Impressions and clicks UP... revenue down

drives me crazy every December!

[ca3le]

This has partially already been discussed, but everyone else is saying that their impressions are down too... not me.

This all happed about November 19th - My revenue dropped 4X lower than it was trending, and it still in the toilet, it did pick up to (almost) normal for three days though... only to depress me again when it fell. December has been historically lower for me as well. Last year though January '04 almost quadrupled December '03 ---

The thing is though... my clicks are UP, my impressions are UP, but my revenue is taking a fat dump... why do they have to stress me out durring the holidays EVERY YEAR... :lol:

Maybe I need to stop refreshing my stats every two hours and start wraping gifts...

Does anyone else trend like me?!? Or is my site just wierd? This scares me every year, stresses me out and make me think that the site that I now rely on as a primary source of income may flicker out, then I calm myself down by realizing that my traffic is still growing at a rate of 15-20%/month --- sigh. Do you all think that maybe it's just because for my computer technical / internet technical site that the advertisers for those types of ads are just paying less right now... maybe because their ad budgets are depleated at the end of the year.

[bumpski]

Google and Adwords using "smart pricing" claim they pay more to Adsense publishers that produce actual conversions for the Adwords advertiser. Perhaps in your area during the Holidays the Adsense ads being shown on your site are not "converting" well for the actual Adwords advertiser. How Adwords determines this is tough to tell. Adwords advertisers can voluntarily allow Adwords to monitor conversions (in some cases). For me this mechanism simply wouldn't work.
You really can't find out much more about Adwords "smart pricing", so I guess you're just going to have to live with the stress.
Some have said if you see untargeted ads on your site your revenue may go down, if the ads are very targeted your revenue per click may go up. So if you look at the ad targeting perhaps there will be a clue. This revenue variation is said to have a week or two delay though. Who knows, its just guesswork.

Happy Holidays