I have noticed my eCPM rate changes so much on a daily basis in January. Is it just me or has anybody experienced the same problem? Thanks.
In order to judge CTR changes, you need to look at it over a period of time, or a trend. Make a simple spreadsheet and put in the week's past 7 day average CTR. YOu can then trend these numbers together in 14 day average CTR-averages. It works well to see if you're trending up or down. I've seen holidays affect CTR majorly, as well as links from other sites (good links) and links from forums (bad links).
Im seeing the same thing as well. Im down in the area of 50% since the 3rd of January even though traffic/impressions has been going up. Is this a normal trend?
I have noticed that my rectangle adsense box changed from 4 advertsiers to 2 or 1 advertiser. Is this normal? Could this be the blame?
Ken123: We've been discussing the rectangle ad in many threads It seems that Google attempts to only display ads that pay the most. If 4 ads only pay $0.05 a piece, and 2 ads would pay $0.20 a piece, they'll show two ads. If one ad offers the best payout, they'll display that. I dumped the rectangles as they definitely looked to glaringly obvious.
Things were off for the early part of the month, but since the beginning of this week, things are back to my old status quo. Hopefully there's some upward inertia in play!
Here is the quote from Adsense help: dadasays: According to your theory, rectangle may not be the best ad format for me, right? Banner is better? Have you or anyone of you has done some analysis on what the best ad format maybe? Thanks for your feedbacks.
ken123: Do you use channels to track your CTR and eCPM for every ad? I recommend channels first and foremost. I also recommend only changing things one at a time and giving it a few days to see if it worked. I've changed some sites and seen results instantly, though. The real key is to make sure that your content is ad-worthy. If all you have is a few sentences, don't expect much in the way of good clicks. You'll likely get bad clicks though (they just want to leave your site so they click out) but I don't think this is the right way to use AdSense (and Google is working to diminish the returns for bad sites anyway).
Yes, I do use channels. I think the worst performers are the link units. The ad units are fluctuates up and down a lot on a daily basis. I did the change you have suggested, and I'll see what happen.
Odd! Link units work best for me, tied with my 468x60 banners. How old are your websites? How good is your content?
I got good contents and ok traffic. It seems every time I did a make over, the clicks reduce dramatically. The price for them also dropped. Is this normal?
Yes, I hate changing the overall look and feel -- and users do, too. I've recently done about 10 template changes over 2 weeks and my CTR had dropped terribly as well as my income even though traffic was way up.