CTR: high in the morning, very low in the evening

why?

[HuhuFruFru]

I know that for apparent reasons the CPC is in the morning much higher than in the evening, but what is the reason that my CTR is in the morning hours around 6% and then gets smaller and smaller and arrives in the evening at 2% or so! I'm not talking about eCPM!

I have observed this for a few weeks now.

Very mysterious...

[kaz]

My theory is that on average the majority of your pages have a lower click thru rate while there are a minority that have a higher click thru rate. In the morning the ctr is higher because the weight of your high ctr page(s) is higher because of the low volume of overall activity. As the day progresses it decreases, as the majority of your pages have a lower ctr. Thus it starts high and tends to go down during the day. You can setup channels to track this.

[Green_Grass]

CTR normally goes down with increase in Traffic..

Does that explain your situation?

[jimbeetle]

Also keep in mind that since impressions, clicks and money aren't always updated at the same time there is really no way to spot trends throughout the day. What you see at any one moment is not always a true snapshot.

[sonny]

Happens to me about every day. I think they do click dumps in the morning.
I had one site last week that started the morning with 0 impressions and 6 clicks. huh!

Or maybe 'impressions' stats lag in the morning

[greedy player]

Adwords budgets start in the morning 8AM (GMT) and are lucrative and expencive ads, but throughout the day the budgets run out and the cheaper ads display at night.

Notice through the day your ads are great and later at night they are poor MFA looking ads.

You get paid more for more clicks as soon as your adsense account starts a new day and less at night.

[Green_Grass]

"You get paid more for more clicks as soon as your adsense account starts a new day and less at night. "

Only true for me sometimes. I think US Traffic pays well .. Rest pay poor...

I cannot really make such a statement from my experience.

[Hobbs]

I used to have the daily drain, but not anymore:

I used to give ad units only 1/2 my daily page impressions.
I now give them only 1/4 and the other 1/4 goes to referrers.
This way only good known to be working pages have ad units, earnings are the same or better and no more - or very little - daily drain.

Somedays I see the ecpm and ctr creeping slowly up against gravity and historic trends by the end of the day.

I think per day stability is achievable if you set your approach on giving Google only quality pages for ads not just throwing in the lot and hoping the algo would sort it out. This involves testing channels for a long time till you know what works and how good it does.

[joaquin112]

CTR normally goes down with increase in Traffic..

I am curious as to where you got that information from? Logically, it wouldn't matter whether one or a hundred people visited a page, they would do the same.

In practice I understand that advertisers may pay less if there's more traffic (supply and demand). But if it's a big-enough niche, I don't think it'd matter.

[HuhuFruFru]

Thank you for your insights!

Also keep in mind that since impressions, clicks and money aren't always updated at the same time

Very interesting jimbeetle, I didn't know that - was this mentioned somewhere in Adsense Help or Adsense Blog?

It may be true that the quality of the ads is the decisive factor for a high CTR, but if the budget of the high quality-advertisers runs out in the evening - what can I do against it?

[Green_Grass]

"I am curious as to where you got that information from? Logically, it wouldn't matter whether one or a hundred people visited a page, they would do the same. "

Unfortunately logic takes a backseat with adsense..

The type and quality of ads keep changing on your site.. The quality of visitors keep varying.. etc etc..

All things remaining constant , your logic may hold..

But with adsense , nothing is really constant, it is a dynamic flux..

It is a practical observation, that as no. of visitors ( especially organic) grow, CTR will tend to go down.

With small no. of visitors , I experience CTR above 40% ..but as no. of visitors goes up during the day...CTR starts to fall....

[joaquin112]

Unfortunately logic takes a backseat with adsense..

The type and quality of ads keep changing on your site.. The quality of visitors keep varying.. etc etc..

All things remaining constant , your logic may hold..

But with adsense , nothing is really constant, it is a dynamic flux..

It is a practical observation, that as no. of visitors ( especially organic) grow, CTR will tend to go down.

With small no. of visitors , I experience CTR above 40% ..but as no. of visitors goes up during the day...CTR starts to fall....

The quality of visitors keeps varying... interesting, knowing that we are talking about visitors in general which should include the fact that no visitor is the same twice, eh? Next a practical observation? I can almost guarantee that if you place non-changing ADS in a page, and every factor including load speed, etc. is the same, you'd get a constant CTR from the visitors (over a long period of time). I know that factors cannot be the same, but we are talking hypothetically here.

I understand everything is dynamic with Adsense. But your CTR/Number of visitor "practical observation" is very flawed... I myself have found through my own practical observations that there is no certain correlation between the CTR/Number of Visitors. I just checked my stats. My traffic has grown a lot through the months and the CTR has maintained pretty constant (it even rose a bit in the last few weeks despite what your practical observation would "expect").

As you said, there's many factors. It may be your specific niche... I don't know.

Okay, back to topic, I see a lower CTR in the night as well. I have less visitors during the night because my main site is education-related. I earn 80% of my income during the day. Why? I am with greedy player on this one. I believe it has something to do with the advertisers. Maybe also the fact that people at night are not as likely to view other ADS (click) as they are during the day for specific niches (education for me).

[Green_Grass]

Well noted that you have a diffn. experience..

Just goes to show, it is difficult to generalize things with adsense...

My max. earnings are when the so called budgets are supposed to be running out...

[Content_ed]

I'm reminded of the bronotsaurus theory of Mrs. Ann Elk on Monty Python. Went something like,

Ahem.

My theory of the bronotsaurus.

The bronotsaurus is very skinny at one end, gets very wide in the middle, then gets very skinny again at the other end.

This is my theory, which is mine:-)