A change in code is what did my earnings in, flat simple and has nothing to do with Google liking my site or hating it, the quality of my content or traffic going up or down, not even smartpricing, Google simply forgot what my site is about and is suddenly serving ads not related.

I've had targeting problems from time to time, but they've invariably been sorted out after a day or two. (In the past few days, I even saw some PSAs on my site--something that hardly ever happens, at least in my geotargeting region.)

Yeah, in years I've never had such a drastic ongoing drop, for me this is no regular fluctuation.

Problem is it is not across the board for them to take action, there goes February.

Bad targeting is something we have discussed at length here since AdSense began. It's as annoying as can be and hurts income.

But......

Is it really Googles fault?

Or is it the fault of advertizers?

I think it's quite likely the latter in most cases. Advertizers that deliberately or otherwise include keywords that are very broad in their campaigns and/or use broad matching when a narrower match might work better and/or don't use negative words as well as they could seem like the more likely culprits to me.

Googles role in poor targeting might be more limited to approving ads that need to be better tuned to the apparent target.

Welcome to what we got hit with starting in December, a almost overnight drop by 35% of our revenue for no reason across our whole network. As someone said earlier, not a normal flux and is still with us to this day.

Our rep assured us we are not seeing smartpricing effects. Our ads are the same companies that have been advertising on our sites for 3.5 years.

CTR the same, traffic up, revenue down.

So either magically bid prices went down by the same percentage across several pr7 highly sought after sector sites due to deflation of ad inventory on tens of millions of different adverts a month that we serve or... we are buying jet fuel for someones corporate 747.

Perhaps Google is counting many more clicks as fraudulent?

For example, suppose many students at a college are clicking on ads, but Google sees that those clicks are all coming from the school's single IP address....?

Or maybe they're just giving away more clicks to head-off an "our clicks are fraudulent" rebellion by advertisers?

We have certainly seen a huge drop in eCPM since before Xmas last year...

And the new 300x250 ATF "Custom Placement Pack" has been a loss for us as well...

Last week was really bad for me, probably one of the worst weeks I've ever had - till something (unknown) happened Friday, and all the sites took off again bigtime. Past four days have been the best in months.

Good thing I like roller coasters.

netmeg is the first to post an improvement since Friday (Feb. 16). I began seeing lower eCPM on that day and it's gotten worse every day since (Sunday and Monday were actually the same). Today, though early, is in the (insert toilet reference)______.

I'm not changing a thing for a few more days. Just the usual page updating, adding pages, etc. Getting tired of <.03 clicks, I suggest G raise the minimum bid to at least .10. Seems reasonable enough, as I don't see the point of passing a user along for .02 or .03 or even a nickel, even if that user doesn't result in a sale. It's just ridiculously low in comparison to the price of just about everything else. At least in the US and most other developed nations.

Is Google a part of the globalisation effort to drag median incomes down to "level the playing field?"

That's what's happening. Somebody has already mentioned to me that my income from AS would be good money, in say, Peru. Nothing against Peru, per se, but their standard of living is much less expensive than here in the good old USA. Up the BIDS!

[added:]
Just wanted to add that this latest blip as of Friday coincides with AdWords ability to pause keywords. Could this have an effect on eCPM? You betcha. I'd say once the advertisers get tired of fiddling with this new feature (about 2 weeks) things will improve.

netmeg is the first to post an improvement since Friday (Feb. 16)

My eCPM on Saturday was up considerably over most of the previous week; yesterday and today are within a few cents of this month's average. Tomorrow may be good, bad, or in between.

Day-to-day (or even week-to-week) changes aren't very significant, in my opinion. It's best to think of AdSense as being like the stock market, where the ups and downs average out over time.

where the ups and downs average out over time.

or not....

or not....

The ups and downs will average out over time; that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be happy with the average. :-)

Another bad day. eCMP went down even more... lot of 0.01 cent clicks. Same ads which gave 0.10 cents per click a week ago now give only 0.01 cent per click. Why?

[edited by: Optimizer at 9:15 am (utc) on Feb. 21, 2007]

Same ads which gave 0.10 cents per click a week ago now give only 0.01 cent per click. Why?

The most obvious conclusion one comes to is an increase in ad real estate supply favouring advertisers. Howver as it is probably safe to assume that 'affected' publishers complaining about the downturn would come from a fairly diverse range of niches, such a conclusion would be simplistic.

Same here. Lowest eCPM since Aug. 6, 2006. This program is simply not reliable and eventually it's going to cost Google.

We should all be aware of the risks of doing business in blind contracts with mega-billion$$$ corporations.

I'll bet G's profits won't suffer this quarter.

I'll bet G's profits won't suffer this quarter.

It could be the reason. Google is trying to reach expected profits for 1Q/2007 and that could be the reason why they cut publishers share of profit. At the same time I wouldnt be surprised if they would double the profits for 1Q/2007.

There we go again, this conspiracy theory will never be put to rest.

Governments don't allow companies to steal, they hate competition.

I'm insulted at eCPM of $1.54 today.

This is supposed to be a top-shelf program, yet the results since last Friday have been less than what I'd expect from run of the mill banner campaigns.

If Google doesn't want our sites to host their ads and make them their mega-bucks, then it's time to look elsewhere. Whatever they're doing, I'm not happy about it. Earnings are off 40-50% and getting worse.

Fix whatever you morons broke!

I'm insulted at eCPM of $1.54 today.

wow... you mean you eCPM's so high? You think your is bad... mine hit less than that two days ago, then 30+ times more yesterday... talk about fuctuation!

well I feel better knowing that its not a conspiracy against me...my ctr is up as i said in a previous post...and the pay out now even Less than before it went up...well at least firefox w/ tool bar still gives a buck.

but I haveto agree with the look somewhere else...i get about 2% views to clicks...and i dont think i want to give 1000 "name recognition" views to any advertiser for a couple of pennys...

February has indeed been a weird month here... I get 4-5 bad days in a row.. then a very good day... then it starts again with 4-5 bad days. There is some tinkering going on, or some weird moves from advertisers.

February has indeed been a weird month here... I get 4-5 bad days in a row.. then a very good day... then it starts again with 4-5 bad days. There is some tinkering going on, or some weird moves from advertisers.

ditto.
there is A LOT of tinkering going on ALL THE TIME.
there are always WEIRD moves from WEIRD advertisers!

sigh...

there is A LOT of tinkering going on ALL THE TIME.

That may be, but what makes it particular this time is the decrease of revenue while actually experiencing an increase of traffic. eCPM has taken a dive lately.

I can not confirm your findings of ultra low eCPM. My eCPM is relatively solid since September 2006, at least when looking at 31-day-moving average values. I have long given up on looking at individual days trying to see bigger trends. The values simply swing too much to allow for any serious conclusion. Looking at longer trends, however, allows for some insights into the current situation (which may be the result of supply and demand, but probably also influenced by [cough] other variables as well).

what makes it particular this time is the decrease of revenue while actually experiencing an increase of traffic.

You can't expect an infinite number of high-paying ads, so with more traffic, it's likely that you're going to see more lower-paying ads as you use up your daily supply of clicks from Widgetco or Whatsit Corporation.

The algo changes have kicked in. Just for kicks, check your low eCPM from last February and compare it to this year. Mine is 20% higher this year.

The last 6-8 days, however, have been abnormally poor performing. Maybe it's just the middle of Winter.

sorry... i must have missed something... what algo changes?

as for eCPM, the this past week has been a real roller coaster... alternating between single digit one day, then high double digit the next...

And what if the eCPM we saw back in 2004-2005 was a bubble? Adwords advertisers are getting smarter, many of them choose not to advertise on the content network, or at least set separate bids for it. It wasn't even possible to have separate bids few years ago. Many advertisers didn't track ROI dependence on traffic origin, and averaged the ROI across the search and the content networks. I think most of them overestimated the content network ROI, add to that a Get Rich Quick with Adwords hype, and the bids were way too high.

My adsense eCPM was gradually falling during 2006. At the same time I was gradually introducing other income sources. Today adsense is about 25% percent of my total earnings with the lowest eCPM of all other options. I am not sure why I keep it at all. Just to diversify and keep an eye on the direction adsense is heading ...

sorry... i must have missed something... what algo changes?

I may be wrong, but I think he's talking about the latest update to the Quality Score algo on the AdWords side. That kicked in yesterday (or the night before last, depending on whom you ask)

"
Today adsense is about 25% percent of my total earnings with the lowest eCPM of all other options.
"
Arikgb,
Could you please elaborate on alternatives. you do have to tells us exact name but may be the combination.

I am convinced that only a combination of adsense/CMP/adbrite/kontera/aff link is going to work in future.

I am convinced that only a combination of adsense/CMP/adbrite/kontera/aff link is going to work in future.

A combination of AdSense ads, CPM display ads, and relevent affiliate links can work quite well for some topics.

kool,

I have adsense/YPN/chitika/affiliate links. Of course, YPN and adsense are never on the same page.