Activated channels and lost virtually all of my Adsense income

[HeyJim]

Yeah, in another recent thread I indicated that I don't check my stats frequently because you can't stress out over the day to day fluctuations.
But, today is different.
Today I activated some channels and yesterday's all time record Adsense day has dwindled down to not enough income to eat at McDonalds!
I know channel stats run 48 hours behind but has anyone read any thing about aggregate data (Your earnings) running behind while thousands of excited webmasters initiate channels?
We are REPLACING the old Adsense code with the new stuff. Right?
(God, I sure hope so. Hope there's nothing wrong with the new code I inserted on the pages.)

[adamxcl]

"Are you using alternate ads with links to pictures?"

In my case, I'm not. I've looked and everything looks as normal. I actually had higher than average clicks but half as much income...which means much lower EPC for some reason. About 25% lower than any number before. Time will tell what the whole story is....

[freitasm]

I'm working on Australian time here (3pm Saturday).
Due to our timezone difference, final stats for a 'day' are revealed around 6.30pm. It is now 3pm and while my clicks are exactly normal, I am experiencing approx. 50% drop in revenue figures, in a very consistant week.

I changed to 'channels' approx. 12 hours ago.

I'm in New Zealand and changed to channels as soon as it was available. I've not noticed anything different from other days. My CTR is in the average area - looking at my last nine months data.

[BBB_Guy]

About 250% down the day i added channels. Its probably something to do with the channels because i cant imagine so big changes.

[Roomy]

I think rather than unfocused, and slightly anecdotal information why don't we create some reporting variables and try to see if there is a trend.

1. Number of channels added - 5
2. Number of domains tracked - 2
3. Host/Server location - USA
4. CTR Trend - up
5. Revenue trend - up
6. Colour of socks - Red

Brief overview

Added 5 channels within 6 hours of becoming available, best day in 6 months.

Please feel free to add variables and or change sock color

[ChrisKud5]

After looking like an as$ as dismissing the first post, I am going to toss my hat in the ring for strange reporting.

I am down significantly today after putting chans. in roughly 70% of my pages.

I do NOT like this "channel data takes 2 days". Why are real time, or close to real time stats out of the question?

Maybe the "lost ads" will be tacked on when channel data is generated 48 hours later.

Should be a little closer to real time stats, the idea google had was good, but the actual implementation of the new stats are far worse than i thought they would be.

Stats
USA Hosted
1 URL
12 Channels
roughly 500 pages
Earnings down roughly 400% from current month moving averages
Data updated only twice today in reports from what i can see

Sock Color - No socks, Arizona is nice and warm, we do flip flops down here

[edited by: ChrisKud5 at 9:27 am (utc) on Mar. 20, 2004]

[tomkee]

I created a channel but did not use it on my site. Noticed a drop of 50% in income. Could it be that google is splitting ads among channels so that we can have multiple ad units per page and hence the drop in revenue?

[icedowl]

I had a normal day as far as impressions went, but clicks are nowhere to be found. Never had a no-click day before.

2 channels added, 1 for each of two websites with a total of ~500 pages. No alternate URL's used. Both sites are hosted in the USA on different servers.

[philr]

with a lot of people reporting a drop in income with channels. I think I will leave putting any channel ads up or create any channels until the dust settles.

[David_M]

Same number of impressions.
Same number of clicks.
Revenue per click down 50%+

Will give it another day- but unhappy right now!

[yump]

On another thread a few of us were saying we thought we had seen a bigger & different variety of ads in the last few days. Perhaps this is just a settling period.

[wonderboy]

Higher CTR and clicks

Less money

I'll put this down to the cheapness of the ads I get =( Cummon adsense, deal me something good!

I inversed my ad colours while implementing the channels, so I don't think the channels actually effect anything other than better reports, although I did screw up the alternate ads bit to begin with (tried it for first time and didn't know it acted like a PHP include so got javascript error)

W.

[JohnKelly]

1. Number of channels added - 10
2. Number of domains tracked - 10
3. Host/Server location - USA
4. CTR Trend - stable (after increasing alt. ads subtracted out)
5. EPC Trend - down by almost half (started day channels were added)
6. PSA Trend - almost 50% of all ad space is now PSA's (actually alt. ads), change started mid-week for unknown reason.
7. Revenue trend - way, way down

[Mario]

EPC has gone down 25% for me. All other stats remain the same. But its probably just a coincidence and will round itself up again in a few days. This happens every few weeks.

[varya]

Earnings down roughly 400% from current month moving averages.

It's not possible for your earnings to drop more than 100%. Once they've dropped 100% you're down to $0.

[deanw]

EPC is 60% of normal after adding channels. This is on my site that has had a very consistent EPC over the last couple of months never deviating more than 10%. I'm giving it one more day and if the results are the same I'm pulling the channels.

[richmondsteve]

I feel for those of you whose earnings are down 200%, 250% and 400%. Anything more than 100% means you're paying Google. ;-)

[ChrisKud5]

Just to clear up for all of you who think your percentage change has to be less than 100%,

My earnings change percentage is down. I toss my numbers into excel, find a per week / month growth rate. I find the standard deviation on my data to see how meaningful it is. I then use this mess of numbers to see percentange upswings or downswings based off the moving growth (or decline) average for the week or month, and find the actual percentage change off of the moving average for the time period.

If earned $1000 last month and i am earning $1010 now, thats a 1% increase. Taking that growth rate of 1% for the week / month whatever, and i earn $100 instead of $1010, my weighted moving average change is $910 off the 1% anticipated growth. Convert that to percentage and you have a very VERY large percentage, obviosly greater than 100%

With this method I can find growth integrity over the months compared to just taking the given numbers and seing the change, which is useless to me. I am more concerned with finding the sustained rate of increase (or decrease) than simply looking at numbers and determining a trend that may or may not exist without standard deviation.

It is kind of a over the top method of looking at numbers but i was bored and now i have it so ill use it. Hopefuly with the channel data now (if i ever see any of it working) i can target new page location and content better to increase any specific area, which would be sweet.

Not everyone calculates their change from day to day, keep your finger off the "they do not know what they are talking about you can only decrease 100%" button.

[FromRocky]

Does not matter what technique you used, the loss of earnings from Google Adsense can not be more than 100%. For more than 100%, you have a loss. However, Google does not charge you to run its Adsense as far as I know.

What you're talking about is the derivative (or slope) of a moving average of your adsense earnings.

[varya]

If you made $1,010 dollars last month and you only made $100 this month, that's a 90.1% decrease in earnings.

The term "earnings" always refers to a positive dollar figure (or neutral in the case of zero). It's impossible for it be less than zero, or for the percentage change in earnings to be more than 100%.

edit for spelling

[jwebber]

I am also noticing a quick drop in EPC after I put the channel code in. I run 3 sites, put channel code in only 1 of them and overnight EPC dropped 75%. It was also dismal today.

[JohnKelly]

Jwebber do you think the 75% drop was due to just the one site, or the EPC for all three went down?

FYI today (Sat.) I'm seeing a recovery in EPC so perhaps hang on a bit....

[ChrisKud5]

If you would bother reading the post you will see i do not use the dollar sum from previous days, but the average growth from week to week, and the decrease off that. I use the growth (or decreaes) percentage in the decrease in dollar earnings, which can yield % changes as high as 10,000 if the numbers were right.

Don't be so quick to tell people they are wrong when you have no clue how they are calculating anything.

Wake up

[edited by: ChrisKud5 at 11:10 pm (utc) on Mar. 20, 2004]

[ChrisKud5]

As of today it looks like the start of the channel data is tacking on to todays earnings.

I am able to see what appears as a couple hours worth of data in the channel stats, and my total earnings are unusually high already today.

Are channel stats tacked on to the daily stats from activities that happened 2 days ago? So if i earned $5 on thursday and $5 today, the $5 from channel pages that was not showing up on thursday is now on saturdays earnings?

If this is the case, and you have half channel and half non channel code, the data is essentially usueless, as you can't tell what came from what day.

I'm almost ready to take the channel code out of all my pages, i liked knowning what happened on what day better than having to guess how the stats are actually computed.

[JohnKelly]

Right now all I can see is the channel data for 3/18, and it is not complete (less than 10% of actual numbers). Since it has not been 48 hours since 3/18 yet, I'm waiting to see what happens.

[jwebber]

"Jwebber do you think the 75% drop was due to just the one site, or the EPC for all three went down?"

I don't know for sure until I can see the channel data. I am really hoping that they plan on tacking the "missed" earnings in the next few days. I have seen fluctuations in EPC but never ever this bad.

[valley]

I don't see why some of you are already complaining , give it at least 48 hours and >>> a few more hours to spare , then make your conclusions and if something screwed up we' ll take it from there .

[markiting]

we are merely stating our concerns and looking for others with similar experiances.

Since I put channel code, clicks and impressions dropped. I am hoping the 48 hour delay will bring things to normal. Meaning I think the "aggregate" stats shown is the aggregate of your ads NOT including channels. Maybe they misused the meaning of "Aggregate", instead it shold be "Non Channel" (I Hope)

[patoruzu]

Take it easy... There's another problem. I didn't do anything yet and my CTR and earnings dropped dramatically.

[CalArch90]

Nothing out of the ordinary here. Today seems slow, but weekends usually are, so I'm not surprised.

Sometimes change can make people uneasy, even change for the better ;-) This is a very welcome feature and should help publishers optimize their advertising.

Give it a few more days before jumping to any conclusions, fluctuations in earnings are to be expected.

[dvduval]

Mine are certainly down, and I am considering dropping the channel listings if earning do not recover with a day or two.