Anyone else seeing less ads per adblock?

Forum Moderators: martinibuster

Message Too Old, No Replies

Anyone else seeing less ads per adblock?

Starting 30/04/08

zett

8:36 am on May 9, 2008 (gmt 0)

I am looking at my Excel sheet tracking Adsense statistics.

There is one item that seems to have significantly changed: the value for "individual ads per ad block".

Over the past 1+ year, the value was at 3.80 on average, with very little deviation. Since 30/04 the average has dropped to 3.44, which is basically a 10% reduction of ads shown to visitors.

The site layout has not changed, so I rule that one out. It seems that Google is just displaying less ads for (my) visitors right now. The CTR has not been affected. Ad blocks get clicked like before (so I do not mind the change too much).

Anyone else seeing this, or any idea what might be the reason for this change?

gaiadata

9:25 pm on May 12, 2008 (gmt 0)

I have noticed the same thing. A wide skyscraper (160x600) is showing 2-3 ads instead of 5. My ctr or cpm has not changed either ... (strange). I think it's been going on for a few days now.

purplecape

2:05 am on May 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

I've been seeing this for much longer--and in fact I remember Google saying something about this when they started doing if. If there is an ad or two in that the algo. says will do much better than the others, they just show the top one or two.

This isn't something new.

zett

5:17 am on May 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

I know that the principle is not something new. Has been around for ages.

But the effect I'm seeing is pretty strange: a SUDDEN, CLEAR, SOLID reduction of ads in my ad blocks, from 3.80 to 3.44 per ad block. 10% less ads without any effect on CTR for the ad blocks.

Strange.

bumpski

11:01 am on May 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

Could it be the landing page visit time quality score change in Adwords?

They might be more effectively finding and ignoring redirects using the measure, so a significant portion of ad's quality scores have dropped.

Thinking out loud