Thanksgiving Day 2007 and Effect on AdSense Earnings

Gives a New Meaning to Turkey Day?

[martinibuster]

I was astonished to read that today, Friday November 16th, was the start of the Thanksgivings Day holiday travel season. Yes, some people are taking today off through the entire next week. This morning, traffic over the bridge to San Francisco, ordinarily bumper to bumper for several miles, was relatively light.

I'm not seeing it reflected in my traffic stats for today, at least not yet, but will be interesting to see how the U.S. holiday affects AdSense earnings over the coming weekend and next week. Last year [webmasterworld.com] many people saw varying degrees of decline, even some whose traffic came primarily from outside the U.S.

[edited by: martinibuster at 7:06 pm (utc) on Nov. 16, 2007]

[Atomic]

My food related site is experiencing profoundly high traffic and earnings earnings. It won't last but certain holidays bring peak traffic as people's thoughts turn to food. This is the mother of them all.

[europeforvisitors]

I get about 50% of my traffic from outside North America, so that helps to dilute the "holiday factor." Still, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon over the years: Even though traffic may decline slightly around major holidays (or events like the Super Bowl and the World Cup), the number of readers who click on ads or make affiliate purchases doesn't necessarily decline. In fact, I've had some really good Super Bowl Sundays, which leads me to wonder if a lot of Moms aren't researching purchases while Dads are drinking beer, eating Tortilla chips, agonizing over touchdowns, and hoping for wardrobe malfunctions during the halftime show.

[dibbern2]

Our main sites perform best on workdays (M-F), so a holiday is pretty much like a weekend, except longer with the extra days off.

We have been trying to compensate for this by finding a niche that performs best when people aren't at work. I think we have one, but the revenue stream is weak, and it takes a lot of hours invested to get back a return.

Would that there was a subject/topic that paid well every day.

[sailorjwd]

Fond memories of thanksgiving week 2004.

On that monday my earnings took a sudden jump to 3x average and never went down (until this year). I wasn't watching my stats for two weeks since I was in the hospital doing a 5x bypass.

Too bad I'll never see those numbers again :(

[europeforvisitors]

Maybe it's time for a "How to Carve a Turkey" article linked from the home page. Still, I do have a press release from Turkey's tourist office running this week. I fully expect AdSense to serve ads about cranberry sauce. :-)

[Atomic]

I want a better way of tying squash cooking methods to bowl games.

[edited by: Atomic at 11:09 pm (utc) on Nov. 16, 2007]

[greatstart]

I hope it doesn't turn out to be another "foul" day.

[con771]

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System: The following 4 messages were spliced on to this thread from: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/3510450.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 11:18 am on Nov. 21, 2007 (utc -8)

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Anyone else notice a strange drop in traffic yesterday. I was coasting along, maybe even above normal but this morning I checked and traffic was down about 20% yesterday.

[HuskyPup]

traffic was down about 20% yesterday.

Are you referring to your logs traffic or Google Page Impressions?

Certainly my PI's were down a good 10%+ yesterday which is strange since I was expecting a downturn this week with ThanksGiving, so far it has not materialised although I guess that may change today!

Don't forget that PI's will be fewer if G does not have the ad inventory to serve up. Are you seeing the same ads or are they rotating?

[RonS]

Happy Thanksgiving!

[jomaxx]

I'm definitely seeing lower traffic this week. I checked my traffic from Google, and international searches are steady while US searches are down noticeably.

This is the start of a complicated season. Ecommerce is way up, but traffic patterns are going to be disrupted until January due to American Thanksgiving, Christmas shopping, Christmas holidays, Christmas travel, New Year's, Hanukkah, and all the other winter solstice celebrations that go on around the world.

[jhood]

My theory on this is that those who are actually at their desks today are basically marking time -- surfing the Web to get ideas for Black Friday, looking up last-minute cranberry sauce recipes and so forth.

[HuskyPup]

Just checked previous years' AdSense stats and my Thursday has been a normal Sunday with Friday a good Sunday however those of us who have been Glitchifried may easily find ourselves up the creek without a paddle for all I know!

Maybe they've been saving up all my clicks and earnings for a month as a bonus tomorrow? :-)

[netmeg]

My No Fail "even you can't screw this up" Turkey Recipe is getting a lot of traffic; none of the rest of my stuff is.

[icedowl]

netmeg, your turkey is seeing the same thing as my cranberry salad.

[Khensu]

"Ahh, to wallow in the gravy of remorse or continue on to toast or even wine. What then, foreshadowed a great doom foreboding on the great electronic mists of conveyance or say ye shall it be a time transformith, a causessense to great exaltations and jublilation."

Nah, everything seem normal ya dang turkeys!

[dibbern2]

The business news this evening featured poor sales performence for the Christmas buying season so far. It just might result in higher eCPM for merchandise markets as sellers ratchet up advertising to still get what they can for this season.

Will people click on those higher priced ads, or will the depressed attitude of gift shoppers be reflected in lower CTRs?

[con771]

"HuskyPup" I'm noticing the same thing as you and so far today is worse then any day in the past year. However last year saw the same trend during thanksgiving.

I hope we're all just a little over sensitive due to the recent changes.

Hopefully Tues/Wed things will be back to normal.

[LunaC]

Mine's way down to, both traffic and Adsense impressions. It had me worried until I remembered it was Thanksgiving in the U.S. So, thanks for writing this thread and reminding me ;)

[edited by: LunaC at 3:53 pm (utc) on Nov. 22, 2007]

[frakilk]

Earnings are so far down today but traffic is not. Looks like the advertisers are keeping their wallets closed for the moment.

[netchicken1]

Traffic way down for me today as well. However the ecpm is higher keeping the earnings about the same.

I am suprised that the traffic drop has happened so soon.

[HuskyPup]

I really don't know what to make of this!

So far, 18.00 UK time, I have had a "normal" pre-Glitch day, if it continues like this I'll be requesting for more US holidays:-)

Now I've written this I have no doubt everything will flush down the pan and return to the "new -40% norm".

[nrep]

Thats great news HuskyPup, mine doesn't look like that so far but hopefully it's a sign of things to come!

[Atomic]

I have only a a fraction of my usual number of clicks. I'm lucky that one of them is the most I have EVER earned from a single click. That one click brought me up to average daily earnings.

[europeforvisitors]

It's only 11:25 a.m. Google time as I post this. A bit too early, I think, to draw any informed conclusions about today (Thanksgiving in the U.S.).

[alephh]

Traffic down, but CTR/eCPM up.

[Scurramunga]

I am seeing a 40 percent reduction in traffic, yet earnings are are inline with this month's daily avaerage. Go figure.

[DXL]

I saw 30% less revenue for Thanksgiving.

[Khensu]

Quite a normal day.

My traffic is pretty evenly global (1-4% in all countries including US/UK) except for the Philippines 15%, go figure. I download my stuff (free software) and the money rolls in steady from the ads so I don't question it. I can never surmise why a small place like that drives so much traffic out of 100,000 visitors per day?