Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I've checked all my sites and it seems none of them have been down. I've excluded factors like weekend etc as I'm comparing with similar periods in the past. It's not the end of the month, so it can't be budgets. My impressions and CTR are normal so it can't be the IE problem and/or ads not being seen by visitors. But I've "lost" a three digit sum so far as a result of this reduced EPC.
I know it's a small sample and all that but our daily clicks are in the decent three-digits - so not that small a sample.
Anybody else noticed a drop in EPC?
Don't know the reason ...
One thing that I have noticed is with this broad matching there is not the same subject relevance.
By example a page that talks about cleaning a home would now show many more ads about home loans than cleaning.
The broad matching could therefore give you a reduced CTR but on that same note you could see an increased or decreased CPC due to the new variety of ads being shown. It all depends which way the cookie is crumbling.
Maybe this is why google is keeping us in the dark with CPC and limited reporting. Once all these trials have been dealt with they might start letting us know what is going on
Up until a few days ago, the overall trend for EPC had definitely been downward. However, that seems to have reversed now, at least temporarily.
Sharky, I must admit that over a 7 day period it works out OK - about average. I suppose the good start to the week kinda had me fooled. I wasn't expecting that they'd drop my earnings to make sure the average per week was maintained ;-) Seriously, though I think you may have a point there. Maybe they do try to ensure the average per week does not go up too fast.
You do seem to have much higher variation on EPC: 1X to 4X. Mine tended to be much, much tighter. Perhaps that's why this drop is so much more noticeable.
I have a spreadsheet with CTR, CPM after CPC, EPC and I've noticed a little drop in EPC (consequently CPM). The CTR is constant for my site and impressions in the last three weeks went up a little (thanks to some articles I've posted that attracted lots of readers).
As for weekends, for some reason Sundays are great days for my sites... who knew?
BZ
To summarise it seems that the drop is not universal - not everybody who's posted here has admitted a drop. That's what I was trying to establish.
Also, I was not aware that it was a long weekend in North America (though that would affect mainly the impressions and consequently the click-throughs ...but not the EPC).
I hope it gets better this week for ALL of you :-)
Andy
There is something odd going on.
Also, I was not aware that it was a long weekend in North America (though that would affect mainly the impressions and consequently the click-throughs ...but not the EPC).
A long weekend could result in lower payments per click if advertisers suspended their ads for the weekend, or if advertisers with a day-trader mentality went to the beach instead of bidding.
In any case, I think it's hard to discern trends on the basis of limited experience and anecdotal evidence. There are just too many variables. Take my category, European travel: As we get into the low travel season, demand (and therefore bids) are almost certain to drop for some destinations, products, and services; but in some cases, demand and bids may go up. Who can say, for example, that hotel demand in Venice during Carnival or in Switzerland during the ski season won't offset the off-season drop in demand for Eurailpasses and camper rentals? Experience with affiliate sales may provide some guidance, but only some, because AdSense can provide targeted ads for so many topics that affiliate programs don't address--e.g., Greek yacht rentals, mail-order alphorns (the ideal Christmas gift for the adventurous tuba player), or naturist resorts in Croatia. Even if advertisers' bids stayed the same, seasonal changes in user demand (a.k.a. the "look-to-book ratio") would affect revenues and effective CPM.
One thing for sure this month will have to pick up substantially to fit the averages of previous months. It is still early, with all the changes, but will have to monitor it over the next few weeks.
With the number of posts on this, would have to think there is an underlying reason somewhere?
Things were great up to October 8, but there was 45% drop starting Oct 9
I saw a drop in CTR (about 20-30% drop) starting Oct. 9th
My original post said that my EPC had dropped by about 50% - and that was from about Oct 9. OK, with the Adsense user base being as big as it is there is always the possibility that it's a coincidence that someone else is experiencing similar figures to mine.
A long weekend could result in lower payments per click if advertisers suspended their ads for the weekend. Good point. CTR may still hold steady if lower priced ads are used instead. We'll see how the rest of the week pans out. Not looking good so far though.
Unlike vacations and travel our field tends to be very stable through the year in terms of ad spend (obviously that history for ADSENSE adspend is not available). And we benefit from not having too many variables.
One thing for sure this month will have to pick up substantially to fit the averages of previous months
Clicks and impressions usually come through out of sync.
I would hazzard a guess that clicks are being washed through their fraud algo hence delayed,whilst impressions are more likely to go straight onto your stats.
Hence CTR all over the map on a given day
I would hazzard a guess that clicks are being washed through their fraud algo hence delayed,whilst impressions are more likely to go straight onto your stats.Hence CTR all over the map on a given day
I hope so. The truth is that yesterday I posted a scoop on a new product, and got listed in many other websites.
As a result I had 25,000 pages served from my site in the last 24 hours, instead of the usual ~10,000.
My CTR is the same as before, my impressions are up accordingly, but my EPC are 50% from the previous day.
I manage to increase the impressions ~130% and the EPC is 50% from a day before? :(
[edited by: freitasm at 10:07 pm (utc) on Oct. 13, 2003]
Something is definitely changing here.. I don't know if the cost of ads is going down or what, but for me there's a fairly distinct point where earnings drop off... it's sort of unnerving considering I was close to getting a check every month, and if things remain this way I'll be lucky to get one every 3... :(
Last month it was high numbers of PSA's...this month seems to be replaced with lowing earnings in EPC. Have to think they got the ads serving improved through broad matching but getting lower paying ads as a result.
Day to day of course the figures are all over the place (3:1 ratio between best and worst) , although again nothing unusual recently. One reason could be my pages are very stable (no new pages).
I would hazzard a guess that clicks are being washed through their fraud algo hence delayed,whilst impressions are more likely to go straight onto your stats.
It looks the other way round to me, impressions lagging clicks as CTR drops during the day. CTR starts very high for the first 1000 or two impressions each day then goes downhill - can't just be click-happy people awake in Asia (start of PST day) and non-clickers in the US (later in PST day). My main audience is US, Canada and UK.
On top of that we saw a minor shift in ads served in the last few days, both in numbers (not full sets) and some lack in targetting. That's the basis of my "broad change" question above.
Dave
Some are still experiencing stable 7-day averages; I understand the point of looking at earnings over a longer time period as daily variations can be caused by a large number of factors.
However, I still believe that something has changed. I would appreciate if those of you not having any drop come back in a week to confirm that the 7-day average is still within normal variance of what you have experienced so far.
BZ
