Buyer evaluation has a rhythm of its own across the year. The market calendar doesn't always follow it.
Most distributor planning calendars are built around a handful of fixed dates: MIPCOM in October,Content London in April, and whatever regional markets sit between them. Outreach ramps up before each one and quiets down after, because that's when buyers are physically in the room.
Buyer evaluation, it turns out, follows a rhythm of its own, and it doesn't always line up with the show dates.
Across the buyer environments we've been able to measure serious evaluation activity, screener starts, repeat visits, and completed sessions that follow a two-peak shape over the calendar year: activity climbs into two clear high points and falls away in between. Consistently, across the environments measured, the lowest point of the year lands in December.
That's worth sitting with before assuming it's universal. The pattern comes from the buyer bases we can actually track. This doesn't include every distributor's catalogue and every territory.
The two peaks roughly track the two biggest markets on the calendar, MIPTV in the spring and MIPCOM in the autumn. When they don't land squarely on the show week itself, that gap is where the planning opportunity sits.
A December trough doesn't mean buyer interest disappears. Most likely, it means budgets close for the year, decision-makers travel, and catalogue buyers were mid-evaluation in November and simply get picked back up in January rather than abandoned.
The data can't distinguish those explanations from each other, and it can't rule out a smaller, genuine drop in interest either. What it does show, consistently, is the shape: activity falls in December and recovers afterwards. Reading a quiet December as a lost deal, on the strength of that shape alone, goes further than the data supports.
Most outreach calendars are anchored to the market date itself: a push in the weeks before MIPCOM,, and comparatively little in between. That's a reasonable way to plan around a show, since it's when buyers are in the room and taking meetings.
But is that also when buyers are doing the evaluation work that leads to a meeting? Not necessarily. If the peak in evaluation activity sits a few weeks ahead of or behind the show itself, a calendar built purely around the show date can end up pushing hardest at a moment that isn't the one buyers are most receptive to, while leaving the actual peak window under-resourced.
A few adjustments are worth testing against this framing, treated as things to try rather than fixes guaranteed to work.
Your own peak window, not the industry one. The two-peak shape holds across the environments we can measure, but where your peaks land, and how far they sit from the show dates, is specific to your catalogue and your buyers.
December as preparation time, not dead time. If evaluation activity is consistently quieter in December, that's a natural window to refresh programme pages and clean up the follow-up list, rather than a moment to force outbound activity that the data suggests won't land.
Follow-up timed to the next peak, not the trough. A quiet December isn't evidence a deal has gone cold. Following up during the trough risks reading as pressure at the wrong moment, when the more useful window sits just ahead.
Room for the pre-market push to start earlier than the show date. If evaluation activity climbs before the show itself, a calendar that only ramps up in the final weeks may be showing up after some of the peak has already passed.
The two-peak, December-trough shape is a pattern from the environments we've been able to measure, not a fixed law for every distributor's calendar. Where the real peaks and troughs land for your catalogue is a separate question, and one of your own buyer data can answer directly.
That's the primary layer ONE is built to surface. Instead of planning purely around the show dates, ONE tracks evaluation activity across your catalogue year-round so you can see when buyers are actually ramping up and build your MIPCOM and MIPTV calendar around that.
Book a discovery call to see how it works with your catalogue.