I've also noticed completely different and irrelevant ads on my sites. I've always had mostly game related ads but now I have credit cards, expedia, windows driver updates, clothing, college, and plumbing ads. It makes no sense.

I agree Edge. A switch was definitely flipped. This was deliberate.

Have they moved your accounts into smart-pricing mode?
[support.google.com...]

This is somewhat of a rhetorical question, as there is no way to know whether or not your are impacted by smart-pricing. (As far as I know)

Did they implement smart pricing around October 1st on a ton of accounts then?

Had a really bad day Thursday, the worst yet! :(

Anyone have any feedback on their Thursday? Better / worse?

Im seeing improvment ,hope it stays... others ?

Anyone have any feedback on their Thursday? Better / worse?

Thursday was woeful. Poor ad quality, reasonable CTR but appalling EPC. Then again, Thursdays are almost always poor for me, so it's nothing out of the ordinary.

Continuing my RPM list, unfortunately it doesn't seem to be recovering. Mostly due to lower CPCs.

RPM relative to September 29:
- Sep 29 100%
- Sep 30 68%
- Oct 1 40%
- Oct 2 65%
- Oct 3 68%
- Oct 4 73%
- Oct 5 60%
- Oct 6 72%

I did notice a pattern. Midnight - 9 am PST (or 09:00 - 18:00 CET) everything seems to go by just fine. But then it is like everything goes to an extreme slow and the RPM plummets.

Big change for us was a drop in CPC by -20%. Made everything worse, it could be because i banned some really unrelated BS ads. Who knows!

In clock terms, the first six or seven hours of the Adsense day are usually terrible. Most of my traffic in this time is UK, Aus and Asia. It either doesn't click or, if it does, it doesn't earn. Australian traffic is particularly miserly. Thousands of PVs from India too but they only make pennies.

A couple of years ago I used to average $15-20 an hour in the first quarter of the day, then US traffic would arrive and things would really kick off. Now I don't see even half those amounts.

Thursday was quite low for me despite the same level of traffic sent to the network - but not as low as this past Saturday was : / Luckily a few other networks help me reach a self-imposed daily minimum. Hope the Christmas season is, at the very least, solid and I can get through February 2017.

My Thursday magically rebounded back to normal and Friday is looking like it'll be normal too.

Here is my full list from 9/29 forward

September (9/1-9/29) = 100% of RPM
Jan-Aug (1/1-8/31) = 88% of RPM
9/30 = 47.2%
10/1 = 51.6%
10/2 = 99.44% (normal day)
10/3 = 62.9%
10/4 = 65.1%
10/5 = 39.9%
10/6 = 103.3% (normal day)
10/7 = 81.7% (normal so far since US traffic hasn't flooded in yet, fingers crossed)

To those asking about being smart priced. It's possible but I highly doubt it for several reasons:

1) It's not just CPC that fell but CTR too
2) Not all my sites are seeing record low CPCs
3) I've had 2 rebound days seemingly at random
4) I've noticed far less relevant ads
5) Under clicks->impressions, I'm seeing a noticeable drop in impressions even though traffic has been up (so ads aren't loading I'm guessing?)

We had a very bad day on Thursday.

Our CPC have been about the same until yesterday then it became really awful. Today the CPC is still awful but the CTR have increased 25%. Just need the CPC back and i'll have a normal day. I wish :D

Ok, so it seems on Sept 26 - 30 Google or other has decided to increase CPE type ads on my site and deliver fewer CPC ads. Then, starting on Oct. 3 - 6 (yesterday), I got lower paying CPM ads and fewer CPE's. I don't yet what the mix of ads are today..

Not knowing exactly what Google AdSense is doing.. I will speculate that they are experimenting with ad types. I assume to see what the best ad types or mix to deliver on my site?

Seeing recovery today 10/7 Friday.

Either something broke over the last couple of days via much higher "smart pricing threshold" or certain higher paying ads were not served or beginning of quarter.

Do you guys and gals have a lot of ads banned? I really don't ban anyone except in rare cases. Only category disabled is the sexually suggestive one.

Thursday was excellent, good CPC, but Friday has been terrible, the first ready bad day for October! Google seems to have removed a lot of clicks today as false clicks and combined with an extremely low CPC, it doesn't look good. Maybe it will pick up late in the day.

Yesterday (Thursday) was an excellent day. It was like they flipped a switch. Then today it's slow again. I haven't changed a thing.

Seeing recovery today 10/7 Friday.

Too soon to call it a recovery, but with Page RPM at 120% (up from 72% on Thursday) it sure is a good day for me, too. A record day, in fact. Very peculiar. It's all too jumpy for my taste, but I'm happy to see a good day among the bad days.

Looking much better than yesterday, hopefully it will get better and stable :).

Changing text color to non-black (which was my former default) seems to help a bit, but as we all know, it takes days to analyze patterns.

But there is no question something is going on either with an experimental new ad format, the ads being served, a re-evaluation of pricing, etc. that is not working out well for enough people across the traffic spectrum to light up this thread...

My estimated earnings for the last 7 days is down 43.6%. I hope better days are ahead of us. Google Gods help us now!

Yesterday was only 5-10% below normal rpm (before 30.9) , but today started again with terrible RPM 50-60 % below...

others ?

Yesterday started good, but declined later in the day. A good start turned out to be almost as #*$!ty as the rest of the week. Today looks really horrible. Decent CTR, but the CPC is not very good. Making an overall crappy RPM.

My RPM was off the charts yesterday (118% RPM with 100% being Sept 1-29). Had my best earnings day all year. 2 days before that was my worst earnings day all year (39% RPM). Today (10/8) looks like another terrible day.

Google is at least responding to my questions and trying to help me with suggestions on how to increase CTR (move this ad here, use 336x280 not 350x250, etc) but what they're saying has nothing to do with what's happening and I don't want to tell them that or press the issue.

Seeing some empty positions right now, like Google can't fill them, or there is something else going on.

@Maximum44 a few of us are having the same problem, see this thread...
[webmasterworld.com...]

I spoke to one of the support team and they were initally quick to respond with the standard reply, clear cache etc. But after sending them more detailed information I've not heard back.

Thanks for directing me to that thread Maleda!

I think we should all send same email to point them that something is wrong , and its not on our side ,
Changing ads position or color layout or anything wont fix anything,
I can see same from other webmasters reporting ..
sudden ctr drop and adsense full stop earning pennies...and like yesterday when everything was going as usual....
today again low ctr... one day 2.5% and other 0.8%..
Anyway we need to do something and point those problems to adsense as we are going to bankrupt ...