Discounted earnings late night/early morning?

Do they pay less in off hours?

[farmboy]

Has anyone noticed that particular ads or channels tend to pay less if clicked very late at night or very early in the morning?

I only have anecdotal evidence at this point, but for ads for business related products and services, it sure seems as if they earn a low amount EPC if clicked very late at night or very early in the morning. That seems to be especially true if it also happens to be on a weekend.

It's almost as if someone decides, "If someone is clicking that ad for industrial widgets at 2AM on Saturday, it must not be a valuable click."

(And Yes I do realize that when it's early morning where I am it's the middle of the day in other locales.)

FarmBoy

[alwaysthinking]

Yes farmboy, I believe that I have noticed this type of "sliding pricing scale" too, just as you described. With the exception that on SOME holiday weekends (not New Years Eve), some advertisers raise their adwords bids - which naturally causes a raise in publishers earning when visitors happen to click on AdSense ads.

I believe this is wise budgeting by some advertisers, and is probably dependent upon what market niche your web site services. For instance, my web site(s) predomenantly serves business people, so my advertisers naturally UP their bids roughly during "business hours" here in the United States (where my web site mostly serves). It seems to "overlap" the regular 8 hour work days by 2 hours before & afterwards, probably accounting for the time zone differences.

Once again, this makes economic sense for my advertisers... as why should they pay a premium price for advertisers at 2am, when most WISE business people are asleep? Very similar to TV advertising, where companies pay a much higher price to have their ads shown during PRIMETIME on the most popular programs, rather than airing their ads during the "Late, Late, LATE B-Grade Sci-Fi Movie Show" shown by your local "celeb" host/hostess. (I used to LOVE watching those)

Chances are that most people clicking on their ads at 2am in the morning would be less inclined to make a purchase. Of course, there are always the exceptions & it MIGHT be a sleepless businessperson desparetly researching for the advertisers product/service because they NEED it in the morning!

I'd imagine that there would be less, if any fluctuation in PPC for regular consumer products and services, rather than B2B type, as we live in a 24/7 world today and many people only find time to conduct online shopping at 2am...

[hal12b]

I was going to post a similar question a few weeks ago. I notice this often too. I start out really strong and earn less and less per click as it gets later, particularly between 9:00pm - 12:00am.

[toldan]

Has anyone noticed that particular ads or channels tend to pay less if clicked very late at night or very early in the morning?
I only have anecdotal evidence at this point, but for ads for business related products and services, it sure seems as if they earn a low amount EPC if clicked very late at night or very early in the morning. That seems to be especially true if it also happens to be on a weekend.

It's almost as if someone decides, "If someone is clicking that ad for industrial widgets at 2AM on Saturday, it must not be a valuable click."

(And Yes I do realize that when it's early morning where I am it's the middle of the day in other locales.)

FarmBoy

I noticed that too, it started about 7 days ago. Clicks that I get early in the morning are 50% less than my usual daily average.

[toldan]

Once again, this makes economic sense for my advertisers... as why should they pay a premium price for advertisers at 2am, when most WISE business people are asleep?

Most wise business people are up at 2am trading currencies and stocks. haha..

[jhood]

I have noticed this for years, literally since Day 1. There are lots of logical reasons for it, everything from budgets running out by late evening and advertisers bidding more for primetime clicks. I don't think it's anything new.

[jomaxx]

I have seen this (the effect described by hal12b) every single day for ages, at least a year. IMO it's too steady and predictable to be related to advertiser decision-making or to the rotation of the Earth (i.e. time zones).

My working hypothesis is that it comes out of one of the algorithms Google uses to charge advertisers and/or split up the proceeds with publishers.

[thegreatpretender]

I have noticed this too. I think we are getting highest bid ads first in the morning, then when their budget runs out the lower paid ads are given a chance to show on our site, that's why we get those lower amount click later in the day.

[edited by: thegreatpretender at 5:25 am (utc) on Feb. 26, 2006]

[Mr_Fern]

The following is my personal conception. It may be invalid, but from what I've gathered it's probable.

Firstly, adwords customers have their daily budgets set up. So after they've used up their budgets for a day, those ads won't be seen. The daily budget resets at 12AM PST, so that's usually where the pick up begins.

Depending on your site's publisher competition (how many sites have similar/same topic ), this concept may affect you or not.

Additionally, time of traffic for these sites also comes into play. People who get more traffic early in the morning (after 12AM PST that is) compared to their publishing competitors, have a better chance of making money off keywords because the adwords budgets have reset and fewer sites are displaying the ads. More sites displaying the same ad, the faster the budget for that particular ad runs out.

My eCPM for the first few hours of the day is multiples larger than the rest of the day. From 12PM PST to 12AM PST, my eCPM generally stays stagnant. It may go up or down a penny every now and then, but that's about it.

Now if only I could get the traffic I get during the day, during the beginning of a day.

[jomaxx]

P.S. Thinking about it now, I cannot recall ever seeing my eCPM be higher than it was the previous time I checked it that day. EVER. This is on a site with a fairly high number of clicks and a very predictable CTR and EPC.

I'm sure it must have happened at some time or other, but the unvarying pattern is that the eCPM starts high and gradually declines throughout the day.

[elfred]

I presented my ideas about this happening long ago on this pages. Nice to find somebody else confirming, at least, the trend. Just to post an additional finding of mine, during recent months I saw that, instead of raising the earnings curve late in the day, the first part of the day shifted down. If the less steep curve that some of us observed approaching AdSense's midnight was caused by some algo, then it might be that the same algo is now extended to more hours in the day.

[RS_200_gto]

We can confirming, the trend on our site.

We are based in the Pacific time zone and we are getting very low traffic and low bid ads around 10:00 PM- 7:00 AM. In the morning our traffic grows when California wakes up and goes to work and uses there work computers , around 9:00 AM traffic starts to increase and than the high bid ads start to show up throughout the day. At 10:00 PM traffic starts to drop again based on the Pacific time zone and so the low bid ads show up again until 7:00 AM.

We promote our service globally, and it seams that google is geo targeting the ads based on pacific time zones instead of our global audience, also google has a problem of targeting keywords we are in the motorsports industry and we promote performance / racing products and we get ads that are so off target, ads like whipped cream charger & creamers and they throw in the PSA ads during the late and early morning hours also.

[Rose_1171]

Yes Ive realized that too. Infact I also noticed that on weekends, the click rates are much much less than on normal days. I have an investment oriented site.

On weekends I get only $.10 per click which is bizarre. Otherwise I usually get $.80-1.20 per click.

Regards,
Rosie

[davethekidca]

Attn, Rose.

I may be wrong but I looked at you site as I was curious, and I thought GAS only allowed a maximum of three AS per page? I counted four. Maybe something to look into.

[Rose_1171]

there are three only. 336X280. The fourth one is link ad.
It is allowed with three of the block ones.
I hope i am not wrong..

Thanks for the concern though.

Rosie

[moTi]

I start out really strong and earn less and less per click as it gets later

can confirm that. seems to be independent of time zone. every day the same ol' game.
advertisers budgets running out is the most plausible explanation. however, maybe it's part of statistics display to blend us a little bit?

if it was true that the money is to be made in the morning, then the way to go is definitely:
chase for early clicks! (which is difficult for a leisure oriented website like mine..)

[Hobbs]

I get much over half of me daily loot within the first 1/3 of the Google new day.

[alika]

One thing to consider is the difference of amount per click based on geographical targeting. As an advertiser, I am charged with less for non-US traffic compared to US traffic. For US, mimimum for the keyword I am targeting for search is $1.25, while for non-US traffic I can get away with $0.10 for search and $0.05 for contextual - big difference. So early morning clicks may be your international visitors (for US publishers) and they pay less because the advertiser paid less to get them.

[send2paul]

Interesting what RS_200_gto had to say. And, if I was to make a hypothetical leap -

According to Wikipedia: "If California were an independent nation, it would have the sixth largest economy in the world" - so we should all have a Google Adsense website based on some topic in California - so we can catch the rich, early risers of LA etc as the click payouts rise after 12AM PST?

Interesting idea......

[pholmstr]

I could be totally off my rocker... but if you were dealing with advertisers with a small per day budget in adwords, they would stop spending cash once their budget has been maxed out. Leaving it up to smaller bids.

My biggest cash days were the ones when I checked first thing in the morning and I already had a bunch of clicks. Late in the day clicks never pay as well.

[celgins]

Months ago, I actually noticed higher paying clicks on the weekends, and during the night.

I guess these "time-based" clicks are relative to each website.

[jomaxx]

I'm skeptical it's due to AdWords bids gradually dropping throughout the day, but if this were the cause then advertisers should see a reduction in their per-click costs later in the day. Has this been widely reported? (I don't use AdWords)

[farmboy]

I know a couple of people who advertise their business on cable TV channels & radio stations late at night/early mornings because the rates are cheaper. Even though fewer people are watching/listening, they still reach more people per dollar spent.

I've also read that late at night when people are "winding down" they are more likely to pay attention to and respond to an infomercial.

I don't use AdWords - is it possible for an AdWords customer to turn their campaigns on and off based on the time of day?

FarmBoy

[moTi]

i believe online advertising is not in that league yet. not sophisticated enough.
they spend their budget in the early hours and then it runs out.