AdSense Reporting Delay December 2010

[HuskyPup]

Heck, is it the UK weather or am I hours behind?

My Page Impressions are very low, about half what I would normally expect at this time of day. Anyone else?

[HuskyPup]

Ouch, ouch, ouch...I'd be having my best day in ages if it were not for the 50% cut in EPC...argh!

[wyweb]

@tristanperry

seems I've stumbled onto a battlefield.

Actually not. Maybe a few rocks being thrown but the heavy hardware stays under wraps.

My position has always been the same. We're simply not given enough tools, enough reporting capability, enough resources to accurately diagnose why one day should look so much different from another from adsenses perspective, when all of our metrics have remained unchanged.

I had a near record day on a Tuesday in November. That Tuesday looked nearly identical to every Tuesday for the past 6 months. Same traffic levels, same visitor demographics, same page views per user, etc... The only thing distinguishing this Tuesday from any other (the only thing that I'm capable of seeing) was this huge spike in eCPM.

How do I assess that? How do I use that information to capitalize on it and turn it to my advantage? I need far more than what I'm being given in order to make use of this. In the absence of this information you can do one of two things.... You can speculate and fret and worry ad nauseum and air it out endlessly in public forums, or you can take your daily chill pill, slap the pony on its ass and enjoy the ride.

I'm just along for the ride...

[tristanperry]

@wyweb
That all makes sense, and I do indeed agree :)

[drall]

We took our old reps advice and implemented 2 new ad blocks in tasteful positions and have tripled our daily click volume and our 7 day moving average for revenue is exactly the same per day of the previous months. Almost like Google said this account gets this much per month and that's all. Nothing new here, I give, back to our continued push on direct ad sales.

[Rockyou]

Almost like Google said this account gets this much per month and that's all.

drall you can open a adsense account in your family members name, Its legal within TOS from same address & same ip address. See if can you get extra money waiting for you. Many people do this around the world to save tax.

[Lame_Wolf]

you can open a adsense account in your family members name, Its legal within TOS from same address & same ip address.

I think you will find that the family member will have to open one, not someone else. I am not a legal expert, but I think that's correct.

True, nothing wrong with other people in the same household having an account each, on the same PC etc.

[zerillos]

3 more 3rd party ad nets added in the last 24 to 48 hours and the ctr and ecpm dropped again. At this point i'd say the two are definitely linked.

[jmccormac]

I've deep sixed their 3rd Party networks for the day just to see if it makes a difference. Yesterday was one of the worst days this year. The traffic was down slightly but the revenue was way down.

Regards...jmcc

[m0thman]

Hi jmccormac / zerillos. Please keep us posted on your findings. One of the problems with AdSense is there are too many dials and buttons to adjust.

[whywhywhy]

today will be bad, yes i know i must wait & see !

[jmccormac]

Deepsixing the lot of them seems to have worked temporarily but this is Christmas week so the traffic is going to be lower than usual due to people being out shopping etc. So far, it is up slightly on yesterday but it is not enough to make any real judgement yet. One of my sites is 85% or so Irish traffic. The other is global with at least 30% being US/Canadian traffic. Their Adsense timezones tend to be different as a result so I won't see any major changes on the second site until late this afternoon GMT.

Regards...jmcc

[Lame_Wolf]

3 more 3rd party ad nets added in the last 24 to 48 hours and the ctr and ecpm dropped again. At this point i'd say the two are definitely linked.

How can you say that ? For one, the time length is way too short to tell. And secondly, there are many other reasons why there was a drop for you.

By what you said, you must have 3rd party adverts enabled. If you think that they are the reason for the drop, then block them.

You could change nothing whatsoever on your site and still see a drop - or an increase.

[wyweb]

You could change nothing whatsoever on your site and still see a drop - or an increase.

Exactly. This is all too common.

"I've changed nothing on my website yet my earnings are falling"

No, you didn't change anything. The Gorg did and I say this rather loosely. Advertisers in your particular niche may have pulled out; may have exceeded their budget. Search parameters may have changed: keywords you were ranking highly for may have been demoted. You may have been "smart priced" like me, in which case I may see you up under the hobo bridge one day. I'll be the one cooking Raman soups over an open fire and lamenting about "The good ol' days".

There could be any number of reasons why your earnings drop, just as there could be any number of reasons why your earnings hit record highs. You don't know though, nor, barring a court order, will you ever be allowed to know.

Google is a secretive biatch. You kiss her and go to bed but you keep one eye open all night long.

[HuskyPup]

Surisingly my Page Impressions have held up quite well this week but that EPC, oh my oh my ... On a normal day I would be writing that I'm 25% of the way to a normal day yet today I'm at about 8%, I haven't seen such continually low click values in years, in fact I've never had a collapse in EPC before Xmas.

MadSense, MugSense, AbSense...Apart from the fact this IS going to be my worst month of 2010 I'm also predicitng now that I shall not reach my monthly minimum earnings' target since I am now -5% down on December 2009 at the same point and it's inevitably going to get worse, for me.

Good job I've an excellent rock band playing tonight:-)

[jmccormac]

Hasn't budged since early this afternoon. Someone had better wake up the hamsters.

Regards...jmcc

[zerillos]

How can you say that ? For one, the time length is way too short to tell. And secondly, there are many other reasons why there was a drop for you.

on monday there were 176 3rd party networks and this morning there were 179...179-176=3 new ones in the monday 'till wednesday timeframe.

in the last two months, every time (and i really really followed this stuff ;) ) they add new 3rd party nets, the ctr and ecpm drop significantly.

it even works the other way around. it happened 2 or 3 times in the last period for them to drop a few of the 3rd party nets. of course, the ctr and ecpm went up immediately afterwards.

[Lame_Wolf]

on monday there were 176 3rd party networks and this morning there were 179...179-176=3 new ones in the monday 'till wednesday timeframe.

Yep. I did mathematics at school as well.

in the last two months, every time (and i really really followed this stuff ) they add new 3rd party nets, the ctr and ecpm drop significantly.

Then automatically block new ones. (I too also follow this).

it even works the other way around. it happened 2 or 3 times in the last period for them to drop a few of the 3rd party nets. of course, the ctr and ecpm went up immediately afterwards.

If you want to think it is the cause, then so be it. Timescale is still too short.

By your logic, block ALL third party adverts, and your earnings will skyrocket.

In reality, anything can happen - without altering a thing.

[Tashi]

It actually makes sense that earnings drop with the addition of 3rd party ads:

* Adsense has always been the best performing ad network, none of the other ad networks I tried earned better than Adsense.
* This means that on other ad networks advertisers pay less than on Adsense, or the network takes a higher percentage.
* This means that by adding 3rd party networks in the mix, earnings are dilluted.

Did anyone try disabling 3rd party ads?

[zerillos]

Then automatically block new ones. (I too also follow this).

this was not about blocking or unblocking them... this was purely a personal observation and conclusion.

Timescale is still too short.

why does everybody think that changes, when it comes to "G stuff", have to take a long time before showing any results? Over the years I found quite a few "sections" in which changes take effect immediately. almost in real time. by this meaning from a few minutes to a few hours. In some instances I've even seen results after just few seconds!

G is a huge system. A system this size could not function properly if it would take ages to update... If this was the case, when a change propagates all the way to the end, the beginning could already be in a different state. This would mean complete inconstancy...and possible failure...

In some areas, G takes longer to update, indeed, but in other, updates happen almost instantly...

(again... this is purely a personal observation...)

[BillyS]

It actually makes sense that earnings drop with the addition of 3rd party ads

Not to me.

There is no reason for Google to substitute lower paying ads for ones that will bring in more revenue. If anyone at Google were to come up with that particular idea, I don't think they'd be employed very long.

Google will be adding 3rd party ads to increase inventory where there is a shortage OR substitute these ads when they are higher paying than existing inventory.

[JCKline]

This may just be a coincidence, but yesterday morning (after another bad day) I blocked ALL certified ad networks and my eCPM and earnings have nearly tripled, both yesterday and today. It accorred within an hour of the change. I will report back if this changes for better or worse...but things had been so bad until this change, I can't think of any other reason.

BillyS - I undrstand your point that "Google will be adding 3rd party ads to increase inventory where there is a shortage OR substitute these ads when they are higher paying than existing inventory.", but what happens when the low bidding ads (weather they are "behavior targeted" or not) have even MORE low paying ads in the "inventory", hence getting more impressions. I feel that maybe "thining the heard" a little could be a good thing when you have only so many ad impressions a day. In other words, I would rather have a couple of "low bid ads" shown to one viewer with more "high bid ads" that have more of a chance being clicked, then a sworm of low bid ads being shown...make sense?

[Tashi]

JC- Interesting, let us know how it evolves.

[JCKline]

Well I took another step forward by actually looking at the ad networks...I was too lazy to really check before, and noticed many were controlled by Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc. Since my last post, I decided to allow these networks only (about 9). I checked my account about 30 minutes later and my eCPM jumped up again. Coincidence - maybe...but maybe allowing less ad networks (just the big ones) is helping. I was surprised at how mny "dinky" networks were allowed, and low paying networks like Chitika (which never paid well when I was a member) are there. Now I wait and let this ride for some days and report back. It can't hurt to "play around" when things were so bad before. Everything else I tried didn't seem to matter...but this? Perhaps I found something that I can feel like "I have some control".

[BillyS]

JCKline - I'm hoping your observations are based on a site much larger than the one in your profile. To make a 30 minute observations, I'm assuming you're near a million page impressions each day.

My site has an Alexa rank close to the one in your signature, and my eCPM jumps around by the hour without making any change at all. I attribute that movement to click dumps and simple reporting noise. It's not unusual for it to double within two hours (early morning to mid morning).

I'm not sure I understand the "thinning the heard" explanation, but I do think Google can make better decisions on optimizing the monetization of a website.

That said, I do remove certain ads (pharms and the like) because I don't want my audience to be exposed to those ads. Even if Google thinks I'll make more money with them in my inventory.

[JCKline]

BillyS - What I mean by "thinning out the heard", is my theory that if I block the small certified ad networks, the ads showing during the "down time" will force supplimented, higher bidding ad inventory to show, competing with the standard auction. Just speculation on my part of course, but things were getting so bad that I had to try something. I have nothhing to lose when I was gaining nothing to begin with. I has only been two days, but I'm seeing a big differance. In a month...who knows...

As far as "Google can make better decisions on optimizing the monetization of a website", I disagree...they haven't been with my website. Not that I don't trust G...but I don't.

[incrediBILL]

If there are new topics please open a new thread to discuss them as they will get lost in this big thread.

This thread is about stat reporting delays only.

[HuskyPup]

Wow, lowest Page Impression day of the year Thursday for me, ~41% of 2010 stavafluc, fortunately my EPC has recovered a little therefore a reasonable day considering the low volume of clicks. I bet today and tomorrow will beat all low-time records for me.

[jmccormac]

There's always a tradtional slump in the stats on my sites around this time each year but whatever Goofle did recently, the stats are a bit lower. Seasons greetings to all.

Regards...jmcc

[cien]

Interesting day:

Traffic -> EXTREMELLY LOW.
CTR -> HIGH
EPC -> HIGH

Let me add that I did get rid of third party ads.

Merry Christmas everybody. Hope next year things are more stable.

[HuhuFruFru]

impressions minus 50%
ctr minus 60%

:(