Ad CTR Increased 250% for past 2 months. Should I report to Google

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Ad CTR Increased 250% for past 2 months. Should I report to Google

Unusual Ad CTR activity - self report to Google or not

thedonald123

1:24 am on Apr 5, 2019 (gmt 0)

I just noticed the CTR on Interstitial (vignette) Ads on my website jumped from 2-3% to 14% starting on Feb. 20th and consistently continuing through today. It's very unusual.
Going back 5 years it's never been above 4% for a month
What do I do?
I don't want to get my account in trouble with Google. My website is my living, and Google mostly through AdX and a little through Adsense is responsible for 70% of it.
But if I don't report it to Google can I get into bigger trouble? I have an option in Adsense to send an Email.

How do I figure out which ads are causing it?
Yes, i can remove the interstitial code from my website, (It's the only Adsense code I use, the other ads are from AdX) but I could be throwing out revenue.
What would you do?

NickMNS

1:39 am on Apr 5, 2019 (gmt 0)

I just checked into my stats specifically for "vignette ads" and last month my CTR was 10.3% whereas last year it was 1.6%. But I noticed a big difference in number of impressions. I had 5X more impressions in 2018 than in 2019. I suspect that AdSense may have changed either how they count impressions, or how/when/to who they serve the ads.

thedonald123

4:52 pm on Apr 5, 2019 (gmt 0)

That's interesting. Thanks for sharing.

But I noticed a big difference in number of impressions. I had 5X more impressions in 2018 than in 2019.

I'm not seeing any increase in impressions just clicks.

Quite a relief that others are seeing this also, which would mean it's legitimate revenue and I I can Keep the money! :-)
For me it's a huge increase in revenue. Vignette ad have gone from less than 10% of my total revenue to over 20%. That's Huge! I just hope it keeps up

Anyone else reading this seeing a large increase in "vignette ads"
The report is under "Ad Behavior"

CommandDork

9:03 pm on Apr 5, 2019 (gmt 0)

Same here. Huge increase started in or around Feb 20th, 2019 and it has continued to trend upwards.

CTR for it in 2018 was typically in the 0.75% to 1.85% range. Now its hovering around 7% to 10%. Today it's near 12%.

thedonald123

9:20 pm on Apr 5, 2019 (gmt 0)

Nice! I assume you are seeing increase in revenue to go with it?

Would be great to get some info from Google on what has changed

spyka

12:08 am on Apr 6, 2019 (gmt 0)

Exact same issue here (around 80% of our traffic is UK) since Feb 20th. I disabled vignette ads via Auto Ads options

thedonald123

4:55 am on Apr 7, 2019 (gmt 0)

@spyka, May I ask why you disabled them?