Huge drop in eCPM in last four days

[Yuchen]

My eCPM had a huge drop in last several days: before Jul. 1st, the
eCPM was around 80 cents to 1 dollar. In 4 days, it drops to 10 cents
on Jul 5th. There is no significant CTR/impression change in these
days.

Anybody from Google can explain this? Does anybody experience the same?

[Antoni .....]

Hi
  I have the same efects.
  
Houseofunexpected.com

[Jim]

Your question is similar to the situation with a drop in CTR (here was
my response to that:
http://groups.google.com/g/de77e6bf/t/771ecf20c3518951/d/1047471e2012f58f)

CTR and eCPM are very related. They are both measures of ad
efficiency. Similar to that post, if your requests/impressions are
below about 100,000 per day, then you can expect very volatile
results. A few days is not enough data to pinpoint the source of
dramatic changes.

However, if your CTR has not changed, then a drop in eCPM is because
of a drop in the value per click. eCPM is "dollars per 1000
impressions." It is an efficiency measure (like miles per gallon or km
per liter; CTR is another efficiency measure - clicks/impression). The
US Independence Day holiday (July 4th) resulted in higher US usage for
most apps. Higher usage drives down the price paid per click (it is
easier for advertisers to get clicks with more usage, so they do not
need to pay as much for the same CTR).

eCPM is equally sensitive to both CTR and $/click. If your eCPM
dropped 80%-90%, then your $/click would have to do the same if your
CTR is constant. We saw about a 30% drop in $/click - which we
expected (actually, we expected 40% - glad AdMob didn't meet that
expectation!). If your $/click dropped 50% and impressions increased
"insignificantly" by 20% (assuming a corresponding decrease in CTR),
you would go from $0.80 eCPM to $0.33. Not sure how you could land at
$0.10.

What are your last few weekends like? Did your usage change
geographically (higher usage outside the US could offset a drop in the
US, but possibly result in lower $/click). Also, do you filter or use
location-based ads? That can be effective at getting clicks, but
result in a drop in pay for a holiday weekend. If so, hold steady - a
good CTR means your users like the ads, you just need advertiser
budgets to recover from over-usage this past weekend. Or, try
different filters to see if less relevant ads (lower CTR) bring in
more overall revenue.

When you try new filters, set up a spreadsheet and record the number
of impressions, clicks and pending revenue several hours before the
change. Then record it again at the time of the change. And again
several hours later. You can calculate CTR, eCPM and $/click from that
data. Then change them again, and record. It is harder to do that now
because some Adsense revenue does not even appear on the Pending
revenue, but if you do it the same day or at the same time of day
during similar days of the week, you will see the impact of the
changes. The aggregate numbers (late night or early morning activity)
mask the real-time effects of the change - especially the closer to 12
GMT you get. You have to sort out the effects of the previous hours.
(You also want to try to do it at times you have steady usage -
variations in usage can also be from variations in user demographics,
which can be sensitive to time of day measures.)

We do this constantly to make sure we understand the impact of
filters, design changes, time of day, day of week, etc. effects.

You probably want an answer from Google that accounts for your
particular app(s) performance - but your question is too broad for a
good answer from them. They might be able to explain an overall
decline in $/click or increase in overall app usage (which would be
great if they could give us some kind of benchmark). But then it would
be hard for us as developers to see something like "clicks average
$0.10 today" and then realize some of us only got $0.05. We can't all
be above average, but I'm sure we all want to be.

How's it looking today? We're holding steady, better than the weekend,
but lower than last week. Not that surprising.

-Jim

[Yuchen]

Thank you for your message and explanation.

I do understand the concept of CTR/eCPM. The problem for me was, there
was no CTR/impression change, but the eCPM dropped. My app has been on
market for almost 9 months and has no changes. I can't imagine why
there is a sudden geographic/user base change in last 5 days. The only
thing I can think of is Google is testing some new algo/ad source and
I happened to be the unlucky guy.

The number comes back a little bit in last two days, but still far
from the original (today the ecpm is 25 cents). I'll see if it
improves over time. I just wish there were some competition so Google
would be more thoughtful when they made changes.

On Jul 7, 9:11 am, Jim <secondphonea...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Your question is similar to the situation with a drop in CTR (here was

> my response to that:http://groups.google.com/g/de77e6bf/t/771ecf20c3518951/d/1047471e2012...)

[Zorilla]

Same problem here.
On 2nd of July my revenue dropped dramatically. Now it seems to
recover a little bit.

@Yuchen, plaease check your requests and impressions. For my app the
revenue most likely decreased because of requests going down suddenly.
Since there was no update of the App, I think it is related to
holidays in several countries.

Or could there a a relation that I sill use the old AbMob library. I'm
would not like to migrate to the Google AbMob library until the bugs
causing crashes are fixed.
Will AdMob drop requests from the Apps using the old API some day?

BR,
Zorilla

[kunal0072005]

I think that your request have fallen down because of the changes in
Android market Search Results.
you can compare it with the previous months.
One of my apps was having increased requests day by day. but from 1st
july, they have dropped to constant each day in this month.
Also falling of CTR ( so eCPM) has too effected sumwhat.

Android Market search results have changed a lot from previous months.

[Jim]

I posted the points about eCPM because I wasn't sure if the concept
was clear - a drop in eCPM is like a fever - it's a symptom of a
problem, not a problem itself. Sounds like the problem is still
unclear, although Zorilla asks a good question about the old SDK.

Jason's post here
(http://groups.google.com/group/google-admob-ads-sdk/browse_thread/
thread/1722a47c3a9fd2f9)
has this statement:

"We will, however, continue to honor requests for AFMA in cases where
you have updated your application to the latest SDK but users have
not
yet updated to the newest version of your app. We expect to honor
these requests until the end of the year."

If they will honor old SDK requests for AFMA apps through the end of
the year, that sounds like a policy decision. Also, from other parts
of that letter, it also sounds like by 8/1 your AdMob ID needs to have
requests coming from the new SDK or they will stop serving ads to
those accounts completely. That is the way I read that post.

It seems to me that AFMA accounts would be treated similar to non-AFMA
accounts from a policy standpoint. Furthermore, your post did not
mention that you had not migrated to the new SDK - problems with the
old SDK may be causing your problem. Especially if AdMob is in the
process of trying to write a new SDK and is focused on making sure a
transition from 4.1.0 to a new SDK is smooth. Server changes/ad
request responses for those purposes are likely to ignore the overall
impact on ads served to older SDK's. So, maybe those changes impact
the older SDK effectiveness (maybe those changes are intentional, but
maybe not).

I measure impression efficiency of the old SDK compared to the new SDK
(clicks and revenue per request/impression, comparing the old to the
new) and, looking back, there is actually a change starting late 6/29
where the old SDK begins a dramatic decline. It appears to continue to
get worse until 7/5, but really hasn't improved much since then. (This
is for my apps, of course.) That correlates to your comments about
eCPM. Since 80% of our requests are from the new SDK, I didn't really
notice until you mentioned your status with the old SDK. We had a
decline in revenue and requests from both SDK's, so I overlooked the
difference in effectiveness when I last posted on this issue.

Although the new SDK has problems, it seems prudent to move to it.

(And, since 20% of my requests are from apps where users are reluctant
to upgrade or have reason not to, I am concerned about AdMob not
serving ads to these users since I expected to be able to generate
revenue from them. Maybe AdMob would consider running in-house ads
only, after the cut-off date? So we could flood our users with ads
that suggest they update their app and get everyone on board.)

-Jim

[Yuchen]

To me, the number requests, impressions, CTR are all in the same range
as before. The only thing dropped is the eCPM. Basically Google was
serving lower quality ads ...

Today eCPM has improved a lot comparing with last few days. I'll keep
watching.

[Wayne Wenthin]

I find it funny that every start of every month the same question
comes up. In most cases you will see this drop due to it being a new
month. I have nothing concrete other than observation to go on. But
if you go back through the archives you will find this question
occurring at the start of the month alot of the time. Of course
there is NEVER and answer to the question because there is never an
answer to anything admob does.

Don't Worry what people think.
They don't do it very often.

[jfieres]

Same observation as Jim and Yuchen:
- Steady decrease of revenue since jun/29.
- sudden drop of fill rate (100 to 70) on jul/2
- number of requests was constant throughout except for usual day-of-
week effects.

I am using old iOS admob sdk. Afraid of switching to new googleadmob
sdk ( check my other posts).

Does anyone using the new sdk experience the drop in Ecpm and fill
rate?

Otherwise I would just assume usual fluctuations in the ad market.
Drops and recovery have been the rule not the exception within the
past 3 years of my admob life.

Best regards
Johannes

[Sergey Belyakov]

The requests decreased dramatically. 

I have new sdk 4.1.0 and android app.

Does somebody know the reason?

[DraganA]

I'm still using old 4.0.4 sdk and have also noticed almost 50% drop in
revenue since the beginning of July.

[Saša Šijak]

Me too. So bad...

[Hazem El-Sisy]

I face the same problem

requests and impressions increasing but cpm and clicks very very down since last 31 may

before 31 may it was 244 clicks now it 8 clicks !!!