CTR issues?

I am getting the same number of traffic, targeting the same catagory, same ad impression numbers but 1/4 the number of clicks. Absolutly nothing has changed. Traffic is ruled out as is RPC. Could it possibly be a YPN tracking issue?

I Went from 1400 something clicks to 200 something clicks the next day, impressions on the day with 200 clicks was actually more then on the 1400 clicks day, RPC also went up.

Anyone else have this issue? I am just trying to figure out what is going on, because it has been sudden.

 

Mine is always all over the place too. Sometimes I wonder if it means that fewer ads are being served at any point in the day, but I figure that YPN has it all under control and everyone is working just fine.

 

can you tell if your clicks are coming from repeat visitors? i have noticed that ypn is not counting clicks from repeat visitors from the previous day.

just a thought

 

Not true.. i have 80% plus repeat visitors onlt 20% new everyday..

 

Ad relevance plays a huge role in CTR, and yahoo has a fraction of the inventory that google does. My CTR can increase by 300% if certain advertisers are running their campaign - and this is on sites generating hundreds of clicks per day, enough to be statistically significant. I track exactly which ads are being clicked and certain ads have vastly different CTR. Yahoo has also told advertisers to geotarget in the ad titles - i.e. "Plastic Surgery Clinic" vs. "Plastic Surgery New York" will result in large differences in CTR. A single advertiser can make CTR go from 3.5% to 11%. Yahoo has started ignoring multiple clicks from the same visitor under some circumstances. I can't be sure if it is just the same ad (different page) or more than 2 clicks per IP during the same visit.

 

I am aware of this, but the ads have not changed between those days. I mean my revenue is 1/10'th of what it was 3 days ago. Traffic is the same and RPC is still very high in my catagory.

This is my first time having an issue like this. I changed catagories just now to test.

 

I noticed the same thing. 1/3 the clicks but with the same impressions or more. I think YPN is blocking "invalid" clicks such as foreign clicks, repeat click from the same IP, suspicious clicks, etc.

This trend has started for me around the 21st of this month (nov.2006).

 

This actally hit me the 26th of this month. I geotarget my ads so they are not shown to foreign visitors. My site is not made for ads, so users are not accidently clicking things. I dont see how they would do this...

DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE THIS ISSUE AS WELL?

 

yes, i have said it so many times. what do you want to know? you are not alone. i have been seeing this since the update on the 19th of sept.

 

I'm having the same issue

 

First time I heared of you having the same issues. This pretty much makes YPN worthless to me. My revenue is 1/10 of what it was, just over night with no changes to my sites traffic or RPC.

Could this possibly be an issue YPN is not aware of?

 

ive posted a few times about this along with my experimentation into proving there was a problem with ypn not giving credit for US clicks via a variety of controlled experiments.

 

I see, so is there anything I can do about this? Or is my revenue streak with YPN pretty much over?

 

your visitors may be suffering from ad blindness especially if you have repeat visitors. try changing the ads look every so often

 

Thats not it, less then 15% of my visitors are repeat... This is clearly an issue over at YPN.

 

i believe you are correct. ypn clearly has an issue that they are not owning up to. they are filtering out seemingly valid US clicks. so while the actual ctr is not really dropping, the ctr that the ypn report shows and pays for is audited. i suspect this started when they implemented their extended international filters (sept 19 update). my only guess is that their geo auditing database is inaccurate or that they are finding other reasons / factors to invalidate clicks / ips. obviously this has to be an automated process since these "audits" are done on the fly and reflect in each 15 minute earnings update.

i also suspect, though i could not prove for obvious reasons, that they may not be counting clicks where the clicker doesnt stay on the destination page longer than x amount of time. if this were true, then those clicks who quickly left the landing page would not be counted and could drastically reduce ctr and earnings.

why dont you give them a call. im pretty sure they will give you the same stock answer - you are being paid for all "valid" clicks, though i know they will not detail the virtues of a valid click.

i know ypn is in beta but i think they are really squeezing their publishers; Implement GeoTargetting and only show our ads to US visitors. ok. we wont explain why, but some of those US clicks dont count. ok. make sure your visitors will convert for our advertisers. ok. hop on 1 leg while singing the hokey pokey. oooook.

jmo

 

Yeah I'm down to .1% CTR as well

 

YPN terminated my accoun today after 10 days of insane limitations. I went from $1500 a day to $11.50 a day after them limiting my clicks to finally terminating my account...

 

wow. that is insane. if you dont mind, what did they say the reason was for termination?

 

Traffic quality... Same old.