Morning Paid Clicks Worth More Than Evening Clicks?

[donelson]

I have noticed that when I look at my AdSense account early in the morning, in the first hour or two, that the early clicks are often worth substantially more than later clicks.

For example, I often see an initial click worth $1, then a few hours later, the average is around $0.20

Is this a reporting anomaly, or does Google actually award more cash per click for the first few clicks?

Thanks

[I, Brian]

More likely it's Adwords advertiser behaviour - Andy Goodman writes about quiet and competitive time periods, and bids having to be adjusted as appropriate.

2c.

[donelson]

Brian, thanks.

Funny though. My first click payments come through 8am - 9am GMT, which is midnight California time (Google midnight), so it does appear that clicks between midnight and 1am Google time are the most valuable, which is why I thought it just might be some sort of accounting anomaly. Or perhaps they give 100% of the first click, 75% of the second, etc etc, down to an "average" value of ? 40% ? or whatever. (Not complaining, just curious)

[BCNeuman]

My guess is that advertisers who bid high for ads use up their daily ad budget early in the day and are not competing for placement later in the day.

[seobook]

another option may that some of your competitors may be unsophisticated and blow their ad spend early each day

[donelson]

There are around 10 advertisers who are repeated every day. You can see when their budgets go, e.g. towards the end of the month etc, but mostly they are pretty consistent.

I still think that Google is offering a higher "early" cut to encourage the less popular sites to maintain their AdSense displays. If a site only has a few visitors per day, then they are still seeing some revenue, not just 10 cents a day which might make them drop AdSense displays. Anyway, that's a theory, which is hard to test.

[fulton savage]

I agree with the previous offerings of later in the day = less competition because of exceeded budgets.

I also offer that in the morning you have no daily CTR. G charges you less if you have a great CTR because you're making them money by running a good campaign. Later in the day you've got some CTR to contribute to the super secret pricing algorithm--this might be bringing your cost down.

Also, I see the same trend with my campaigns.

[Jenstar]

Another important reason that no one has mentioned yet is geotargeting. Perhaps advertisers are paying more to advertise to UK visitors than for US visitors (say $1 a click for UK versus 50 cents a click for US).

Because of time zone differences, this would mean you could see those higher earning clicks during the busiest UK surfing times (which would be early in the AM "AdSense time") than you would during the US surfing times.

[donelson]

Originally Posted by Jenstar

Another important reason that no one has mentioned yet is geotargeting. Perhaps advertisers are paying more to advertise to UK visitors than for US visitors (say $1 a click for UK versus 50 cents a click for US).

Because of time zone differences, this would mean you could see those higher earning clicks during the busiest UK surfing times (which would be early in the AM "AdSense time") than you would during the US surfing times.

We see Very few UK-only ads (maybe 10% non-USA). Most are .com's with addresses in the USA.

We get around 75% of our visitors from the USA, which I see as a trend starting around 2pm GMT, peaking at around 7pm, and starting to fall off around 10pm. The low point is around 5am GMT.

The highest traffic around 7pm GMT is around 250% of the lowest point around 5am. The hourly traffic curves over time are very smooth.

We do get peaks when, for example, schools do some sort of activity around "taj mahal", but large peaks are pretty infrequent, usually tied to certain types of news stories.

I still think that the first clicks after 8am GMT (new day = midnight Google time) provide (day after day) much higher value than those later in the day, which I CAN track about every hour.

[donelson]

Originally Posted by donelson

We see Very few UK-only ads (maybe 10% non-USA). Most are .com's with addresses in the USA.

Should say this, but "for visitors IN the USA". For visitors in the UK, there's a different mix, of course.

[vayapues]

I see the opposite on my site network. I get around 7-10 million impressions each month, so a pretty good sample size.

I typically see my first few hours earning a lower cpc rate, with increasing rates throughout the day. I get frustrated if I check too early, because they can be quite low, but without fail, they increase to an average of 2 to 4 times as much.

That is not to say that I have not seen the opposite either, because I have. Just all depends on who is bidding, where the market is, and what my visitors are clicking on.

[donelson]

Originally Posted by vayapues

I see the opposite on my site network. I get around 7-10 million impressions each month, so a pretty good sample size.

I typically see my first few hours earning a lower cpc rate, with increasing rates throughout the day. I get frustrated if I check too early, because they can be quite low, but without fail, they increase to an average of 2 to 4 times as much.

That is not to say that I have not seen the opposite either, because I have. Just all depends on who is bidding, where the market is, and what my visitors are clicking on.

Interesting. Do you find that different regions of the world provide different rates throughout the day?

On my site, I also see that click values often increase at the beginning of the month, perhaps due to monthly budgets being exhausted before the end of the preceeding month, etc.

[hello2paul]

I am in the UK. I have one website where Canada is targetted the most. The same ads can appear at different times of the day, and virtually the same all week.

Revenue is poorest during my daylight hours, (Canada's wee small hours of the morning), but I wake up to see a nice healthy Adsense account just before 8am, (UK time= midnight Google Californian time), due to more Canadian surfing and higher value ads in the Canadian late afternoon and evening.

And, being an informational website, revenue drops off all weekend, as most of the folks who were surfing during the week - were doing it at work