Often the data tells a very different story to the inbox.
Summer isn’t dead. It’s just quieter. The businesses that keep showing up in the quiet are the ones with full inboxes again in September.
Keep going.
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