Theories about the black Friday

Maybe ads about sport bets?

[jetteroheller]

While my English sites had been just a little bit above average performing, the German pages had hours with an extrem low CTR.

When I visit German news web sites, I am allways annoyed by all sort of ads for sport bets.

Could it be, that there was also a big AdWords campaign for sport bets ruining my CTR?

[leadegroot]

How about - "the target audiences were all off watching the start of the World Cup"? :)

[mzanzig]

Yup, half of Germany (conservatively estimated!) were sitting in front of the telly to watch the WC 2006 opening and continued to party after that (4:2 victory over Costa Rica BTW). I guess they were not connecting to the internet right after the match...

Somewhere I read that worldwide 1.5 billion people were watching. That should give some dent in the traffic. :-)

[Eazygoin]

When was 'black Friday'? I don't see any difference to stats.

[jetteroheller]

It happens again!

Until 3:00 pm MET (Middle European time - 9 hours difference to Google time) just a slow Saturday. Nothing special, there are more or less good Saturdays, but there is a certain range for the number of impressions on a Saturday.

But from 3:00p, to 4:00pm, CTR only 1/5 what is normal. Impressions in a very low, but just normal range for a Saturday afternoon.

Are people not watching soccer also the same sort of people not clicking on ads?

[europeforvisitors]

When was 'black Friday'? I don't see any difference to stats.

I saw a very modest dip in EPC, CTR, and eCPM, but impressions were up about 20%, so I wouldn't call it a "Black Friday." In any case, one day (or even one weekend or one week) doesn't constitute a trend.

I wouldn't even begin to speculate on numbers for today (Saturday), since it's still early morning Google time.

[mzanzig]

Ah! NOW I see what you mean. The =CTR= is down. I can confirm this. That's indeed very strange. There must be an easy explanation for this.

[jetteroheller]

NOW I see what you mean. The =CTR= is down

What language is Your site?

As mentioned before, this happens only to my German pages.

Friday stats from my English pages had been little bit above average.

I think I download now hourly the CSV detail files to have a better overview what's going on.

[jetteroheller]

I saw a very modest dip in EPC, CTR, and eCPM, but impressions were up about 20%, so I wouldn't call it a "Black Friday."

Your target audience is mostly US, and they are no soccer fans.

My main audience is the German area.
German is a soccer country and they have just right now the world championship.

[mzanzig]

I have a bi-lingual site, and the US are not really online researching for my widgets between 6 am and 9 am in the morning (their time). So I guess, mostly the Germany/European sites are affected by this. Will dig a bit deeper.

[europeforvisitors]

Your target audience is mostly US...

Not according to my affiliate statistics.

[jomaxx]

What Black Friday? Why wasn't I told of this?

[JoaoJose]

I'm seeing a very slow day today (ad impressions) but normal CTR. I think we'll have an early summer this year because of the world cup...GO PORTUGAL! hehe

[asinah]

Our websites in Asia see an increase of around 30% in revenues. Friday was an excellent day and CTR and EPC were up by around 2%. Our websites inside Germany with a .de TLD are down by 40%.

For the month of June our revenues are up by around 15% compared to last month and we are still on target.

As I am myself a little bit addicted to the WorldCup, I only work an hour a day and enjoy the games from Berlin, Germany.

Go Japan, South Korea...

[Scurramunga]

My revenues have been back up for an entire week. It's been the best week since March (March was my best month ever)

I attribute my site's revival to an aggressive campaign of MFA culling, which I resumed just a little just over one week ago.

[Scurramunga]

All in all I don't think the cup has afected me that much in terms of traffic.

[Essex_boy]

I have a sports site targeting the worl cup has made no diffrence people just arent coming to the site. Ive even signed with a bookmaker offering free £10 bets no still they dont come.