Smart Pricing Change - Does it get implemented on Mondays?

eCPM shot up for no apparent reason this morning

[stardoc]

I got up this morning to get a pleasant shock as my earnings for first two hours of the day are way more than usual. The earnings have almost tripled and the eCPM has shot up several times (more than 10x on some channels) than what I usually get. Rest all indicators, like ad impressions, clicks, CTR are within the normal range. I operate multiple websites and this is happening only on two of my main revenue generating sites. Both these websites serve the same industry but different niche and have different geographical distribution of visitors. The advertisements on both these websites usually do not overlap. My first reaction was to check whether a new major advertiser has started a campaign but could not see any (even with preview tool for different countries). My search engine rankings are still the same for both websites so there is no possibility of getting more revenue worthy visitors. I have been running a small adwords campaign for years (not targeted to adsense pages) and it shows the same old usual statistics. The only change I can think of is a small traffic increase (by 15-20%) in one of these websites this month but that is seasonal and happens every year in jan-feb. I investigated a bit on all the possible reasons but nothing is out of place.

One possible explanation I can think of is smart pricing change. I have read in these pages that it is calculated on weekly basis but I am not sure whether its changes are implemented on Mondays. For a favorable smart pricing change I need to have a better conversion rate. That can happen on one of these websites as this is usually the shopping season for its visitors but the same is not true for the other website.

I am posting this here to ask these two questions

1. Does anyone know when the smart pricing change is effected in a week? I know it is "official confidential piece of google information" and no one is supposed to know it, but I am asking about any observations and first hand experience by anyone in this regard.

2. What else can possibly trigger a rise in eCPM? I joined adsense soon after it was started in 2003 and have never seen such a wild fluctuation in its indices (except when my sites are featured on major media channels).

I know that I am taking about an observation based on a very insignificant time period. I really apologize for starting this kind of thread but I am a bit concerned and at a loss of reason for this unusual change.

[level80]

2. What else can possibly trigger a rise in eCPM?

I've found the following can do this:-

Lots of visitors from countries that give me higher CPM ads
New advertisers in your site's group
Just chance (eg some days are going to be better than others)
An increase in traffic from visitors more likely to click on your ads
Better relevancy of ads (eg rewording pages, using section targetting etc)
Redesign of site ads (eg changing colours, placement etc)
Seasonal variations - eg Christmas, holidays etc
People being on holiday

[Hobbs]

>1. Does anyone know when the smart pricing change is effected in a week?

Been feeling dental pain every Thrusday.

2. What else can possibly trigger a rise in eCPM?

Existing Advertisers pumping in more money

> an observation based on a very insignificant time period.

Right on, give it more time, we all start the day with higher eCPM & EPC, few hours or even days in no indication of anythig, good luck and may may the SmartPricing loose your URL.

[hunderdown]

1. A couple of people have said Thursday, but there's no reason why it couldn't be different days of the week for different accounts--AdSense recalculates a fraction of all accounts every day for a week, then repeats.

[Mentat]

For me each monday I see smart pricing acting :( UP or DOWN until the next monday.

Today (Monday) I see slight down trend for this week! :(

[europeforvisitors]

As others have said, fluctuations can occur for a lot of reasons, and statistics from two hours are meaningless if only because AdSense reports of impressions and clicks/CTR aren't always in synch. (I'll often see a higher eCPM early in the day, with the eCPM dropping as impressions catch up with the clcks a few hours later.)

[ve3cnu]

I too have noticed a very welcome doubling of my eCPM this morning. Of course these things need to be measured over time to have any significance.

I heard a page-rank update was underway over the weekend. Perhaps something else was going on as well.

[greatstart]

So far, today is the best eCPM on my sites for the entire year! It would be real nice if it continued like this everyday.