Why am I making less when my CTR is up?

CTR up, per click earnings go down

[anxvariety]

Wondering if anyone can give me insight on this pattern I'm recognizing..

My site runs in the $6-8 eCPM range throughout the conditions I am about to describe... Usually I get about a 5-6% page CTR, and lets say 100 lemons per click. During December my per click went up to 500 lemons per click, and my CTR went down a couple percent to the 3-4% range.

Why am I making less when my CTR is up?

Interestingly this seems to happen when my traffic is below average.. so on my light traffic days the trend is higher page CTR% but lower per click.. on the higher traffic days, the per click earnings go up and the CTR% down

Any ideas appreciated.

[trinorthlighting]

What time have your click thoughs been during the day. We are noticing a lot of advertisers are only advertising during the day.

Most of our click throughs happen overnight for us.

[rigi]

During the day in which time zone would that be?

[trinorthlighting]

I have noticed in the US, Eastern Time Zone. That many US advertisers in my niche do not advertise at night in our niche.

Seems like most go from 7am-7pm via their adwords scheduler. Also we have noticed most do not advertise on the weekend.

Thats just our niche though, but you might want to look to see if thats happening.

[anxvariety]

How are you guys tracking click time?

[Pengi]

I find that eCPM is only useful for high level comparisons of performance. It does not help to identify or understand what may be causing certain patterns or changes in a given site's performance.

I calculate and track my average Earnings Per Click. This together with Click through Rate and Impressions, gives me three distinct parameters that are affected by different issues.

For your earnings to reduce as your CTR increases, either your EPC must be falling or your traffic is falling. If eCPM is staying the same, then it suggests the latter.

Perhaps the question should be: "Why do I see a higher CTR when my traffic is low?"

This could possibly be a "small sample size" issue.

Others have suggested that there is an inverse releationship between EPC and traffic due to smartpricing. I haven't come across anything indicating a relationship between CTR and traffic though.