Earnings Volatility

[JasonDX]

Lately my earnings have been very volatile. I could earn $100 one day and $20 the next. For years I could rely on steady predictable daily earnings with little fluctuations. I think it may be due to the new interest based ads. Different ads with varying cpc rates will appear on your site depending on what the interests of your visitors on that particular day. On days when the interest is for low paying products or services, your earnings will be low. Couple that with the notoriously low ctr for interest ads and the result is a horrible earnings day.

[ThatsBoBo]

From my understanding, the interest based ads will only show if they will pay more per click than the ads that would be shown based on your content.

One of my sites that has high paying ads based on the content never shows interest based ads (from what I have seen), but some of my niche sites that typically attract low paying ads (due to the content) typically show a lot more interest based ads because they more often than not, pay more than the content based ads for those niche sites.

I can't really tell how CTR has changed due to interest based ads because I can't turn off interest based advertising for testing and the market is so volatile. I can only opt out of having the data from my site visitors used, which doesn't help with testing.

[ThatsBoBo]

But yes, I suppose if you're top paying content based ads pay $2 per click and then interest based ads came into play that pay greater than the $2 they would take the place of the content ads in question. Then you may get interest based ads that pay $2.10 per click with one user who was browsing for gyms and $15 per click for a Forex buff that came another day. So, I can see how your income could become volatile.

Then there is the whole CTR issue, which is impossible to test.

[alika]

Hve you segregated your site based on channels -- e.g. size of the ad, topics, URls, etc? If so, can you put the data of each channel to see which is the cause of the volatility?

It helps to be really breakdown your site by channels and see which is causing these income fluctuations. Then you can crosscheck it with your analytics and other data.

I'd rather look at my data first before blaming everything on interest based ads.

[incrediBILL]

I'm not sure everything you're seeing is AdSense related.

Google has made some major changes [webmasterworld.com] impacting everything lately.

[MsHuggys]

Interest based ads is the reason, I am sure, my earnings are all over the map recently. My ctr has tanked on many days, making it more difficult to earn a steady daily revenue as I have for years now. I can back this up with my own experience.

Nine days ago I was searching on the web for a product that is so rare, I would bet not a single WW user would want, need or seek one. The reason I was searching on the web is because the product is so rare I couldn't find it in my town, any town nearby and none of the local companies who might have sold it if it wasn't so rare couldn't find one from their wholesalers so they could sell it to me either. After they had given me the run-around for a week or so, I decided to try to find one myself on the web last Monday. This was not a luxury item, I NEEDED it desperately. So, I hit the web, found one, had it shipped to me, it arrived last Wednesday and I am currently using it. The item arrived within two days of ordering it. (God I love the web!) I bought the item through a company I found in Google search listings, not the company who was advertising heavily on the search results page. That was because the Adwords advertiser's product was going to be shipped from a site that was UPS Ground zone 5 to me. I found a supplier who was clearly zone 2 to me, meaning I could get it quicker, and shipping was free.

Every day since, including as recent as ten minutes ago, I am seeing all three Adsense blocks on any of my own sites, showing me ads for that product I searched for. Not a single site I own has any content, not a single word, that would pull those kind of ads. If I was seeing those ads on your site and you were showing ads for SHOES, the odds of me clicking on one of those ads is nil. I am shopping for shoes now, not this obscure, one in a million product that has nothing to do with fashion, women, clothing, shoes or accessories. I have bought the product and in fact, will NEVER buy the product again. I will never need the product again. Yet, for at nine days and counting, I keep getting ads for that product.

I can think of other products this might happen with. Let's say today you are looking for an attorney to handle a wrongful dismissal at your job. You search for one, hire one and then go on with your life. You land on my site that has information on buying cockroaches (I don't have such a site). When you land on my pages instead of seeing ads for cockroach suppliers you see ads for employment attorneys. What are the odds at that point that you will click on my ads? Nil.

While the broader concept of interest based advertising seems valid, in real life practice there are countless instances where showing ads based on what I was interested yesterday is in no way an indicator of what interests me today, or any day in the future. If my interest is based on a cookie, the cookie time frame needs to be reduced to a couple days at most. Otherwise, publishers and Google as a whole are going to see a decline in ctr and revenue.

My channels are broken down by topic. Each topic has a maximum of 10 pages, so each channels is very finely tuned. I can see exactly what is going on any of my sites and have been tracking statistics for over eleven years, six years with Adsense. I know my visitors. Because the recent ctr was so insane, I knew the only answer had to be untargeted ads. I went out to research it and in the course of doing that, figure it based on my own personal experience. If I am seeing highly untargeted ads, what are my visitors seeing? Untargeted ads. I don't think there is any other logical answer. Interest based ads are killing my income.

[icedowl]

MsHuggys, I had my own similar experience last October. Our old refrigerator quit working and we decided we were going to just get a new one rather than have it repaired. I did some searching online first before heading out to the stores so that we'd know who had one that fit our needs and at the price we were willing to pay. We went out to the one store that had what we wanted and purchased a new refrigerator that same day. I suffered through a few weeks of seeing refrigerator ads no matter what I was doing or then searching for. It was simply ridiculous as the interest I had lasted less than one hour.

[JasonDX]

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, I was searching Google for "investing" and just minutes later began seeing ads for "investment reports" on my site that has nothing to do with investing. I believe once you're done searching for a certain topic and move to a different site, that's it, you're not going to click on unrelated ads. The ctr will be very low, but for those few that do click the conversion may be better.

[wyweb]

I was searching Google for "investing" and just minutes later began seeing ads for "investment reports" on my site that has nothing to do with investing

I've seen that also. Circumstances very similar anyway...

[heisje]

Site owners should be able to opt in or out of "interest based" ads. For me, as things stand, this "prior interest" following the user to his next steps and in effect negating his "current interest" i.e. his reason for browsing the current site he is on, is a very bad thing. Ads should be narrowly relevant and focused to the *page* he is on, not even the site he is on, let alone relevant to the previous site he has been on ! The current situation of not providing "opting out" of "prior interest based" ads is very regrettable, and Google "control" of other peoples' sites has gone too far, really. This is the result of a monopoly situation in the market, and comes to confirm how corporations *always* and without exception abuse monopoly power when they get it. Benevolent restraint from monopoly abuse is mere wishful thinking. My personal experience, in every instance, is that if corporations achieve a monopoly situation, then, by definition, they will always abuse it. To date, I have seen no exceptions to this rule. Sad.

[vivalasvegas]

I too have been seing high fluctuations in earnings and important CTR drops over the last few months. If the interest based ads are what's causing it, why doesn't Google do anything about it? They can't possibly prefere a lower CTR.

[sailorjwd]

Yesterday was the highest revenue day of the year. Today looks like one of the lowest - go figure.

[johnmoose]

They can't possibly prefere a lower CTR.

Agreed, but they want a honest CTR.

[alephh]

They can't possibly prefere a lower CTR.

Something like 99% of the adsense-sites are cr*p, with 0% CTR, and 1% of the sites are quality sites with, let's say, average CTR of 5%. Interest based ads are likely to increase clicks on the cr*ppy sites, but lower on the quality sites (with already well-targeted ads getting screwed).

So, overall Google is likely seeing higher CTR and more money for them.

Not to mention that money smaller bloggers never reach enough money to withdraw it away from Google.

Unfortunately advertisers are getting clicks from totally un-related sites.

[londrum]

i think interest based ads would work great if they just helped narrow it down within the subject of your site.

eg. you are a Manchester Utd supporter, and you click a few Man Utd ads. google now knows that you like Man Utd, so the next time you visit a very general sports site they can show Man Utd ads, or even just football ones, instead of tennis ones.
that would be great.
but showing Man Utd ads when you visit a 'buy a new washing machine' site is silly.

[netmeg]

I don't know. When I visit my sites, I see the same ads, regardless of the topic of the sites. They're not even necessarily based on anything I've searched for, but they're definitely targeted to my location. I think the ads are creepy, and I wish they'd quit following me around.

But if these interest based ads are what's showing on my site right now (I haven't banned anything) then give me more of them. I went down to just one ad slot, and then a second one one that shows up after a search, so my impressions are way down over last year (despite having twice as much traffic) And my CTR for the past month is actually UP over last year (to my surprised) and my eCPM is four times what it was TWO years ago, which was my best year. I'm already way past the earnings of the best May ever.

But - and it's a big but - I don't really WANT ads that are targeted to the specific subject matter of this primary site. I want ads targeted to the people who visit it. It's not the same thing in my case. So that's probably why it's working for me.

To use the age old example of the digital camera review site - if I had such a site, I'd want the ads to be completely about digital cameras, and not necessarily interest based. But for my site, which is a sort of event site - they seem to make a lot more sense. There are a lot of sites like that, and maybe that's why Google went down this path.

I definitely see instances where I'd want the option to opt out. But this whole operation is driven more by the advertisers than the publishers, so I don't think that will happen soon.

[Lapizuli]

Yes, I wish Google AdSense would allow us to choose which pages display interest based ads and which don't.

I have only one publisher ID, but could do many different types of pages / sites. It could make so many websites profitable that can't be monetized through AdSense now - it could be the secret to monetizing fiction. Imagine - free bestselling fiction on the web, paid for by interest-based advertising...

[HuskyPup]

I have only one publisher ID, but could do many different types of pages / sites.

You only need one publisher ID to create as many sites as you like. There's nothing to stop you experimenting whether IBAs would work for your ideas.

[Lapizuli]

Edited post because I belatedly "got" what HuskyPup was saying:

I kinda thought that opt-out choice for interest-based ads DOES limit some of the interest-based ads displayed on our pages, if not all. I know it doesn't remove all, but...maybe I'm wrong about that. But I opted out.

If I'm wrong, you're right, I could try it again and might do all right. It may be worth a shot.

[JasonDX]

I kinda thought that opt-out choice for interest-based ads DOES limit some of the interest-based ads displayed on our pages, if not all. I know it doesn't remove all, but...maybe I'm wrong about that. But I opted out.

I thought is wasn't possible to opt out of interest based ads.

[HuskyPup]

I thought is wasn't possible to opt out of interest based ads.

Our options are here:

[google.com...]

Supposedly:

1. Show ads based on user-interest categories. Visit information from my sites may be used to help create interest categories.

and

2. Do not show ads that are based on user-interest categories. Visit information from my sites will not be used to help create interest categories.

I assume #2 means that when someone leaves my site and goes to someone else's site, no matter what the subject, that the new site will not show MY type of sites' widget ads?

I have #2 selected however IIRC in a much earlier post a couple of months ago, it was also up to the user to disable/opt out in their Google account to prevent this from happening.

Clearly this does not work since I do not use a Google account when searching however one browser I use does have cookies enabled and it does serve-up IBAs however my most used browser does not have cookies enabled and that serves-up a site's regular ads.

Bit of a mess if you ask me but I know nothing and I haven't known that very long!

[heisje]

But, seriously, is anybody aware on any statistics presented by G in support of "prior-interest-based" superior performance, benefiting either G or the AdSense hosting webmaster?

[edited by: incrediBILL at 7:15 pm (utc) on May 29, 2010]
[edit reason] thread clean up [/edit]

[alika]

Several research firms such as Emarketer have released several studies showing the strong interest of behavioral or interest-based advertising among advertisers, especially big advertisers. Advertisers are salivating over the idea that their ads could follow the users as they move from one website to the next. If it could attract big advertisers, then G is hoping it will benefit them -- with the eventual hope that increased ad spend from advertisers will eventually trickle down to the Adsense publishers.

That's the hope, I think. But how and whether it will work for us the Adsense publishers is still a big question mark

[heisje]

Just imagine . . . advertising lingerie on a camera site. Mom looks for lingerie and next thing you know, teen son browses for a digital camera. Great! Most ads turn up about lingerie! Webmasters need to uphold the overall integrity & relevancy of their sites, even if temporarily this means they get slightly reduced adsense income (I need proof before I may accept even that). In the long run, overall site relevancy, including ads, will attract more traffic, bookmarks and adsense income for the site. A true opt-out option will leave the ultimate decision on "prior-interest-based" ads to the individual webmaster, in contrast to one-decision-fits-all policy currently imposed upon us (i.e. the Big Brother knows best policy).