The same $50 buys about 25,000 ad impressions in January and about 7,000 in September. That gap is this guide’s subject: which months are cheap, why the fourth quarter climbs, what moves the price more than the calendar, and how to plan a launch.
Which months are the cheapest for YouTube ads?
January and February are the cheapest months to promote a video on YouTube, and the gap to the rest of the year is wide. January 2025: $1.98 average CPM. September 2025: $7.28. Those are the low and high points of the twelve months in the Gupta Media Social CPM Tracker, which draws on tens of millions of ad impressions across industries (figures through September 2025). CPM is the price of a thousand ad impressions.
| Month | YouTube average CPM | Read |
|---|---|---|
| October 2024 | $4.70 | Holiday build-up begins |
| November 2024 | $4.73 | Black Friday month |
| December 2024 | $5.70 | Year-end peak of that quarter |
| January 2025 | $1.98 | Cheapest month of the year |
| February 2025 | $2.73 | Still under half the spring price |
| March 2025 | $3.66 | Budgets return |
| April 2025 | $6.33 | Spring plateau |
| May 2025 | $6.30 | Spring plateau |
| June 2025 | $3.77 | Early-summer dip |
| July 2025 | $6.65 | Summer campaigns |
| August 2025 | $6.36 | Back-to-school |
| September 2025 | $7.28 | Most expensive month in the table |
What the table says: the cheap window is narrow. Prices sit near the floor for eight weeks, triple by April, dip once in June, then climb into autumn. The fourth quarter is expensive, but in this tracker it was not the ceiling. September was.
If a video is evergreen and the launch date is yours to choose, the first eight weeks of the year are the cheapest place to put it.
Why do ad prices climb in the fourth quarter?
Prices climb because retail budgets enter the auction in September and stay until Christmas. Google’s own guidance for publishers says it plainly: “Seasonal increases in traffic and CPMs generally begin in September, peak late November, and drop back to normal in January” (Google Ad Manager Help, Seasonality). Every promoted video competes in that same auction, so a creator bidding for views in November is bidding against gift advertisers.
The demand curve in dollars: advertisers spent $11.38 billion on YouTube ads in the fourth quarter of 2025 and $9.88 billion in the first quarter of 2026, a 13% drop between back-to-back quarters.
The year before ran the same way: $10.47 billion in Q4 2024, then $8.93 billion in Q1 2025, a 15% drop (Alphabet Q1 2026 earnings release, Q4 2025 release).
- Cultural dates (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Lunar New Year) pull in brand budgets.
- Commercial dates (Black Friday, Prime Day, Mother’s Day) pull in retail budgets.
- Ad hoc events (a World Cup, an election) pull in whoever wants that audience that week.
YouTube’s own analytics documentation says the same thing from the creator’s side: “many advertisers bid higher just before holidays” (YouTube Help, Understand ad revenue analytics).
Google’s video planning tool even bases its cost forecast on the dates you enter, because costs vary “depending on the time of year” (Google Ads Help, About Reach Planner).
Is YouTube advertising getting more expensive every year?
No. The year-over-year direction is down, because YouTube adds ad inventory faster than advertisers add budget. In Q4 2025, spending on YouTube rose 13% while average CPM fell 18% and impressions grew 38%. In Q1 2026, spending rose 20%, impressions rose 52% and CPM fell 21% (Tinuiti Digital Ads Benchmark Report, Q4 2025 edition of January 2026 and Q1 2026 edition of April 2026, drawn from the agency’s client accounts).
Where the new inventory comes from: TV screens carried 72% of YouTube campaign spend in Q1 2026, and Shorts became the second-largest format at 18%. More screens and formats mean more auctions, and more auctions mean a lower clearing price for the same viewer.
The practical reading is simple. A creator who waits a year for prices to come down gets the same seasonal curve, shifted slightly lower. The month you pick inside the year matters far more than the year itself.
Seasonality is a three-to-four-times swing inside a year. The year-over-year trend is a slow drift down. Plan around the first, ignore the second.
Does the month matter more than who you target?
No. Targeting moves the price of a view more than the calendar, because the auction is different in every country, on every placement and for every audience. Google’s CPV documentation says the system charges “the lowest amount available for a video TrueView view” and tries to charge “only what’s necessary for your ad to appear” (Google Ads Help, About YouTube’s cost-per-view bidding). What is necessary depends on who else wants that viewer.
YouTube lists geography and ad format alongside time of year as reasons a CPM moves, and a shift in where views come from shifts the price on its own. The cost-per-subscriber guide shows what that looks like when one budget runs against different countries.
| What moves the price | Size of the effect | Who controls it |
|---|---|---|
| Month of the year | About 3.5x between the cheapest and dearest month in the tracker | The market |
| Country and language | Several times, between high-cost and low-cost markets | You |
| Placement and audience | Varies auction by auction, hour by hour | You, or your optimizer |
| The video itself | A skip is free; a first five seconds that holds attention lowers the cost of every view | You |
Why this matters for a promotion: a campaign that spreads budget evenly across audiences pays the December price everywhere. Sprizzy builds more than 200 audience combinations from your keywords, similar channels, location, age and gender, then removes the low-performing ones every hour.
When a holiday advertiser pushes one audience’s price up, the budget moves to the audiences still delivering views at the right cost.
Should you wait until January to promote a video?
Only if the video is evergreen and the launch is not time-sensitive. A seasonal video earns most when its audience is actually searching for it, and no January discount makes up for missing that window. A gift-guide video promoted in January reaches people who have already bought the gift. The right question is not “when is the auction cheapest” but “when is a view worth the most to this video”.
Three cases, three answers:
- Evergreen how-to, tutorial or explainer. Promote it in January or February, when every impression costs the least and the video will keep earning for years.
- Seasonal video (holiday, tax season, back-to-school, a sports event). Promote it two to three weeks before the moment, while people are deciding, and accept the higher auction price as the cost of relevance.
- A new upload you want the algorithm to notice. Promote it in its first days, whatever the month. The early watch time and subscribers are what tell YouTube who else to show it to.
Waiting has a cost the calendar never shows: the views you did not get this quarter. A Sprizzy campaign runs for about three to five days, so a test in an expensive month costs one week of budget, not a season.
You pay only when a real viewer watches, and you can pause the campaign at any time and move unused funds to a new one. Start it when the video is ready and let the optimizer find the cheap corners of that month’s auction.
Cheap months are for evergreen videos you control the timing of. Everything else runs when its audience is watching.
How do you plan a launch calendar around ad prices?
Sort every video into evergreen or seasonal, put the evergreen launches in the cheap months, and schedule the seasonal ones just ahead of their moment. That is the whole plan. The steps below turn it into a calendar you can fill in once a year, using the price curve above and one free demand check.
- Tag each planned video. Evergreen (useful any month) or seasonal (tied to a date, a season or an event). Be honest: most videos are evergreen.
- Check the viewer side in Google Trends. Type the video’s topic and read the twelve-month curve. That is when people want the video, whatever the ad price is doing.
- Put evergreen launches in January and February. The auction floor. A June launch is the second-cheapest window in the tracker.
- Schedule seasonal launches two to three weeks early. Ahead of the Trends peak, and before Black Friday week if the moment is the holidays, since late November is the auction’s own peak.
- Keep new uploads on an always-on rule. Sprizzy’s Auto-Promote option runs a campaign for each new upload automatically, so the first-days push never depends on the calendar.
- Budget by month, not evenly. Put the largest budgets where impressions are cheapest and the video is evergreen; keep seasonal budgets smaller and sharper.
A worked example at $50: at January’s $1.98 CPM, $50 buys about 25,000 impressions. At September’s $7.28, about 6,900. Those are impressions, not views; a view is charged only when someone keeps watching, which is why the video moves the final cost.
Sprizzy campaigns start at $50, one payment, no subscription, and the first one comes with a money-back guarantee.
How can you read your own niche’s price curve for free?
A monetized channel already owns a twelve-month price chart for its exact audience: the Revenue tab in YouTube Analytics. Its playback-based CPM is what advertisers paid to reach your viewers each month, and RPM is what reached you. The months where CPM spikes are the months where promoting to that same audience costs the most, because the two numbers come out of the same auction.
Not monetized yet? Use the tracker table above for the market curve and Google Trends for the demand curve, then read the two together. A topic whose demand peaks in the cheap months is the best launch a creator can have.
- YouTube Analytics, Revenue tab: your audience’s monthly CPM and RPM, twelve months back.
- Google Trends: when viewers search your topic, by month and by country.
- Your own campaign history: cost per view by month, the only benchmark that is exactly your niche.
The cheapest time to promote a YouTube video is the cheapest month in which the video is still the one people want to watch.
Common questions
Is December the most expensive month for YouTube ads?
December is expensive, but the price peak is late November. Google's guidance says seasonal CPM increases begin in September, peak in late November and return to normal in January. In the Gupta Media tracker, December 2024 averaged $5.70 and was the highest month of that quarter, while September 2025 averaged $7.28 and was the highest of the twelve months shown.
Is January a good time to promote a YouTube video?
Yes, for an evergreen video. January is the cheapest month in the tracker at $1.98 CPM, under a third of the spring and autumn price, because retail budgets reset after the holidays. For a seasonal video, January is only right if the season is January: promote a video when its audience is searching, and use the cheap window for tutorials, explainers and how-tos that stay useful all year.
How far ahead should I promote a seasonal video?
Two to three weeks before the moment. Check the topic in Google Trends and start the campaign ahead of the curve's rise, while viewers are still deciding. For holiday videos, start before Black Friday week, since late November is the auction's own peak. A Sprizzy campaign runs about three to five days, so a two-week head start leaves room for a second push if the first one lands well.
Do YouTube ad prices differ by country as much as by month?
Yes, and often more. YouTube lists geography alongside time of year as a reason CPM changes: each country has its own level of advertiser competition, so a shift in where views come from shifts the price on its own. The month sets a ceiling and a floor for the market; the countries and audiences you choose decide where inside that range your campaign lands.
Are YouTube ads getting more expensive every year?
No. Tinuiti's benchmark reports show YouTube's average CPM fell 18% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 21% in the first quarter of 2026, while impressions grew 38% and 52%. More TV-screen and Shorts inventory keeps the clearing price down even as total spending rises. The seasonal swing inside a year is much larger than the year-to-year drift, so plan around the month.
Does Sprizzy cost more in expensive months?
Sprizzy prices by the view, not by the month: you pay only when a real viewer watches your ad, campaigns start at $50 with no subscription, and the pricing page shows the estimated views for every budget. Sprizzy tests more than 200 audience combinations and removes the low-performing ones every hour, so budget keeps moving toward the audiences still delivering views at the right cost, whatever the calendar says.
