Can someone make sense of these stats?

[FourDegreez]

Comparing Monday's stats to Sunday's, my CTR was up, eCPM was up, real number of clicks was up, yet earnings were less. What am I missing here?

[topr8]

was your number of impressions down

[mzanzig]

FourDegreez:

What am I missing here?

This is a possible scenario when traffic and EPC go down:

Compare these fictous values (for demonstration purposes only)

a) SUN - 10,000 imp - 100 clicks - Revenue $25.00 => $0.25 EPC, CTR 1%, eCPM $2.50
b) MON - 8,000 imp - 120 clicks - Revenue $22.00 => $0.183 EPC, CTR 1.5%, eCPM $2.75

CTR up, eCPM up, real number of clicks up, yet less earnings (caused by less impressions and less value per click)

CTR = clicks/impressions x 100
eCPM = revenue/impressions x 1000

[ConfusedButCommitted]

As topr8 asked, are impressions down?

If not, maybe $ are down from your advertisers?

[greatstart]

I see that all the time in my stats. The eCPM goes up along with the CTR, but the earnings are lower. I never really figured out why.

[OptiRex]

Can someone make sense of these stats?

Yep...did you require an answer?

What am I missing here?

Oh...it's called AdSense, it's a marriage of convenience, sometimes it's great, sometimes it's cr@p...take the middle road and then you may appreciate it.

Whatever you do, don't try and dictate to it NOR try and comprehend it unless you know its vagaries, and since you obviously do not, we haven't 3+ years to explain it.

ASP...AdSense Stuff Happens:-))

[matt52]

I'm inclined to agree with OptiRex. Adsense sometimes has no rhyme nor reason. You think you're doing everything right and then see that income is less than before... In my experience of showing Adsense ads the main stat to watch is eCPM. If you can make that grow, everything else will fall into place - i.e. your income will also grow. Of course, increased traffic can only help too.

[swa66]

the main stat to watch is eCPM

I respectfully disagree. First of all you don't have control over the eCPM; Secondly the traffic you have is much more important on the bottom line. If you succeed in getting enough impressions, you might even make it to premium publisher and get the permission to do much more than what we're allowed to do.

Getting more traffic is the way to earn more.

[mzanzig]

swa66, in a way you are right - total turnover and the amount of traffic are important. But eCPM is an important value as well that should be monitored. It tells you about the =value= of your traffic. How much are 1000 impressions worth?

[FourDegreez]

I should say, yes, the number of impressions were down in my stats. Thanks for the math... I can see how this might happen now.

[matt52]

I'm basing this on my experience. When I started with Adsense I, like lots of people I guess, added the code to virtually every page of the site, so I was getting up to 25,000 impressions per day, but with a low click through rate which added up to an eCPM of less than a dollar. For a long time I couldn't understand why: the traffic was there, and the page impressions, but the returns were so low. Why? It took me a long time, and some study on the net, to work out that the value of the ads themselves and ad positioning (i.e. not every page) and therefore the value of the clicks was far more important than the no. of page impressions & CTR, which is why I said that I see the eCPM as the most important stat to watch than any others, e.g. the amount of traffic. We can do something about it, e.g. reduce the number of ads per page and on the site as a whole.

The great Adsense paradox: fewer ads and fewer clicks = more money... go figure! Thanks Google for inventing such a system!

[swa66]

Ok,

I'll revise my statement from before:

Within a page average CPC, and CTR are important factors (individually or combined into eCPM (to be honest I look at them individually).

To choose if you run Adsense or some other advertising source you basically look at eCPM numbers for the different choices on the different pages, the level of diversification you want etc.

But to really make a difference there is nothing like having more traffic, and the way to increase that is to make more and better content, to get more incoming links, to have better SERPs, ... or to buy the traffic (which I don't do to be honest).

I also know that focusing on more and better content is the long term strategy I have. The short term goals of optimizing ad placement e.g. should not take most of the time I have to spend.

E.g. I recently had an external event exposing my niche to a broader audience. It yielded an earning increase of a factor of 4 to 8 times the normal level while it lasted, mostly due to the increased traffic combined with higher valued clicks (the advertisers are also attracted to broader events). I was able to capture some recurring visitors off of that peak and they continue to contribute to the popularity of the site. I'm currently having a second related peak and I'm not going to mess with ad placement, but will try to get as many of those visitors happy and returning.