When it comes to magazine subscriptions, Christmas comes but once a year

We always knew that magazine subscriptions had a distinct seasonality, but according to Peter Lebensold, the direct marketer and copywriter, we've now got at least one more way to pin that trend down.

Google offers a wacky little (free) service called Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends). It lets you enter a topic (Madonna, US Open Sudden Death, Maple Leafs, naked Paris Hilton, etc.) and see how often it's been searched on Google over time, and in various countries (and even cities).

In an attempt to further delay doing any productive work, I recently searched for "magazine subscriptions" and generated the attached graph (1 representing the average number of searches during this time frame, number for "All Regions"). A more detailed look at - for example - the 2007 numbers, shows the beginning of a steady climb in interest about 20 October, and then (surprise) a precipitous drop in interest from 24 December.

The data above is worldwide. Below, we've done the same search, but for Canada only with roughly the same result: