What's the deal with the delayed earnings?

[Scott]

Is anyone else's AdMob account running about a week behind in terms of
daily payouts? Ever since AdSense came into the picture, we are
seeing our daily earnings starting very low, and then slowly creeping
up after the fact for about a week.

This is super annoying and I've contacted Google about it (to no
reply, of course).

[Antoni .....]

I have noticed the same.
Antoni

2011/7/14 Scott <scottt...@gmail.com>:

[Jim]

If you track Pending Revenue, most of the earnings are included in
that number, but do not get posted to the actual earnings for a day or
two. We have seen a few additions to the Pending Revenue number a
couple days afterward, but it is small.

The only way we know to get an estimate for the daily number is to
record the Pending Revenue at 12 GMT, when the AdMob day starts and
compare it to the previous day. If corrections are made to previous
days, it will be too high. We have never seen it too low.

-Jim

[HD]

Same in my account. Since about 2011/7/13 daily revenue is without the
adsense income. Normally there should be a change about 2 days later,
but since last week, nothing happens. This is really annoying.
What are the google guys doing the whole day/week? Same with the
active installs stats in the market. No change since about one week.
Vacation for one week? Log out from G+ and get your stuff done...

[kunal0072005]

Yup this has happened previous month too ,, mine too aint updating from 13th ,
One day in this week or next , it wil be updated.

They are written adsense earnings will be updated in up to 48 hours, but
many a times it is later than this

[joker]

me too. when will we get adsense earnings?

[kunal0072005]

today i got the adsense earnings for 15th july,,, its more than 48 hours

[Morpheo]

It's weird, Admob never take a long time to update earnings with
adsense. I think they have a problem.

[John]

Hm, I kinda hope that it is an Adsense problem and not that I'm losing
users. Well, I got a 50% drop from July 13th to July 14th and it stays
on that level. Honestly I can't imagine that this huge drop comes from
losing users.

[Scott]

Get this. I just received this from AdMob support regarding this
issue.

"We're always working on improving our system. Please be patient as we
integrate our systems over the next few quarters.

Best,

Tuyen"

That's it. No explanation, just a vague 2 sentence reply that says
that the performance could suck for 9 more months.

What a load of bullshit from these idiots.

[Morpheo]

I think the delay in adsense income isn't problematic (we'll have the
adsense income soon). Be Patient.

[Jim]

Take what you want from the message, but a few observations:

1. The "delayed earnings" are apparently delayed, not gone - the
message indicates that this is the result of systems integration. Good
to know.

2. We should not expect delayed earnings to be "fixed" in a week or
two. It might take a few months. We should probably continue to post
messages about the issue, though.

3. I do agree that delays are annoying, however there is no indication
in the message of "performance problems" - unless the delay is
considered "performance." I would not consider it a performance issue
(like I would SDK bugs, a drop in per-click revenue or unrecorded
clicks).

4. I disagree that they are idiots. Regardless, they are smart enough
to know what that word means, and name-calling is likely to result in
less communication to all of us.

5. I am happy with the message - it clarifies that we should continue
to expect earning delays, we should not expect lower revenue overall
because of delayed earnings, they are aware that it is a problem, they
are working on the problem, he tells us that it could be more than a
couple months to fix it and he asks for us to be patient (probably to
include feedback along the way).

Scott, thanks for sharing the message. Tuyen, thanks for the update.

-Jim

[Scott]

Sorry for the outburst, but we just worked very hard to push a large
update to our application, and are seeing record numbers of users. To
lose revenue due to shoddy backend engineering is beyond frustrating
when we had been very happy with AdMob performance until this
incident. For us, the timing absolutely could not have been worse,
and is just another silly stumbling block in the Android development
world.

It doesn't help that "support" comprises a trite sentence or two
without addressing the problem, or the reasons behind the problem.

I will continue to email them every day until this problem is
resolved, and I suggest you do to. I don't believe they are
monitoring this discussion board, and I think emails are far more
effective.

sup...@admob.com

Turn in support tickets at http://www.admob.com/home/contact#

[kunal0072005]

We get the earnings before the end of the month,,,
for e.g. like earnings of 29th of any month is updated on 31st... or 1st

I mean it happens in between the month only,,, so no probs for me ( my
observation)

[Jim]

That sounds absolutely horrible. My grandfather used to say, "Doing
business is like crossing the street - timing is everything." And as
you said, the timing could not have been worse.

I think we all hope that this is temporary and the "delayed" earnings
are delayed, not gone. It is very nerve racking to rely on hope. I'm
sure you've ruled out app errors as the source of the problem, so
hopefully AdMob has enough information to identify any errors, or they
are able to integrate systems faster than Tuyen's e-mail suggests - so
we worry less about ad delivery and more about app construction and
distribution.

Please keep us posted on how it progresses - if/when AdMob recovers,
I'm sure it would help them (and us) to know that it has. And I expect
AdMob monitors this forum despite their silence on most matters
(although they don't always respond, the responses from them that I
read seem to be timely). However, I agree that e-mail is more
effective. We should do both.

-Jim

> supp...@admob.com
>
> Turn in support tickets athttp://www.admob.com/home/contact#

[Windsails]

Hi All,

Thanks all of your message and I have same issue, then find some
answer here.
I had sent email to admob support, but there is no any reply too.
Of course, according to my history records, I guess the delayed
earning are
delayed more than 48 hours, maybe delayed 7 days for earning on 14
July 2011.

- windsails

[Scott]

Finally seeing an update, but the numbers are still lower than I'd
anticipate.

[Scott]

Saw another update today, this time for 2 extra days worth...our daily
earnings are still only 50-60% of what they had been.

[Jim]

We saw what we expect is an increase in delayed earnings this weekend
(more dramatic than before) - and we also saw updates to our Pending
Revenue from last week and prior, like others in this thread.

I think we, as publishers, all agree this is irritating. However, I
believe the more critical issue with delayed clicks/earnings is the
impact to CTR as a measure of performance - like in Scott's message.
We update our apps with the expectation of improvement in our numbers
overall (requests/clicks/downloads/active users). Without timely CTR
data, then we do not know the impact of changes as it relates to user
satisfaction and our revenue. And, as the delay gets longer, we have
to try to account for other factors that impact performance. So, our
ability to measure app performance as measured by CTR (or eCPM)
dramatically decreases as the delay gets longer.

I only say this so that it is clear to AdMob that we are not merely
"complaining" but rather that the situation reduces our ability to
effectively measure app performance. Also to emphasize that rapid
updates to revenue are not just something that we "like" or should be
seen as a convenience to us. It is critical to our measures of
performance for app development and enhancement.

-Jim

[Jim]

We've seen a lot of action today. If there was a problem with delayed
earnings, it looks like it is fixed for us (or getting fixed - we
might still have some outstanding back-earnings). We also saw some
large jumps for revenue older than 2 days. It looks like AdMob is on
top of getting things straightened out (thanks guys). For example, we
saw about a 15% increase for revenue on 7/23. This was the first time
it exceeded the Pending Revenue amount by a substantial margin, which
we are happy about.

Anyone else seeing good things today? Sometimes, we just have to take
it one day at a time...

-Jim

[Scott]

We are indeed seeing some substantial updates. I would say, however,
that I still feel that clicks aren't fully updated.

[netcat]

We have a big drop in last three days too.

The number of request/click is about 50% of normal days, and the revenue is about 10% of normal days.

I just hope Google can fix this issue as soon as possible.

--
"A captain would never run away from his duty, if he knew the ship was sinking."

[Scott]

Just for giggles, I disabled AdSense last night to see what would
happen. Unfortunately, in the span of the night, our fill rate
dropped to around 50%, and ads were no longer being displayed in the
app during my testing. I'm starting to think that two things are
going on.

1) Admob ads are seriously, if not completely, broken.
2) Most ads that are getting displayed are AdSense ads, which means 2
things:
a) Lower eCPM
b) More delay in earnings

Either way, I'm pretty disheartened about things. It looks like this
50% hit in daily revenue is here to stay.

[Scott]

Just curious if anyone had tried what I outlined below to see if it
was as broken as I described.

[Jim]

Scott,

We haven't tried turning off Adsense - but here is an alternative
theory to your results:

Google has to get all advertisers onto a common contract while
delivering ads on a common platform. Until all the contracts are
transitioned, and all the ads also, there will be problems with ad
categories, publisher categories and ad selection/filtering
algorithms. The old "AdMob" ads will disappear along with the old
"Adsense" ads, while they become one common group. Adsense "back fill"
allows delivery of Adsense ads to the Admob platform during the
transition. Once the advertiser transition is done (and advertiser
contracts are revised and signed) it won't be "back fill" anymore - it
will just be the "regular fill" or standard ad inventory.

That said, I'm glad you checked it out because it could have gone the
other way, for some reason. However, since it didn't go another way,
it still leaves a lot of questions.

What will the new publisher contract and tool set look like? Will they
change the filter mechanism and what will the capabilities be? Will we
be able to adjust ad category fill rates? (Turning categories on/off
only is like trying to fill a bathtub to the right temperature and
"Hot" or "Cold" are either on or off, no middle ground. Unless having
both "on" is the perfect mix, you have to constantly adjust by turning
them on and off. For example, I think Personals would work very well
in some of our apps, but when I turn it "on," then virtually all ads
are personals and it saturates the audience; when it's off, I get a
lot of Adsense ads, many of which are not relevant.)

Our most important tool, as developers, is the ability to filter ads
that are appropriate to our audience. As Adsense back fill becomes a
larger portion of ads (or the entire inventory), and as "AdMob" ads
decrease, available AdMob ads will saturate our users until the
inventory runs low, then we get unfiltered "Adsense" ads. So we should
expect inconsistent revenue and results (we will notice lower revenue
more easily) because overexposure occurs, followed by random ads. I'm
sure they are working on the tools, but like all things in life, it
can't get here fast enough.

-Jim

As an aside, it would be nice, for publishers, to have Adsense
advertisers transition to the "old" AdMob. And maybe they are
integrating new ad contracts into "old" AdMob ad inventory, but I do
not see support for that theory. They need a new, consolidated
publisher contract. In other words, Adsense advertisers cannot be
expected to automatically accept the old AdMob rules, or vice versa.
They need new contracts in order to move forward.

[dm1973]

I think your assumption 2 is right on. Right now I am not using
adsense back fill and my fill rate has dropped from 80% to the 40-50%
range.

One thing to remember is that ad revenue is very cyclical. The summer
months tend to be slow ones. Last year I my revenue dropped about 50%
from July to August before climbing back up in Sept.

[Jim]

Why are you not using Adsense back fill? Seems like your summer this
year might be better with it...

[Rob Franz]

Just for fun, I decided to disable Adsense back fill a few days ago.  That option was magically reset to enabled.  Weird.

[dm1973]

I prefer to mediate between the ad services myself instead of having
google do it. The tradeoffs are worth it right now for me. YMMV.

[Christiaan Schoenaker]

Strange, last week adsense gave me delayed earnings of a day or so.
Acceptable.. but now I have delayed earnings for more then a week! And
it has been a good week even without adsense earnings so I hope
adsense it better. (normally 0.08-0.11 eCPM, now only 0.03-0.05 eCPM)

[Scott]

Looks like our earnings are backlogged to the 15th. Just Google being
Google, I suppose.

[paul sohier]

Still nothing here at all since the 15th. Most of my earnings are from adsense here.

2011/8/23 Scott <scottt...@gmail.com>

[kunal0072005]

The end of the month is near...lets see

[Aleksandar Vujosevic]

still nothing here also :(