Content network impressions can't be right

Am I the only one getting a huge spikes?

[grigoroo]

I have an ad group that has recently seen huge spikes in impressions. Yesterday alone the volume exceeded what would be normal for several months. Clicks, on the other hand, have been at their normal levels. It's apparently limited to the content network ads so I can't determine what keyword it comes from.

I've seen this before in a different ad group and asked G about it, but got a blunt response that the stats are clean, that there had to be a real spike. The keywords that would have caused it are for a mundane clothing category, nothing that has been in the news.

So does anyone else see these occasional spikes in impressions?

[Import Export]

Of course, this is a uber dynamic system. The content system is based on serving ads on third party websites. Keep in mind the everchanging number of site/page possibilities as new pages/sites are added and other sites/pages are dropped. You also have countless other factors that can affect impressions (IE: News, Seasonality).

I have personally never seen these stats to be very-wrong, but I would contact GAW if you think this is.

[eWhisper]

If your ads get syndicated to a major newspaper/portal news site, your impressions can jump 10x for a day or two.

This is a pretty common phenomena. Often the rise in impressions is very real, clicks/conversions may or may not correlate to these impressions spikes as people reading news are often in a different mindset than those looking for some specific info.

[grigoroo]

eWhisper,
I'm not ready to accept that. I have dozens of ad groups and over a thousand keywords, many that are far more likely to generate hundreds of thousands of content appearances than the group that did. They don't tend to spike this way.