Forum Moderators: martinibuster
My CTR has remained the same however my average EPC, thereby my eCPM, has been reduced by just over 15.5%.
I have not had one day out of the four reaching my Feb 1-13 daily average earnings even though the clicks are there.
Has anyone else seen a similar reduction?
FWIW my EPC tends not to vary greatly over a month, maybe the odd day or so, but very rarely not for four consecutive days.
It's good to remember that it's not really a "normal" week:
- President's day
- Valentine's day
- (Ski, etc) holiday week in many countries
[edited by: Lame_Wolf at 2:48 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2009]
It's good to remember that it's not really a "normal" week
No criticism of you alephh however just how many weeks of a year are considered "normal" in US terminology.
I've never known so many holidays, they seem to be every other week! In the UK, apart from Easter, Xmas and New Year, we have 3 extra days...2 in May and 1 in August, that's it!
Another question has to be why would the CPC paid by AdWorders be reduced simply because it is a "holiday" time? Surely for many widget sectors it would be a sensible time to increase their advertising spend IF extra traffic is going to those sites or is this another American "norm" with either too much or too little proven analysis?
Me? I know nothing and I haven't known that for very long :-)
And being though Sun - Mon - Tues are my best days it dosen’t bode well for the rest of the week.
I hate it when I see these patterns; it brings out the conspiracy theorist in me!
[edited by: dawnstar at 3:46 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2009]
my eCPM, has been reduced by just over 15.5%
My eCPM for the same period is down 35%
I haven't noticed any significant drop or increase in average EPC over the past few days (just the usual minor ups and downs), and EPC for February to date has been pretty decent. For my site, clickthrough rate has been the big drag on earnings. People just don't seem to be clicking as readily as they used to, probably because so many of them are reluctant to translate "That sounds cool" into "That sounds cool, I want to buy it" in the current economy.
Another question has to be why would the CPC paid by AdWorders be reduced simply because it is a "holiday" time? Surely for many widget sectors it would be a sensible time to increase their advertising spend IF extra traffic is going to those sites or is this another American "norm" with either too much or too little proven analysis?
Lots of reasons. First, extra traffic isn't important. It's the "right kind" of traffic. Second, it's anticipation of less competition, so drop the bids to make sure. Third, it's anticipation about the value of the traffic.
You should be able to take it from there.
...and always remember, it's PERCEPTIONS, and not objective reality that determines behavior.
is to actively understand adwords and how advertisers work.
It's the "right kind" of traffic.
Your points are totally valid however have advertisers the actual "facts" that holiday periods do not attract spending visitors or is it a reverse psychology game played by some pretending the traffic is of less value when it may actually be the opposite?
Honestly I don't know however my EPC usually recovers very quickly from a low spell yet this is now the fifth day of much lower than 2009's average...and straight after last Saturday's debacle.
Conspiracy, no, something broken for some of us...more likely.
Sure, there are lot of holidays, most of them without any affect to publishers (depending on niche, traffic/advertsers/continents, etc) but I have come to notice that some of the holidays will explain/fit data variations pretty nicely - year after year.
Your points are totally valid however have advertisers the actual "facts" that holiday periods do not attract spending visitors or is it a reverse psychology game played by some pretending the traffic is of less value when it may actually be the opposite?
For my site, clickthrough rate has been the big drag on earnings.
Me too, the average CTR of my sites has decreased substantially from the long term average (past years) since september, however, some increase of EPC has somewhat help my revenues stay above water.
The past 2-3 days have also been pretty weak.
After Thursday being my lowest earning day of 2009, Friday's earnings were 70% higher. I don't think roller coasters are allowed to have such extremes are they? :-)
It's not yet recovered, that's if it does. I'm just hoping things stabilise soon but what can I do but wait.
These "glitches" can mean a difference of thousands of dollars per month which is dramatic.
Fingers crossed this week is a better one for us all.
I'm with you HP. It seems some troll the forums to reiterate the same old "changes in advertisers" etc. It's just too coincidental that the huge drop come after the downtime.
But why was there a "huge drop" for some and not for others? If Google made a global change of some kind, shouldn't it be affecting publishers across the board?
If Google made a global change of some kind, shouldn't it be affecting publishers across the board?
The problem is that we have no idea of how Stupid Pricing is actually implemented and how Google actually applies it.
Sure they give us a brief explanation of what is supposedly more relevant for advertisers however a slight change in the algo, or whatever has been done, could mean a significant change both up or down for only a select few.
It's very noticeable that a limited number of publishers see similar changes all at the same time and to varying degrees therefore it is not a random coincidence but a specific action on Google's part.
Do they see posts here and think "Ouch, we tweaked it a bit too much, better throttle it back a bit"?
Certainly we should all expect statistical variations however some of these tweaks are a severe kick in the nuts making one wonder IF one has actually done something wrong and has been penalised only for a while later to see the metrics return to their normal patterns.
Interestingly I was re-reading 21_blue's post from 3+ years ago earlier on, it is still extremely valid, probably more so these days:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Lets say it were a bug that only effected channels that were created before February 19th 2007. It's not going to effect everybody is it, in fact only a small percentage of publishers.
Perhaps a new set of keywords, topics or something else now trigger smart pricing to a great extent. Perhaps Google decided to take a greater percentage from only UK publishers. I really have no idea but it's crazy to assume that because EVERYBODY wasn't effected, the drops in earnings, must be due to drop in advertisers or changes to their max CPC.
Their algo is utter crap. It's unstable at the best of times. A prime example is that I just made a new channel for one of my main ads and ecpm has shot up 4 times. I find that alarming. Even if it's temporary.
but WHY are the ads less appropriate to my content since the 14th?
Interesting you should write that. I supply specialised construction products and normally the ads are superbly targetted however today I saw some Greek island hire car ads!
Their "Little" tweaks seem to have untested consequences at times.
Regards...jmcc
