Change from ad units based impressions to page impression reports?

[trader]

There have been several threads and posts lately regarding sudden unexplained large surges or declines in impressions and CTR, i.e. going from 10,000 to 20,000/day, or reversed say 17,000 down to 8,000, or say a 2% CTR now showing as 5%, etc, when the server stats show little change.

Something similar (but not those example numbers) also alarmed me a few days ago (when I noticed my impressions were less than 1/2 but my traffic stats did not change. At same time CTR also more than doubled when impressions dropped more than 1/2.

I also noticed that happened retroactively looking at all-time stats, going back for ages, as far back as I could tell. For example, a record setting day I recall a while back now shows less than 1/2 the impressions, actually about 40%.

It seems this is due to G now offereing us to look at stats based on page impressions in lieu of the ad units. That means if you have say 3 units or blocks the impressions would be triple what they are based on one unit (or 1 page), but your CTR would also be much lower.

It appears that G somehow changed my default setting to page impressions rather than ad unit based impressions. I do not see a way to toggle back to the old way as page impressions seems to be the default now. Also got email about this change from G a few days ago but do not recall the details.

Anyone else notice this? Anyone know how to look at the reports both ways?

[icedowl]

trader, there is a drop down box that allows you to switch between "page" impressions and "individual ad unit" impressions. It's located just below where you'd select a date range for the "to date". It says "Show data by [?]" just above it.

[trader]

Thanks, did not know that was there. Must be something relatively new I assume, or I am going blind.

I am guessing others also do not realize that is the reason for the big variations they are seeing. It sure makes a huge difference in the stats.