Does Adsense drop at the start of the month?
July 3, 2006 – 9:17 pm
Seems like since the 1st of July the high count of visitors, page impressions and subsequently adsense income has dropped back to normal. Reviewing the stats the mad thing was that even taking into account the one day less for June to May, May still had more uniques, more visitors and more page impressions yet $20 less in adsense. Towards the end of July our average CPC was above average, now it's dropped to half on certain pages, some even less.
The drop in visitors is quite interesting but then so was the rise last month. However the more noticeable difference is that on 30th June we were getting up to 4 times more per click on certain pages than we are now. Now I know I read someone's comment on one of the blogs I read, I honestly can't remember (or find) who said it, but something they mentioned has got me thinking. Is adsense worth less at the start of each month? Are the higher paying ads not displayed so much on the content network at the start of the month compared to the end?
For anyone who doesn't already know, an AdWords campaign has a daily budget set by the advertiser, to spend no more than £X per day. Question is, is this accumulated over the month? So at the start of the month perhaps Google randomly chooses when to display the ad to keep the spend within the budget - this I know they do. But towards the end of the month, perhaps the last week of the month, does Google review how much the advertiser has spent so far and then increases their budget so that essentially their month's spend is £X * days in the month? It makes me wonder when I know our site can get clicks for twice sometimes 3 times the average, and Adsense is meant to display the highest paying adverts on the site (of course with more than one ad then the visitors may not be clicking the top paying advert), yet the difference at present is a quarter of the average on one page.
Of course the best way to tell this is to take the last 6 months and compare the start and end of each month and get the average CPC for each, and see if there's a pattern. Guess that's what I'll do for the next hour and report back my findings! Any thoughts in the mean time?
6 Responses to “Does Adsense drop at the start of the month?”
Wasn't it a holiday weekend in the US or something? These things can usually explain a drop in both visitors and clicks…just happens to have coincided with the start of the month!
By One Dollar A Day on Jul 3, 2006
Ah good point. I did think it was a major drop, and the upsurge in traffic has been out of UK hours so perhaps that is the answer. And maybe the adsense targetting the nightly visitors is what's been pulling the average CPC up?
Good deductions Watson
We'll see if it changes towards the end of the week.
By Sarah on Jul 3, 2006
Yep, it's a holiday here, tuesday the 4th is officially the day.
Having the holiday fall on tuesday means many people also took monday off to extend the weekend.
Everything is way down since past friday for me.
By 45n5 on Jul 3, 2006
Smart pricing is also recalculated at the end of each month I believe. The major impact would be the US holiday period IMO
By Peter on Jul 4, 2006
Yep, checking the stats from yesterday shows the clicks have gone back up to almost average, and the CPC is on the rise again. Not quite back to average, as it was for the end of July, but is an improvement over the start of the week.
I guess the good news on this is that we're getting more US visitors to our site now too which will hopefully help in pushing product sales more after my comments about UK Buying Online. Plus it seems the US visitors have a higher CPC on the adsense - guess there's more money being invested in the adwords for the US on the subject.
By Sarah on Jul 6, 2006