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Here we go again....?

         

btas2

6:06 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



On Feb 1st I saw a very significant earnings drop, as did many others. It corrected itself by the end of the month and February turned out to be my best month ever.

Well, looks like it's happening again. On March 1st (today), I'm seeing a very signifcant drop in CTR, CPM and earnings for the day. Overall down to only about 30-40% of what I normally see, day in/day out.

Presumably it will correct itself (I hope), but does anyone know why the 1st of the month (or the first few days) seems to be behaving this way? Do advertising accounts run out on the last day of the month and not get renewed until a few days later?

Would it be a good strategy to not publish new content early in the month, it being a better plan to attract new readers (or old readers back to the site) when Adsense is having a better day?

europeforvisitors

6:49 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)



Presumably it will correct itself (I hope), but does anyone know why the 1st of the month (or the first few days) seems to be behaving this way?

It's hard to gauge trends accurately when you've got only two months' worth (or, more accurately, one month and a day's worth) of data.

FWIW, I haven't seen any dop at all. Quite the opposite: The month is starting off with a bang.

Would it be a good strategy to not publish new content early in the month, it being a better plan to attract new readers (or old readers back to the site) when Adsense is having a better day?

Every day that your new pages sit on a shelf is a day when you aren't making money from them.

btas2

7:00 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Actually it happened on Jan 1st and February 1st (and now March 1st) of this year. I looked at last year and there was no sign of a discontinuous change in earnings as the month changed.

I'm looking at mid 5-figure impressions/day so I don't think it's just a statistical fluctuation.

Timing of new articles is critical. When a publish a new article I get a surge in readership for a few days. It would seem to make sense to time that so it coincided with when Adsense was serving optimum (targetted and high paying) ads, if that could be done.

What I've seen so far this year is that early in the month I'm getting less clickthroughs (which probably means less well targeted ads), plus the EPC is lower (indicating lower paying ads).

Could just be a coincidence I guess, or it may be something odd about the way advertisers work in my market segment.

yosemite

7:07 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



This month is starting out great for me too. Let's hope it sticks.

joebob

7:19 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I too had a great Jan. and a bad Feb. and about the 15th I switched to another ad program. It did better than G's lows. Yesterday I decided to give G another try just to see how G was doing.

As far as I can tell everything is back to what it was in Jan.

I hope that it sticks too.

Jon_King

7:28 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



btas2 are you in the US (knowing many here are UK based)? I have the exact same thing btas2 in Central US.

We have seen UK vs. US serps differences that may coincide with the flux. That's where I'm going with this...

no9t9

7:46 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



my march 1st is in the crapper. but my previous months 1st days are all pretty normal.

In fact, march 1st 2005, so far, is the worst day EVER for me. EPC is down 65% from the lowest levels of February. My CTR is normal, impressions are normal.

I just don't get why it is flucuating so much lately. I have been on Adsense for over 1 year and my site gets quite a few impressions and clicks. Just the EPC is all over the place lately.

jetteroheller

8:00 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



[FWIW, I haven't seen any dop at all. Quite the opposite: The month is starting off with a bang. ]

Same here, the day develops towards a new highest ever

btas2

8:12 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I'm in the US, not the UK. My CTR, CPM and EPC are still down for today.

I guess it's just one of those AdSense things that we'll never really know about. There's so much stuff going on that's hidden from publishers that making money with AdSense is as much of a crapshoot as a science on any particular day.

I don't get bugged by changes over short time periods. My 90 day running average of earnings is steadily climbing. It's just annoying when you get fluctuations in earnings over which you have no control and about which you have no understanding. I have enough impressions and clicks that I know the variations I see aren't just due to normal traffic fluctuations or variations in user behavior. In fact my traffic doesn't fluctuate much day to day. Something is changing at the AdSense end, but I've no real expectation of ever figuring out what it is!

ownerrim

8:35 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I'm seeing a very signifcant drop
I haven't seen any dop at all
This month is starting out great
my march 1st is in the crapper

you say to-may-toe, i say ta-ma-toe...

hunderdown

8:39 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)



btas2, just because we can log in and see our stats update throughout the day doesn't mean that we're seeing what's really going on. I think it's pretty much agreed here that clicks and impressions don't always get updated at the same time. Sometimes, clicks get held, possibly for days.

I'm as obsessive as anyone about checking my stats but I try to look at a week's worth of info before concluding that something's changing....

europeforvisitors

8:40 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)



I'm seeing a very signifcant drop
I haven't seen any dop at all
This month is starting out great
my march 1st is in the crapper
you say to-may-toe, i say ta-ma-toe...

And some say "I'm da martyr."

incrediBILL

9:27 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



So far March 1st has been my best day all year, made as much by 9am as I typically make on a Saturday.

Undead Hunter

9:58 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Wouldn't this be due to AdWords - people looking at their monthly stats for Feb., and then optimizing their campaigns to match?

Yes, for our main site today we have the highest CPM we'd had this year. The CPM so far today is DOUBLE the average norm. Page Views and CTR are about the same.

Only 1/2 the traffic is through so far, but we're already past our daily average total.

Normally our site doesn't see big flux's like this.

Interesting Side Note: Back in November 2004, our best month ever, the CPM's were much closer to the one we're seeing today, more like one and a half times the current CPM (where today's is double our average CPM). I hadn't realized just how much we had fallen in overall CPM since that month...

icedowl

10:28 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Having a nice average day here, which is also much better than the start of February.