Adsense Earning went down when I added a banner

Question regarding CPC

[dailypress]

Yesterday, I added an image below the google ads without linking to any website! My CPC decreased by 50%! Why is that? The number of clicks hasnt changed. Is it against the TOS?

I removed the banner a few hours ago (back to the old version) and I noticed the next few clicks earned very low as well!?

Does it take 24 hours or something to earn what I used to earn?

What should I do now? Do I need to wait a couple days?

I would appreciate your response.
-DP

[joelgreen]

About images near ads
[adsense.blogspot.com...]

[Pengi]

Somedays I do nothing at all to my site and my EPC decreases by 40% - even more when I have less traffic.

Other days I do nothing to my site and my CTR decreases by 50%.

Some days I do nothing to my site and both EPC and CTR decrease.

Some days I do nothing to my site and EPC or CTR increase (these are the better days :) )

It may be that adding the banner had little or no effect - it just caught a bad day!

I never form a judgement on performance for any change to my site without looking at at least a week's worth of data.

[yc168]

dailypress,

nothing related to your banner. we do nothing yesterday and my ecpm drop 50% too..

i think it's just another round of smart pricing.

[andrewshim]

My impressions are up 50% but CTR and eCPM dropped 50% the last 2 days. Kinda confirms (for me at least) that increase in traffic triggers the Spricing algo, because I went up the serps for major keywords about the same time.

Then again...

Somedays I do nothing at all to my site and my EPC decreases by 40% - even more when I have less traffic.
Other days I do nothing to my site and my CTR decreases by 50%.

Some days I do nothing to my site and both EPC and CTR decrease.

Some days I do nothing to my site and EPC or CTR increase

When I part my hair on the right, eCPM drops.

When I forget to shave, CTR and eCPM drops.

When I help an old lady cross the street, karma, CTR and earnings increase.

When I forget to be nice to my wife, I don't get any ... not to mention clicks...

Yep... the Adsense algo is very strange indeed.

[dailypress]

thank you guys! but I do think the image had an effect! because I have been earning the same for a few months!
Just when I add an image, the CPC drops 50%!
I removed the image for now!
and yes I I put the image exactly under the google ads!

So my advice: DONT PUT ANY IMAGE ABOVE OR UNDER YOUR GOOGLE ADS!
-DP

[MThiessen]

So my advice: DONT PUT ANY IMAGE ABOVE OR UNDER YOUR GOOGLE ADS!

This should also indicate that putting "any" two ads too close to one another is very counter productive in my experience. It's a poor layout stratagy, at least on the sites I have designed.