Is google AdSense backing me up?

Any experience with this issue?

[caspita]

I'm using the alternate ad opt from AS pointing to a php script on my domain, that way I can count number of times AS wasn't able to target Ads for me and I can show some interesting data to the user.

Using this counting I could see that I was getting around 10% - 18% no targeted Ads .. but for the last few days this % has raised to 35% - 37% and the most scare thing is that it has been incresing as more PIs I have .. meaning my PIs have been raising beacuse I have been promoting my site but it won't help if I start to get that % of no Ads.

Any experience and advice about this? my site is not too good getting new visitors .. the most of the hits are returning visitors every day ... an a few ones that get interested when the arrive at first time.

I know the most important is the content so I'll try to get more quality on that, but may be some additional idea could help.

Thanks,

CS.

[FromRocky]

I have noticed that some pages on my site showed PSA most of time while the rest had any. The new page I just recently added showed PSA in the first three days (due to holiday?).

Based on these observations, I think PSA varies from page to page (or from site to site) and any new page added will contribute to the site exposure more to PSA.

New page addition may cause a PSA increase in your site.

[Compworld]

You should add the default ad feature to display all non-payment ads to an alternative ad service. Why waste those impressions ans possible clicks?

CompWorld

[FromRocky]

Yes, I did use alternate ad in a place of PSA spot. I just made a point.

[richmondsteve]

caspita, it's due to supply and demand for content ads through Adwords. Since ads are dependent on the theme of the site, content of the page, available matching ads and their advertisers' budgets, the incremental effect of an increase in impressions over time may be ads that pay the same, less available paying ads resulting in lower paying ads and/or PSAs (or your own alternate ads).

One of my sites uses leaderboard ads and nearly all of the hundreds of pages on the site show ads from the same 3 or 4 products/services from the same 5-10 companies (depending on whose advertising when) and their affiliates. All pages use the 4 ad panel leaderboard format. As the number of publishers showing the same ads has increased the number of impressions (known by doing spot checks) that show only 1, 2 or 3 ads or alternate ads (I stopped displaying PSAs a few days after alternate ad functionality introduced) has increased.

I've also been able to observe what happens when impressions increase by several magnitudes during a short time do to a spike in visitors for a site where the supply side of the supply/demand equation was already fairly balanced or saturated. The particular site (information based) received huge visitor spikes four times since AdSense was implemented due to it being mentioned on Fark, a syndicated national radio show, having hundreds of blogs link to a single page over a short period and a large spike in SERP click traffic due to high placement due to a high profile news story.

On these four occasions impressions jumped 15-30 fold and normal daily impressions were in the 4-figures. CTR on these days was 10%-40% that of normal days due to a combination of a higher percentage of alternate ads and PSAs and the degree to which ads matched visitor interests since their reason for visiting on these days was very specific. On the highest traffic days, where impressions were 30x that of a typical day and impressions were 10-15x normal levels, CPC was 50%-70% of a typical day. Based on observing the ads throughout the day evidence suggested the lower CPC was due to higher paying, higher volume advertisers exhausting their daily budgets, resulting in lower paying advertisers getting placement and less than 4 ads being shown in the leaderboard which would also result in less per click than 4 ads of varying CPCs.

That's my 2 cents on what I've observed.