Hour by hour smartpricing?

[Burningcoals]

In the past month or so I've noticed something new in regards to daily earnings on my sites. I'll check my Adsense dashboard first thing in the morning and make note that the total earnings up to that point is $17.62 with an RPM of $1.41. An hour later I check the dashboard again but the total daily earnings has dropped to $10.03 with a RPM of .75.

I'm seeing this a lot lately, sometimes twice a day, often every day. I'll take note that the earnings are humming along early in the morning and check back an hour or so later and the total earnings have dropped anywhere from 30 to 50%. I've been an Adsense publisher for seven years and I haven't seen this before.

I'm in policy compliance,not getting any messages that there are invalid clicks, etc.

[denisl]

My earnings are also more up and down than I have seen before but I doubt it's variable smart pricing as you suggest. I think its more likely to be due to some advertisers targeting geolocations that may be online at certain times or (I don't actually know) but I would guess that some advertisers may be able to target particular times of the day.
The result is that competion between advertisers is likely to vary considerably as you go through the day

[piatkow]

A drop in RPM is understandable as the best paying and most interesting advertisers use up their daily budget and leaving only the low payers in play but that doesn't explain a negative change of $7.59 over one hour. Getting the odd click cancelled yes, but unless you are in a high paying niche that's probably a dozen or more clicks, before allowing for any new ones in that hour.

[nomis5]

Over the past year or so the reports from the Adsense dashboard on a day by day day basis, and even more so on an hour by hour basis, have become almost irrelevant. I believe that G are purposely mixing up what you see because they are now truly paranoiac about anyone getting an insight into what is happening in those small timescales.

Yes, I look a couple of times a day but in truth anything shorter than a week's figures has little impact on me anymore.

[greatstart]

Not only am I seeing hour by hour smart pricing, but day by day. It seems that if I have one or two good days, it is usually followed by 3 or 4 poor performing days. It's like they are trying to make up for the higher pay they gave me on the 2 good days.

None of this ever made any sense to me, but what does count is the total at the end of each month.

[itworked]

I too have more regularly seen earnings go backwards hour to hour than I have in the past 5 years. I've also seen some very big clicks, like $30 clicks in the past 3 weeks. Twice those high value clicks came and went, once it actually stayed in the account.

[jimbeetle]

Okay, bear with me as I haven't checked my intraday stats in years. It used to be that clicks and money weren't updated at the same time, there was always a lag with one or another.

Do AdSense stats still update that way or is it now real time?

[itworked]

Analytics and Adsense are still a bit out of synch, but what I was referring to and believe Buringcoals as well, was Adsense showing the days earnings at $100 at 10:00am and then at 10:15am showing the earnings at $95.00. It has always done this. I was just noting that I see it more frequently now.

It could be that they are just providing more visibility to a process that was always in place.

[frankleeceo]

I agree. While noticing that they "take" away more money on a daily basis. I have found less money to be taken away during the monthly finalization.

I usually notice higher than normal CPC earning during the 1~4 AM hours and taken away. Could it be that the budget spending is normalized to a daily average amount?

I think I check stats too much.

[swa66]

I doubt it has anything to do with smartpricing.

Smartpricing is on your account and it is dramatic (you loose nearly all of your CPC as advertisers don't value clicks of your users anymore) There's no little bit smartpricing.

What is there is regular value of clicks, (e.g. some click from a bloke in India or China is not going to do well for Joe the Plumber who lives in Alaska). Now with daylight hours moving around the globe, the region that's most active at any time of day moves around just as well. If you do not have global advertisers, you might well see this effect. Moreover we all know some countries out there have a bigger population of pro spammers and click fraud farms than others ... Google will know too ...
What else is there: obviously the budgets can run out on a daily basis, as budgets are used up the better paying slots are used up and you end up with more trashy advertising, that your more advanced users will not be interested in.

But smartpricing: It's not a myth, it exists, but that's not what you're seeing here as the myth in publisher's eyes is that it's like losing a 10% or so of your CPC (losing 90% is more likely), nor that it's something that comes and goes and does so gradually. In reality it's a hit like be thrown off of the train, one step away from getting banned.

Don't waste time looking multiple times a day at your stats: It has NO positive effect. moreover the stats are delayed and not assured to be updated in sync throughout the day.
Build a better website for the visitors instead: that has effect and it's long lasting.

[martinibuster]

Adsense showing the days earnings at $100 at 10:00am and then at 10:15am showing the earnings at $95.00.

Seems like there is there is a misunderstanding, as jimbeetle noted. AdSense only shows estimated earnings. That's how the control panel labels it, estimated earnings. Google is not "taking away" any of your money. It was just an estimate.

[CalArch90]

I'm seeing this as well, it started about a month ago or so, I've been a publisher for more than 10 years and have never seen this before. It seems to me what we are possibly seeing is clicks get discounted in real-time. It's not smart pricing, but rather real-time click invalidation.

[greatstart]

Something has gone wrong this month. In all the years I've been with AdSense, I've never seen it so bad. This smart pricing scheme is ridiculous. I hate to be a quitter, but I need to give it up by the end of this year. It's just not worth dealing with any longer.