Clicks with a negative $ value or reporting bug?

[richmondsteve]

Algebra time. I have a day this week with the following stats:

X impressions, Y clicks, Z earnings

When I view that day's channel data by selecting all channels the stats are:

X - 28 impression, Y clicks, Z +2 earnings

I do have a few pages (out of hundreds) without a channel specified so the difference in impressions isn't surprising, but this implies that the 28 impressions without a channel had 0 clicks worth a total of negative 2 cents. And looking back over the last 10 days there are a total of 4 days where the channel data showed the same clicks as the aggregrate data, but daily revenue of 1 or 2 cents more than the aggegrate data.

Clicks with no revenue have been mentioned in at least a few threads. For example - Multiple clicks but no money [webmasterworld.com] and My first free click! [webmasterworld.com], but I hadn't heard of any mentioning clicks worth negative money! Reporting bug? Or should I make sure every page has a channel assigned!? ;-)

[richmondsteve]

Has anyone noticed similar behavior in their publisher reports? There was quite a bit of discussion when clicks with no earnings were discovered, but there's been no feedback to my negative earning click discovery.

[darkmage]

Could be related to charge backs. If Google refunds an advertiser then they would also deduct your portion. It probably happens more frequently but without line-by-line reporting you are not going to see it. In normal accountng you don't make payments 'disappear', you simply create a reversal entry later.

[FromRocky]

It can be some different round-offs applied for channel and aggregrate stats. There were some reports about the monthly $ total and approved amount.