Sharply lower PPC in Jan?

Anyone else noticing this?

[MikeNoLastName]

Anyone else noticing sharply lower PPC on AdSense for the first couple days so far of Jan? Mine's down about 33% from December's whole month average while CTR is a bit low also. I'd chalk it up to non re-newal of key ad budgets at the end of the month and going into a holiday weekend, except that the most popular page ads all look the same as typical. On the other hand, and it could also just be coincidental, it started on Saturday which is when I've always noticed other sudden changes in PPC (like Google suddenly flipped a Smart-pricing switch, although never this sharp before). Or maybe GAd just doesn't like us anymore.

[europeforvisitors]

So far, my January EPC and CPM have been significantly higher than last month's average.

Mind you, I wouldn't consider 1-1/2 days of results to be a trend for my own site, let alone anyone else's. :-)

[alika]

Things are looking very very good for us. EPC and CPM are way way up. Must say it's a very good start. December was a bad bad month for us, even if it started well. Here's hoping that the trend will continue (keeping fingers crossed).

[CalArch90]

Things look normal. It's the weekend so I wouldn't draw any conclusions at this point.

[taps]

It is a normal start of a month - PPC is always low in the first few days.

December was fine for us except 24th and 31st. First of Januray was a real desaster - but we are recovering today.

I think, anything is fine - it everythin in the normal Adsense bandwidth.

[maximillianos]

Don't worry yourself by comparing a few days average to a whole month average from December. It is just not an accurate comparison, and it will end up giving you ulcers... ;-)

[howiejs]

Its the drop in Google traffic from mid Dec that is driving me crazy - not a few bucks either way on CPM

[ownerrim]

I say tomato, you say to-ma-toe...

[scottct1]

I am up and up nicely. :)

If it stays up like this it will be a highly profitable month. :)

[Staale]

The CTR is higher and the CPM is higher, but impressions are down. But hey, its only sunday!

I hope Jan will be a great month!

[Zygoot]

Mm for these 1.5 days of January I have been earning very well compared to the past.

For the moment I'm earning more than 10% more than last month. I hope it will continue to grow this way ;)

[JohnKelly]

My EPC is down 32% from December's average. Does not bode well for January, that's for sure.

[OptiRex]

Funny this, I was just analysing it this morning for the past couple of weeks...

Page impressions bang on normal except for Xmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Click thrus up nicely even on Xmas Day and New Year's Day. In fact, Xmas Day saw our highest ever click thru rate!

Unique visitor numbers down almost 50%!

Could that 50% all be spiders since these have noticeably been down over Xmas and New Year?

Bandwidth usage down considerably.

Anyone else seen such a pattern?

[Teshka]

Mine is up a bit (and traffic is up quite a bit) so far this month.

[AZEvil]

Here's a piece of advice for everyone who gets worried about earnings going up and down during the month:

1. Don't compare month to month stats the first 14 days of the month or the last 14 days of the month. You have a two day window to look at how you are doing and then leave it alone for another month. I find that comparing during the middle of each month is far less stressful than looking at the end of the month as companies' budgets disappear or the beginning when they are tweaking the budget based on last month's data.

2. Always remember that the only thing you can control as far as AdSense goes is how many visitors come to your site. There will be CTR and CPM fluctuations. Learn to live with it. Keep making your site more valuable for visitors and traffic will go up. This WILL lead to earnings going up...if not immediately, they WILL eventually.

3. Read this [webmasterworld.com ]

4. Stop checking stats and build more useful content. If you think your site is perfect, build another one on a different topic.

[MikeNoLastName]

Opti,
Had similar interesting results. Xmas + day after, had the lowest Page impressions (as expected) but the highest CTR and CPM of our term with Adsense. Then proceded to have our three highest Earning days to date the following three days on lower CPM! Kinda surprising for a travel site.

January Day 3 - earnings up, simply because Impressions are through the roof and CTR has remained higher than avg, but still seeing VERY lackluster PPC. Off 30% from last month's averages. Getting ready to turn off some of these high traffic /ultra-low PPC averaging pages. Not worth losing a visitor for that much.

AZE was kidding about the 2 day window... right? :)
And the thread AZE pointed to is not available to non-paying members. Summary anyone?

[AZEvil]

Yeah...I wasn't completely serious about the 2 day window. That was more of a "lighten up" and don't get too wrapped up in day-to-day comparisons.

To summarize what's behind the link (the title of it is Comparing Tax Returns or Buying Fish), it is more valuable for you to do this:

Create good content
Get good links
Optimize your site

and don't spend much do these:

Checking rankings
Checking stats that you cannot directly effect
Reporting Competitors/Spam/Cloakers

This thread is something that I've been trying to implement and has done alot of good for me. For many of the people who visit this part of the forums in particular (AdSense), this thread alone may be worth the price of admission ;)

[kempozone]

I've only started adsense since Oct 04 and have experienceed a decline in cpc each month. Jan so far is 1/2 of what Oct was.

Advertisers are returning from vacation this week so i'm hoping next week things will start to look up.

kz