Why are there conflicting income reports? Multi-ad units, good or bad?

[trader]

At the start of the month I suspected a big drop in my EPC was underway similar to the decline due to changes G made starting early April. However, the past 3 days I now see it spiraling up and now looking real good. It seems almost valueless reading posts where some talk about their income declines but a short time later (in the same thread or different threads) others say income is actually up! Anyone know why that seems to so often happen?

Regarding a different issue on multi-ads per page, I only did that on a few minor sites after thinking about the negatives. G did a very good job making the multi-ad units work well with mostly all different targeted ads (even with 3 units per page). However, it would seem quite possible it actually may reduce income by drawing clicks to lower paying ads (i.e. lower priced ads in ad unit 2 or 3) due to too many choices being on the page for the visitor.

[diamondgrl]

The jury is still out for me. My initial impression was good based on increased revenue. But now that I have one day's worth of channel data with a rigorous side-by-side test, it shows a decline in revenue. The increase was an illusion based on other changes. It's not yet statistically significant so I'll wait for another day or two of data to see.

However, even if shows declines, I'm not giving up on tests since right now I have the ads right next to each other, stripped down the side of the page. However, on pages of a certain length, it might very well make sense to have multiple ads, just not next to each other. That way, viewers don't have a range of ads to choose from all in one place which could therefore draw users to lower-revenue ads. If they are separated, they will first encounter the higher-paying one and then only later upon scrolling discover another set of ads.

[clearvision]

I have been evaluating the multi-ad option as well.

Click value is down and the same number of people are clicking. I don't know if it's because we added another set of ads which caused less value keywords or if it was due to the long Goooooogle and advertisers are paying less per click.

Today I am going to remove the second ad and see what happens to the value of a click. That will at least take one option out of the equation. As a side note, our EPC has averaged the same and we have been with the program since the beginning. This kind of drop is not the norm :).

[blairsp]

but a short time later (in the same thread or different threads) others say income is actually up! Anyone know why that seems to so often happen?

that is simply the way of adsense and why I suspect quite a few people who read this board don't bother to read these type of threads. If I have a site on oil and there are a lot of stories about oil on the news then the earnings might be good that day. If on the other hand I have a site about pink elephants and no-one is interested that day then..... Everyone will have a different experience of adsense as they will of life.

By the way my earnings went up 10 million percent yesterday.

Oh and I got my cheque today. Which IMO is another pointless thread (12 days to go and counting?). You have either got your cheque or you haven't. Don't really care that some unknown person in the second house past the large bend in the road beyond the yellow house straight across from the school has received his cheque.

I wonder who will be the first to post below me that their earnings dropped by 50million percent.

[edited by: blairsp at 9:22 pm (utc) on Sep. 9, 2004]

[TampaLou]

In cautious use of the multiple ad units, it seems to work (on pages where ad choices are plentiful). But when you start using the same ad styles more than once, you run some serious risks at this point, at least from what I've observed. The ability to add an extra 125x125 is nice and all (or an extra 468x60 or whatever), but not when that new addition mysterious makes your 160 skyscraper, which previously filled up just fine, suddenly show PSAs (or blanks if you have them set that way).

It seems to me that the bugs in the software for multiple banners are still being worked out. Which is fine, but I think it's something to be aware of because making en masse implementations on your site or sites.