Starting Days of Month are always Slow.

is it related to advertisers?

[ashii]

Last 2 years I have noticed starting 3-4 days of every month are always less compare to usual average.
is it a universal trend with adsense?

is it related to advertisers still not set their campaign for the month & put in the money?

However yesterday was more bad perhaps due to combined effect of above and people reporting in other thread (Long delays in Ads Appearing)

[ken_b]

I don't know if it is universal, but I doubt it. That said, I don't think it is uncommon either. The first few days of a month have been below average for me fairly often.

But there will always be a few days "below average" and a few "above average" days I guess, otherwise where would the average days comne from. :)

Which days turn out to be which is a mystery!

[mainspot]

Confirm: Today $ drops around 50%.

[Green_Grass]

Start of the month is slow. End of the month is slow. Weekends are slow. What the heck is left?

;-)

I guess, as they say ... It Depends..

[Trisha]

Yesterday and today were slow for me too. The first of the month isn't always slow for me though. I thought this time it might be due to the data refresh being talked about in the Google forum and/or the problems with ads showing up in some places. I just hope it gets better soon!

[LifeinAsia]

Interesting... I just went back and looked at our stats and found a similar trend until around Sept. After that, there hasn't been much of a dip, and yesterday's numbers were some of the best all year.

[Powdork]

Yesterdays numbers were some of my best as far as ctr goes, although the totals were only slightly above average due to low cpc. today is breaking records for both. I did notice a lack of good ads at the end of last month. I may have had more advertisers use up their budgets last month than normal. Everything seems very targeted now.

[rogerd]

I sometimes see an increase at the beginning of a month - I assumed it was due to new campaigns being triggered by the date.

[I Will Make It]

I have noticed that if the month starts out good, this lasts for the entire month. I had this in January - my best month ever..!
December was the worst month ever. (Also because this is the worst month for the niche I'm in, but also because the clicks payd
extremely low)

It's almost like turning on/off a switch every 1st/month.

Again in February it looks like we're back in December mode.. it sucks so far, but it's still a little bit better than December.

I'll remember this post, and check the first couple of days next month.

[Trisha]

I've noticed the beginning of the month being higher before too, which seems to make at least a little sense logically.

[sailorjwd]

It is getting much worse here.

I'm noticing the last 15 days of the month are really slow and the 1st 15 days are even slower :)

[greatstart]

In the month of February, the first 28 days are slow. The exception is on a leap-year, it is the first 29 days are slow.

This month has always been one of my slowest. The other slow month seems to be in June. My best months seem to be April, September and December.

[FrostyMug]

yes, for me as well. first few days are always slow.

[BigDave]

My first few days always seemed slow before, But Jan 1 and Feb 1 were both blockbusters.

I could believe that it was new monthly ad budgets, except both times the gold rush started on the 31st of the prior month.

I almost wonder if there is some sort of housekeeping algo that goes through and frees up clicks that were stuck in the verification queue.

It's not really worth worrying about, it's the running average that concerns me. Or at least that's what I tell myself on those days when the clicks are way down.

[koan]

I'm having a pretty bad day, after a really good month (january). It's all across my multiple and diverse sites too. I've noticed that one of my site seem to have a targeted advertiser selling something really unrelated and my ECPM has plummeted on that one.

[RonS]

I have a "problem" with my stats: My traffic has been increasing so much that year over year comparisons are very difficult.

I think that such different traffic levels bring different issues in terms of CTRs and eCPMs and fluctuations therein. Don't you?

[andrewshim]

In the month of February, the first 28 days are slow. The exception is on a leap-year, it is the first 29 days are slow.

Oh... never mind then... that leaves the other 43 days of February to do well... ;)

[theRealairness]

You are so funny Andrew. he he he. Yeah. I noticed that slowness as well. Maybe, the advertisers are evaluating last month's conversion rate. They make changes every month.

[Mentat]

We are talking about a huge # of advertisers and those sudden changes are not credible so steep.

For me this is the Google Smarprice common algo :(

December was great, Jan was pretty good, but those ~ 3 Feb days are horrible...!

And Yes, Feb has only 28 days -> small check!

[nmweb]

I suppose many adwords campaigns are set to end at the end of a month (is this not the default?). This might explain the phenomenon. Apart from that, January has been great whereas December was crap. February was average so far.

I must add that Google says that January is the best month for me in the sense that people in January search for my keywords more than in other months. June, July are at the other end of the spectrum.

[iwannano1]

No such problem here but weekend I see 30-40% less earning due to less traffic on forum

[RonS]

I must add that Google says that January is the best month for me in the sense that people in January search for my keywords more than in other months.

May I ask you where you get that info?

If you do allow me to ask that, will you tell me? :D

[koan]

I wonder if the bad start of this month is related to Adsense display performance problems (see thread: Long delays in Ads Appearing)

[dollarshort]

Green Grass Wrote
....Start of the month is slow. End of the month is slow. Weekends are slow. What the heck is left?....

You forgot Holidays, Superbowl weekends, and beach days that are slow too.

I guess not many days are left.

[europeforvisitors]

The beginning of the month looks okay to me--February EPC isn't yet quite up to January's average, but it's in the same ballpark. (I can't comment on eCPM since I've been fiddling with ad placement, and CTR has been going up and down in response to site changes.)

I will say that January, 2007 was quite a bit weaker than January, 2006, although it wasn't down enough to prompt any teeth-gnashing. Part of that was my own doing (I made my affiliate partners much more visible in 2006, a strategy that has paid off handsomely), but I suspect that other factors, such as Google's introduction of separate bidding for the content network, have also been at work.

[europeforvisitors]

Addendum to above: Site-targeted text-ad CPMs are, in many cases, better than eCPMs for contextual ads this month, and in some cases they're amazingly high. (I just wish there were more impressions.) Publishers who have asked to have site-targeted ads disabled might want to reconsider.

[trinorthlighting]

Today sucks because its super bowl day in the US!

[ken_b]

Today is great so far!

[andrewshim]

earnings down today...since 90% of my traffic is from the US...

Superbowl... touchdown = Adsense... ouch!down?

[greatstart]

Yep, real bad today for Super Bowl Sunday.

Lowest CTR and eCPM this year, so far.