Removing Adsense Ads Daily From 12 - 8 a.m.

[potentialgeek]

Does anyone do this? The idea is based on the value of clicks being lower during the night, pulling down the site, potentially leading to smart pricing.

I don't know if some AdWords advertisers have a time block when they advertise each day, e.g., 9 - 5 p.m., or at some time they think visitors are serious traffic, although it seems like it. Even if they don't, the net result is virtually the same if they have daily budgets, which are usually met each day.

Anyway, I'd like the equivalent option or Adsense match. The ability to switch off Adwords during the least profitable times of the day would be good to protect the integrity of the site from junk MFA ads which come out at night like bats out of hell.

I don't foresee Google offering Adsensers the option from the Adsense control panel. But there is a simple workaround. It would require two sets of web pages: one with ads, one without. Then uploading daily, which is easy and fast enough with all files in one folder. Time: two minutes.

My main site sees the value of clicks rise from about 8 a.m. each day until about 5 p.m., after which they go down steadily for the rest of the day...

I wish Adsense stats showed hourly data with click value for that hour, but you can monitor it yourself.

p/g

[gendude]

I think what Hobbs mentioned will work for you - however it's no longer PhpAdsNew, it's now Openads (openads.org).

They have just recently added Google AdSense click-tracking, and they have worked hard to make sure that it remains within the Google AdSense TOS - as a matter of fact, I believe under the old name, they had direct contact with the Google AdSense people and they probably still do.

Just to clarify - it does not alter the AdSense code in any way (which would, of course, be a violation of the TOS).

It does allow you to vary your advertising based on time of day, day of week, etc. (I just checked the site).

Somebody posted a thread here about using it with AdSense, but I can't find it right now.

That said, it all depends on your site. Several of my sites tend to concern things of interest to people all over the world - my main advertisers (I'm talking about the ads I see most often), ship all over the world. As such, I let them run 24/7.

[foxfox]

I find no reason in removing ads from 12 - 8 a.m, which increased my click rate, i can't find any benefit

[rogerd]

I see better eCPM during the wee hours, at least on some sites.

Nevertheless, if you think that this time period is one of low earnings, instead of cutting off Adsense, you might try reducing the frequency of Adsense ads - you'll see fewer clicks, no doubt, but perhaps not in proportion to the frequency reduction. I.e., if you cut Adsense frequency in half, you might find your clicks only fall off 25% (from less repetition of the same ads, etc.)

[incrediBILL]

Does anyone do this? The idea is based on the value of clicks being lower during the night, pulling down the site, potentially leading to smart pricing.

Maybe you should take a step back and realize you're dealing with a global economy and varying exchange rates. AdSense is dynamic and people in different geographic areas, varying cities, states or countries, see target ads for their area, maybe some global ads as well.

For example, someone from Australia clicking on an Australian ad may pay a bit less because of the exchange rate.

Don't know about you, but I'll take anyone's money from Tibet to Luxembourg, it's all good.

[eflouret]

IncrediBill, your post was superb and cristal clear.

[Chrispcritters]

Based on my own recall I've noticed that my CTR & CPM rates decrease as the day goes by (best results in the early AM local time and worst results in the PM local time). I've setup additional channels for the hour of the day to see if this really is the case. I could see this happening if people are setting their AdWords campaigns to accelerated deployment of their daily budget. Interestingly I've always seen better CTR & CPM rates on the weekends (more than enough to compensate for the 20% lower traffic on the weekends.)

[Huntster]

I'll never do this. I'm open for clicks 24/7.

[potentialgeek]

Maybe you should take a step back and realize you're dealing with a global economy and varying exchange rates. AdSense is dynamic and people in different geographic areas, varying cities, states or countries, see target ads for their area, maybe some global ads as well. For example, someone from Australia clicking on an Australian ad may pay a bit less because of the exchange rate. Don't know about you, but I'll take anyone's money from Tibet to Luxembourg, it's all good.

What about smart pricing? I see your point, but don't see how it takes SP into consideration. I don't know that Google does "geo-smart pricing," i.e., smart prices you for some countries, but not others. I suspect they pool all countries into one number. I'm seeing some signs that SP is getting more specific, i.e., not account-wide any more, but I don't know that Google has geo-SP yet.

p/g

[incrediBILL]

I think you're confusing smart pricing with supply and demand plus market and exchange rates. If you're smart priced, it's probably across the board for all markets. However, that has nothing to do with the amounts actually being paid for those ads in the first place which may vary wildly per market.

[jenkers]

I make money in my sleep - I like the idea of that too much to worry about smartpricing. Its always night-time somewhere.

[leadegroot]

This has given me an idea for an interesting (although probably not really useful) experiment - I think I will add channels for the 4 quadrants of the day (ie 6pm - midnight, midnight - 6am, etc), to see how earnings, ecpm, ctr, etc change across the day.
This is doable now that we can put multiple channels per ad :)
I'll let you know what I see, although I expect it will be domain specific.

[Huntster]

Its always night-time somewhere.

It's always day-time somewhere too!

[internetheaven]

If the lower ads do lead to site wide smart pricing, than yes, this is a great idea. But don't you think that Google knows that at midnight the ads get cheaper and it's not publisher's "fault"?
What do you think guys?

It doesn't matter what we think, we are only speculating here and it is unfair of Google not to respond to this ... it's also bad business because if it has no effect and they DO take it into consideration then they are losing money by not contributing to this discussion.

Of course, maybe their silence is evidence that such is the case and they would like us to block ads during the night so that we can all show the more expensive ads during the day ...

... we just don't know ...

[jomaxx]

Stop. Breathe. There is nothing to this nonsense. If there was an overall trend to fewer ads or lower bids at nighttime, it would hit everybody including Google's own ad sales.

If somebody wants to do an extended test (at least 1 month), I'll be happy to consider the results, but I am highly skeptical that suspending ads for 1/3 of the day or even more can possibly have a net positive outcome.

[Khensu]

I went through the same type of scenario a few months back. Just had to vary some of the page topics to cater to a more international audenience on the overnight. If you hit the right things, a few pages can carry you pretty well through the down turn of the others.

[Clark]

I've tried dozens of little things like this w/ php code. Tracked lots of stats etc. What I've learned is that nothing works. And if you find something eventually that does, the algo will change soon enough anyway. But worse, there is an algo to downsize your income anytime it grows faster than it's "supposed to". And it may recover to original levels, but never quite as high as before. It led me to develop Clark's law.

1. Any time wasted on "tweaking" adsense is time and therefore money wasted.
2. Google charges Advertisers CPC and pays publishers CPM.

Therefore, instead of wasting energy on a system that is completely controlled by a third party, spend all time to improve site. Develop "real" advertisers that you have a relationship with or other income streams. The less adsense, the better.

[kaizenlog]

You are missing a point.

When it is night in USA, it might be morning in another part of the world.

Why remove ads when you are missing a big part of the world?

[Khensu]

Because the US CA UK and rest of the EU (sorry AU/NZ you probably are too) are better converting for most advertisers and they will pay more for exposuse during prime time.

Basically, money follows money.

[Hobbs]

it might be morning in another part of the world

Jury still out on that one, where the sun shines seems to be a hairy topic..

[Chrispcritters]

After about a week of running with an added channel for hour of day it appears that I see a 40% reduction (from average CPM) for the hours 7AM to 11AM (local time). If there is another advertising campaign that I can run during those hours that would exceed the Google AdSense CPM for that time frame it would make sense to run it during those hours. I'll let it run for the rest of the month (as is) and report back then.

[potentialgeek]

Not sure if I'm ready to switch off the ads overnight. Between 4 and 5 a.m. yesterday morning from one click I got $12.00.

p/g

P.S. I'm in the wrong industry. On the typical day, I'm rarely getting $0.15/click.

[fischermx]

potentialgeek:

It would require two sets of web pages: one with ads, one without. Then uploading daily, which is easy and fast enough with all files in one folder.

OR.. as the potential geek you are, you could just program an "IF" statement based on time of the day in your preferred server-side language, don't you think? ;)

Cheers!

[fischermx]

Oh, God, I can't stop:

Create a PHP block with Adsense ads to plug in. When you want the adsense turned off, replace the PHP block with a different one.

OR ... you could just use an IF statement and conditionally show one or the other automatically based on the time range you programmed. ;)

I feel so happy today! :)