adsense inventory terrible for November start

did the best advertisers just kill their budgets?!

[amznVibe]

The good news is that one of my websites had more visitors than ever before today.

The bad news is that I was watching the ads and they went from the decent ads in October to absolutely terrible ones at midnight November 1st.

I am used to terrible rates at the end of the month as budgets dry up but wow this was a bad day for me. Click rate was half of what it is normally.

[yosemite]

So far so good for me.

I had a somewhat alarming slump in late September that lasted until a week and a half into October, but since then it's mostly recovered. Whether or not it will stay that way is anyone's guess.

That's how it seems to go—up and down, up and down. As long as the "up" keeps returning and stays for a while, I guess I can live with it. It's just one of those things, I guess.

Pretty annoying and powerless feeling, isn't it?

[alpski]

Tell me about it.

Exactly the same as you amznVibe. I am not liking November so far!

[triumph]

I'm curious to see what the ads will cost as we get closer to the Holiday shopping season. This is my first Holiday season with Adsense and affiliates on my site, so I'm getting my hopes up.. Hope they aren't shattered.

[clearvision]

High CTR but low values per click...To bad, another record high day of visitors. I should stop multiplying the clicks by the "old" click values to see what the income "would have" been :)

[effekt]

I had a 200% increase from September to October. Plus, if every day is like today there will be yet another 200% increase :). I doubt the beginning of the month would have anything to do with what ads you get.

[rapidcars]

No real changes here. Same as it was in october which isn't really a bad thing

[amznVibe]

Probably helps to know this site's subject and keywords are in the entertainment industry, television and movies. The pay per click was always low, but the ads were great because they were highly targeted. Now they are gone and I am left with crummy "win free" and other too good to be true promises that people see right through :(

It normally gets like 500 people a day, today it got almost 1000 but the clickthrough rate was less than half of normal so it all fell through. Sigh.

[taps]

I can confirm that: best day ever, most visits. Good CTR but very bad cpm. Like a cold shower after all time high on sunday.

[valeyard]

Same here across several sites in different content areas. Beginning of month is usually good, Monday is usually good. Impressions were high, CTR was average - but EPC, CPM and earnings lower than I've seen them since mid-August. We're talking about a 33% drop here.

Only one day so far, but if it continues maybe this thread was right after all:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[thewonderwall]

I had an all-time high earnings day yesterday (Monday 1st November)... so I'm obviously happy so far... :)

[enotalone]

our adsense performance dropped since oct. 1, nov. 1 is even worse. both CTR and earnings have dropped a great deal.

[amznVibe]

thewonderwall, what is your website topic? (NOT specific url)

[sailorjwd]

Me Too!
Last Tuesday was by far the highest earnings day ever.

Since then, CPC has steadily dropped to 1/2 of what it had been for most of October.

[Mentat]

The revenue from all my advertising agencies has been cut by ~ 50% :@

Adsense is plunging down since 21 oct...

Not happy!

and my traffic is Up, UP, Up

[Jebus]

Mine as well...

Since Tuesday, October 26, Earnings dropped 50% of the average for the last 4 months. It has stayed between 48% and 52% of the average since then. Page impressions, clicks, and ctr have stayed the same average.

50% cut in earnings seems to be what other people in here are having as well. I wonder why we would all have the same % drop in earnings at the same time?

[Jenstar]

Everyone seems to fluctuate - someone's worst day is another persons best day.

Yesterday was a near-record for me.

[amznVibe]

I poked around on some competitor sites with adsense preview tools and such and found there were some better ads available for my keywords. So I forced my urls to change and made the mediabot come by and bingo, better ad inventory.

Maybe it's just stale keyword caches on Google's part for some sites? Possible?

[alika]

You can always improve targeting by forcing the mediabot to come and revisit your site, and often the best way is to change the ad layout/format/size.

[alika]

The good thing with Adsense is that you can in large part control how it performs on your site. You can do something with your CTR, impressions, and to a certain extent, ad targeting to increase your revenues.

It would be best for many here to rethink how they are presenting the ads in their pages -- instead of whining and complaining. The answers to your complaints may be there -- and then make changes and experiment to see if the change provides better results.

[Jebus]

what if you have something like a 30% ctr and 40 000 impressions per day ... then what can you do to improve?

(These are not my stats)

[WisTex]

AdSense ad revenue is exactly the same for me between last month and the first day and a half of November. But I have noticed that it goes up and down on a daily basis. I try not to make assumptions based on only one or two days of data. I've had days with barely anyone clicking, and other days where everyone is click happy. And some days lots of clicks, little revenue, other days few clicks, high revenue per click. It varies so much that I am more concerned with the averages and the trend. So far the trend on my website is the same, except when I make changes to the website, which, so far, has positively effected AdSense revenues.

Perhaps some sites that get more traffic this time of year would see less click throughs perpage view because the people are actually staying on the website longer? I'm not sure if that is the case, but it could be.

[hunderdown]

I'm doing well so far this month, and it seems to be entirely due to the average payment per click being up, for my site...

[yosemite]

Well, yesterday was good, today—not so good.

I will wait and see if it's related to the election here in the USA. If it's not, I guess I will switch a few ads around.

But as I said before, that seems to be the nature of this thing—up, down, up, down. Oy.

[amznVibe]

I just realized something. I may be a victim of a "smart pricing" adjustment.
In fact the more I read about "smart pricing" and look at my stats, I know it.
Probably happened after the recent review/warning I recieved, ugh.
Not a happy camper. Worst day ever - most views, least clicks, lowest pay per click.

Time to research some alternatives more heavily.

[yosemite]

My stats have updated and it's looking a little better. Not great, but within normal levels (on the low side of "normal").

If it stays at this level for longer than a few days, however, it will not look good. But too soon to tell.

[cabowabo]

We're seeing increases across the board the first two days over the first two days of last month.

[annej]

My slump started in August but I wasn't that concerned as traffic is always down in August (vacation month) but now my traffic is back up and my earnings aren't. The ads seem to be about the same, maybe not quite so much variety. So I am guessing it is just lower bidding for ads in my hobby related topic.

[guez]

Same experience with a sport related website. The summer inventory was terrible. Less than 30% of regular season inventory. Now inventory is back but conversion is lower than ever. I am worried...

[howiejs]

This is a roller coaster ride. I have seem a decline in EPC daily since the start of Oct.

You need to always watch / be on your toes and build new pages / more traffic to keep your earnings steady

This is NOT add the code and go away and collect a check