Seasonality of Google ads in Greece: which sector advertises in which month

In November 2025 businesses based in Greece started 63,418 new ads on Google, 25.1% above the average month of 50,693. In August 2026 they started 36,373, the fewest in the twelve months from October 2025.

In the Google transparency archive I counted every ad of a Greek business, 608,321 new ones in twelve months, in the month it was first shown in Greece. So I count when ads start, not when they run. Next to that I counted how many businesses started a new ad each month, because a few large advertisers upload hundreds of variants.

By month

November, the month of Black Friday, is the peak for 9 of the 18 categories in the table below. August is the quietest month for 13 of the 18.

Businesses move less than ads. The businesses that started at least one new ad went from 6,406 in December to 8,529 in May, a 33.1% gap. In ads, the gap between the busiest and the quietest month is 74.4%. How many businesses advertise by sector is in the previous article of the series.

By category

Categories with at least 6,000 new ads in the twelve months. The column "peak / average month" says how many times the category's average month started in the peak month, for ads and for businesses. Where the two are far apart, a few advertisers make the peak.

Dining and tourism are seasonal in businesses too. In dining, the businesses that started a new ad went from 140 in January to 530 in June. In travel, from 593 in December to 1,715 in June (Greek travel agencies with active Google ads). Ads in both peak in May, businesses in May and June. In August dining started 799 new ads, 37.3% of May. Ads that started in May may still be running, but here they count only in the month they started.

In jobs and education, ads peak in May, with 2,746, and businesses in September, with 461. In August 448 businesses in the category started a new ad, when almost all other categories are at their lowest.

Apparel and electronics: few advertisers, many ads

Apparel is the largest category, with 111,618 new ads. In ads it has three peaks: November with 12,663, January with 11,256 and July with 11,164. In January and July the regular seasonal sales start in Greece. In businesses only November stands out, with 1,424 against 1,197 in the average month. In January there were 1,270 and in July 1,158. The two sales peaks come from businesses that upload many variants.

The same holds in computers and electronics. In November 2,916 new ads started, 2.1 times their average month, from 290 businesses, 1.2 times the average month.

Methodology

Source: the Google Ads Transparency Center, table creative_stats in BigQuery, downloaded 2 October 2026. Advertisers based in Greece according to Google. A new ad is every ad (creative, that is one variant of text, image or video) first shown in Greece within the month. I count ads, not money: Google does not publish spend for commercial ads. The category is the one Google assigns to each ad, not the activity code (KAD, the Greek extension of NACE) of the business.

Google keeps mainly what was shown in the last year. Before October 2025 the ads that stopped are missing, and a series from there shows false growth. For this reason the series has twelve months, and with only one year seasonality cannot be separated from the trend: November is from 2025 and August from 2026. The explanations with Black Friday and the seasonal sales are date coincidences, not measurement.

At first I counted the active ads per month, that is those that ran on any day of the month. I dropped it, because an ad that runs for a year counts in twelve months and erases the seasonality. With that measure apparel went from 78,314 in November to 57,007 in September, 1.4 times. With new ads the gap is 1.9 times.