End Of Month Earnings

Do your earnings sag at the end of the month?

[WolfLover]

I've always had the last couple of days of the month be lower than the monthly average. I've assumed that is because advertisers running out of money at the end of the month?

However, the past two days have been quite low.

Is this your experience as well?

[jambui]

Yeah past one week has been too bad. Almost half of what i earn...

[incrediBILL]

Budgets often run out at the end of the month so it's never too surprising.

[IanCP]

Mine's actually hyped up lately after months of downward trend in CTR.

Of course it will reverse next month.

YMMV

[martinibuster]

Budgets running low, as incredibill noted.

[dawnstar]

Affirmative, however we have had a mini heat wave in the UK so that might have something to do with my poor figures of the last few days... (must learn Indian rain dance thing...)

[workingNOMAD]

me too in the uk, i hope the mini heat wave finishes soon, for the sake of earnings and allergies!

[tim222]

I see this almost every month. I think Bill is correct and it's due to budgets hitting their max. AdWords asks you how much you want to spend per day but will occasionally exceed that amount. If you hit the aggregate maximum (daily max times number of days) before the end of the month, I guess they'll stop serving your ads. I don't know for sure because it's always under my monthly maximum.

On top of that the last two days of this month fall on a weekend... I imagine many advertisers figure they'll just wait until Monday to replenish their budget.

[nickreynolds]

In the Uk - great weather, lowest number of vistors since xmas day. However, both clicks and visitors often decline on the last day of the month. Often wonder if google just holds a few over till next month - or am I being paranoid?

[Atomic]

If the reason for a decline in AdSense earning at month's end is attributed to advertising budgets being exhausted, wouldn't a smart advertiser ramp up their advertising at this time to save money?

[martinibuster]

ouldn't a smart advertiser ramp up their advertising at this time to save money?

AdWords advertisers need leads all month long, not just at the end of the month. Not every advertiser has a monthly budget but enough do to cause this effect, which by the way, has been happening for years.

[sabrebIade]

Like a few others mine is totally backwards.
Start of the month low eCPM.
About the 15th it picks up and finishes fairly high.
BUT as soon as the 1st hits, back down.

[mayest]

Budget exhaustion makes sense to me as an explanation for the week of the month effect. However, in my case, there are also significant seasonal factors.

I run a tutorial site where the majority of visitors are college students taking a class in a certain subject. So, visits are somewhat cyclical, with the fall and spring semesters being best. Joined AdSense is June 2007, so 2008 is the only year for which I have complete data.

That said, when I look at average daily earnings for 2008 (all months) I see that the last week is slightly (1.5%) better than the first week. But the third week of the month is about 15% better than the first week, and is my best week. On average, daily earnings fall by about 12% from the third week to the last.

If I exclude January, June, and July (far fewer students in class) then I see that the first week outperforms the last week of the month by about 5.5%. I still see that the third week is the best week as measured by average daily earnings. The fall from the third week to the last week is about 10%.

Overall, though, all of my metrics were remarkably similar regardless of the week of the month (i.e., pretty darn stable). When I look at the data on a monthly basis, there are some pretty significant differences. The fall months are the best, winter the worst.

[dibbern2]

Not to change the subject, but I feel the month-begins-on-a-weekend depression much stronger than the end of month pattern.

[IanCP]

Mine hopefully have improved since I got rid of the "rotten" graphic ads.

I've only battled a CTR downturn, never EPC down. Impressions are "my" problem. Current "text only" code also allowed graphics. For whatever reason.

It was inappropriate "Girlie" graphic ads versus "text ads" relevant to my site.

The ultimate answer was so simple and the geniuses at AdSense would really hate it.

CTR went from 0.67% to 2.00% amost overnight.

[nrep]

IanCP, have your earnings gone up the same sort of amount too?

[IanCP]

Yes. EPC was never a problem, the average always remained the same. Just CTR dragging me down.

Why would my visitors click on totally irrelevant ads?

[nrep]

Thanks for the reply. I always (blindly) assumed that google would self optimise image ads and only display them if they were expected to earn more. I've switched 2 of my sites to text online and I will see how the perform over the coming week :)

[Scurramunga]

Do your earnings sag at the end of the month?

They sure do.

[griswold]

never,in fact i feel the price is high in the begin of month.

[HowYesNo]

in the end of month ctr&ecpm down 10-20%
in the begining of month ctr&ecpm both down 30%