Strange decline in AdMob requests and revenue

Hi guys,

I have a strange problem.
Until Feb 12 I had requests around 1300, and it was stable for the last month. Suddenly, it has started to decline rather extremely. From 13 Feb it fell to ~ 300 requests and been there.

Anyone knows that this could be? I would understand if the request rate fell down slowly, but this seems like another issue?

Please help me out here.

Regards,
GopalAppmaker

Do you have Google Analytics for your app? If so, you should be able to tell whether there was also a sharp decline in the number of active users during that period.

watch your installations (on market) - also many users has turned their inet connection off to save battery - if your app stops getting new downloads, admob will also drop

i had a similar problem, sudden decrease in revenues since mid Feb.
But requests and impressions are ok, they didn’t change.

I searched a lot but i didn’t find anyone reporting the same decrease in revenue :s

Maybe it’s related to the following
http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/2012/02/admob-auction-enhancements.html
http://www.insidemobileapps.com/2012/02/08/googles-admob-eliminates-minimum-bids-and-targeting-fees-in-move-toward-adwords-style-auctions/

Admob had removed the minimum click bid, maybe that had effect on revenues. I really wish that anyone confirms this info.

admob changed something in their bidding system on 15th feb - there was a message about it on the campaign tab.

I’ve also seen this drop, but it was recovered after some days.

the minimum bid prevented publishers from getting crappy ads … I prefer non-crappy ads xD

Today I received a strange email:

From: Google Admob <[email protected]>
Subject: You’re missing out on AdMob revenue!

Hello,

We’ve noticed that you’re currently not using your Google AdMob account to generate earnings from your app and would like to encourage you to give it another try.

We’ve made a lot of changes in the past year, and invite you to give us another try.

  • Improved fill rate through AdSense backfill
  • New tablet and rich media ad units
  • Automatic updates

If you want to learn more on how to build a business and not just an app, we recommend to check out the “Guide to the App Galaxy” [link]

Your AdMob account is still open, so you can always try AdMob again. Log in and reactivate now! [link]

We would also appreciate if you completed this survey to help us understand why you have stopped using your AdMob account. [link]

Sincerely,
The Google AdMob Team

I say this is strange because I am actually still using my AdMob account. They sent this to my main email address, which earned $0.04 revenue today, and a couple of dollars so far this month. Those figures are significantly lower than previous months, but still more than nothing.

Is this perhaps another symptom of major problems with AdMob?

Maybe they have a threshold of some earnings before they count it as “earning” :slight_smile:

I got relativly normal numbers yesterday again (out of sudden) … and also yesterday the january earnings were paid … so something seems to work again

confirmed, numbers are back to normal again … eCPM ~0.80 (completely out of sudden), the days before was not over 0.50.

Ok, maybe that email was just a one-off issue with my account. Or perhaps, as you say, they could have a threshold which they consider to be “zero” earnings.

Although it’s strange, because I’m getting a lot of impressions. I’m just choosing to fill those with House Ads, not general inventory.

Here are my figures after first 5 days of using AdMob:
Impressions 30,000
Fill rate 99.9%
Revenue $3.80
eCPM $0.13
CTR 0.39%

Why is my eCPM so bad?..
I set refresh rate to 90 seconds and filtered out religion ads. All other settings are default.
Maybe I shouldn’t use Google ads to improve fill rate?

your CTR is very low (eCPM is calculated, so earnings / impressions/1000 or something like that).

so a higher CTR will instantly be reflected in a better eCPM

And why my CTR may be so low?

because people dont click your ads :wink:

try setting refresh rate to 120 or turn completely off ato refreshment - I don’t know your app and if autorefresh is appropriate for your app.

I ended up turning off auto refresh for most of my games currently (except robo miner) - but I have some sort of my own refresh - most of my games turn of ads when showing the game menu, so if they start a new game they get a fresh banner which does not refresh the whole game.

I decided to show banners in the main game screen, there are no ads in game menu.
Game sessions in Doptrix can be anything from 2-3 minutes to hours.

If I turn auto-refresh off, the number of impressions will go down, but how it will help to improve the CTR?
If people don’t click ads now (when they see a fresh banner every few minutes), why would they click a banner that is not changing for 10-20 mnutes? Just because they get really annoyed with it? :slight_smile:

CTR (Click thru rate) shows how often your banners get clicked - 10 imp = 1 click is worse than 1 imp = 1 click

But I will not get 1 imp=1 click. I will get 1 imp = 0.1 clicks.
Which is the same CTR.

no … let’s asume, that i am watching your menu

so let’s say I get 5 banners shown but do not recognize them after some minutes there comes a banner which I find interessting and I click it.

Let’s assume on the other hand, i get only 1 banner (which doesn’t change) and after 5 minute i was ready with the menu and just recognize the banner, like it an click it.

You see the difference? Users will not stare on the ad whole the time … and a bad CTR results in lass high paying ads - so it is good to get the best CTR possible, so you will get better ads, which are (hopefully) more likely being clicked during a whole game session.

Oh, now I see your point, thanks.
I thought 1.5 minutes is enough time for user to notice any banner…

Yesterday I set refresh time to 120. If there is no change in CTR, I’ll try to disable auto-refresh for a few days, will see if it helps.

Are there any other tricks?
Are you using “Google ads to improve fill-rate” and “Social Ads Preference” options? Do you set any filters for ads in your games?

Just to throw another spanner in the works - I’ve heard that many advertising networks actually rewards apps with a higher CTR by serving ads with a higher CPC (revenue per click).

So lets say, all things being equal, you can choose between:
[ul]
[li] 100 impressions with 10 clicks, or
[/li][li] 10 impressions with 3 clicks.
[/li][/ul]
At first glance it would seem logical to choose the 10 clicks rather than 3 clicks. But here are the CTRs:
[ul]
[li] 100/10 = 10% CTR
[/li][li] 10/3 = 30% CTR
[/li][/ul]
Even though the latter scenario is giving you fewer clicks, it’s getting a higher CTR. So if AdMob rewards the high CTR by paying you more per click, you could actually end up earning more money, from fewer clicks!

Yes, it’s clear. But I have doubts that decreasing the number of impressions will automatically lead to higher CTR. If it does - good. But if not - it will only decrease the revenue.