No need to guess! I've just checked for the first time today and the red bar is there, it seems to be a permanent feature for me.

Yeah, redbar for me as well - checking it for the first time today. Also, when I click on "Performance Report", it by default shows me yesterday's stats (with no redbar) and redbar is shown only when I select "today" in the date range (OR when I go through 'View sites' link on the homepage where default date is today). May be a possible reason why it goes unnoticed by many people.

After years of steady growth my average RPM has plummeted by 40% in just over 3 weeks. Either we're seeing a strong market correction or Google is giving away free clicks. Good to see that my overall traffic is stable and my US and UK visitor numbers are rising.

Are you referring to page RPM, or impression RPM? My page RPM has recovered quite well in the last few months, I suppose we sometimes peak above £3 and very rarely drop below £2. However, my impression RPM has never gone back to what it was like in the good old days. Suppose we average between 60p and 90p, occasionally rising above £1. However, monthly earnings are always in three digits so I can't really complain

My red bar has gone but the numbers look way out of kilter, 3 clicks from India and 2 from Romania for 32 cents, 10 PVs from the USA in 5 hours, no way are these correct.

At least my media.net is now up to date

Not entirely sure what is going on today but RPM is so low it's absolutely unbelievable. Stupid thing is, I've had three times as many page views so far but pitiful earnings so far today. Something really weird is going on

Red bar replaced by this:

One goal of Matched content is to increase user engagement. Your page RPM and other metrics might be affected by this increase.

What on earth is going on?

RedBar, do you have Matched Content on your site? If not, the message is obviously the result of a server glitch.

BTW, I do have Matched Content on my site, and I see that message every time I look at my "Performance Reports" page. I click the "x" to dismiss it, and it reappears on my next visit like the cat in the old children's song:

"But the cat came back, he couldn't stay no longer,
Yes the cat came back the very next day,
The cat came back, thought she were a goner,
But the cat came back for it wouldn't stay away."

do you have Matched Content on your site?

Nope, I had to look it up, never heard of it before! And no matter what I do the darned message stays there.

Today's CTR is dire again, normal traffic, no clickers.

@One goal of Matched content is to increase user engagement. Your page RPM and other metrics might be affected by this increase.

This thing is enabled by site to site only. I think a site with a certain number of "pages" will unlock this feature. My guess that the threshold is about 1000 pages. I have several sites and only 1 with 1000+ pages and that has it enabled.

Just having 1 site with the feature will see that message. I have been seeing it for over half year now I believe.

Never used it however since the feature does not apply to my particular site with it enabled period.

The message never goes away though lol, it's like they want to shove it in your face just like we do shove our ads at our visitors sometimes haha.

Feeling hopeless every day. Earning is just unbelievable. Every time I see the low numbers, I just stare blankly on the screen and take a deep breath. The next day, I come back and hope this not real. But it is.

Bad Earnings still have low rpm-ctr-cpc .. BY 50% ..

Ouch, PVs normal, CTR way down, Saturday was easily my lowest day of the year thus making it one of my worst-ever days with earnings at 20% of February average.

The next lowest is 50% of average, the US didn't even turn up for the day with an rpm of 15.6% of Feb average and earnings of 12%. What the heck happened, data loss?

Looks like it's going to be another one of those really weird days. So far today I've had 3518 page views, 4041 impressions. Eight clicks with page rpm at 41p impression rpm at 36p with a grand total of £1.44. I know it's only early, but the majority of my traffic comes from the US so it's only very early morning, what is going on? I'm wondering if it's a bot or something

a grand total of £1.44

After 5 hours of an AdSense day I'm at 1p, yes, £0.01, from the USA ... and surprise surprise ... a red bar!

Things are moving up slowly, to £2.50 or something now, however my page rpm is only at 61p whereas normally it would be over £2. Also got the red bar again.

I've just had an Indian click with a higher value than a USA click, 13p v 12p ... What does that tell you?

@RedBar, how can you see individual clicks? Does that mean you had just one click from each geo when you checked?

In about three hours I will have NO AS ads left on my pages. It will all be media.net, Gourmet Ads and Conversant. I'm just very tired of trying to make Google happy. I've had it!

Does that mean you had just one click from each geo when you checked?

Yep, I have hardly had any clicks today whatsoever, everything is almost at a complete standstill and do you know what, those two country click values have changed, the US one is now 400% more!

Something is very, very wrong.

Having a decent day here. I had a red bar very early in the day.

A totally and utterly bizarre day for me then I thought ... it's Valentine's Day ... doh, this has happened before and on a Sunday, whacko metrics ... there is one thing one can predict about people ... unpredictability:-)

Saw second highest daily rpm of the year

Good for you, my (especially US) RPM is still very weak compared to previous periods and months. Lowest in years.
Not sure what the reason is but most of my visitors are in schools, universities, and educational institutions and use networks rather than individual IP addresses. Could well be when I read about Google panicking about possible bot activities.

Friday was very good as payment (Valentine ads), but the weekend was like a ghost town as payment and traffic.

I had a pretty good day yesterday. I suppose I was a little bit above what I am happy with on a daily basis. Mind you, it was a weird day yesterday. Page views around 4500-5000 and impressions are normally between 14,000 and 15,000. However yesterday page views were 10,400 and impressions were 20,600. I have 74 clicks which is slightly above average. However, page rpm was £1.16 and impression rpm was 59p. If my page rpm had been double like it normally as I think we earnings would be much much higher, but it wasn't a bad day after all. I just don't understand why page and impression rpm were so high yesterday. Even though according to Google analytics I had just over 3500 hits a day, that's nothing unusual.

Today's CTR is dire again, normal traffic, no clickers.

I would wager you have too many options available to show visitors more content(categories, navigation, similar content, in-content links etc). I added the adsense "matched content" links to my site and saw CTR plummet and pageviews skyrocket. Yay for me, showing more content for less money overall! At some point you need to balance for the click.

Yesterday saw my third-lowest PVs of the year, the USA was very lacking with both PVs and clicks, was it national no click day or some other weird phenomena?

It is absolute #*$! show for me. Traffic is ok (about 40K daily) but the feb earnings are like 60%+ lower than average. Just took al look at last years jan and feb performance and it was way better.