Google Adsense Stats

Google Adsense Stats

Once you are up and running with Google Adsense you can login to the Adsense control panel an see how you are doing.

The main Page displays an overview as shown in the figure below:

You will notice that I've blanked out the figures as Google TOS states that you can't reveal them. However what I want the screenshot for is to explain the stats and what they mean.

First lets define the columns for the Content stats:

Impressions - The number of times an ad unit is displayed on a page. If you have 3 ad units per page then one page view is equal to 3 impressions.

Clicks- A click corresponds to a user’s click on any ad on a page.

Clickthrough rate - The clickthrough rate (CTR) is the number of clicks an ad unit receives divided by the number of times the ad unit is shown (impressions).

Effective CPM - Cost per 1000 impressions. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by the number of impressions in thousands. For example, if a publisher earned $180 from 45,000 impressions, the CPM would equal $180/45, or $4.00. From a publisher's perspective, CPM is a useful way to compare revenue across different channels and advertising programmes.

Observations

Although the stats are real time stats you will notice that there is a delay between the updates. Don't be too worried about seeing anomalies or stats that don't change for several hours and suddenly seem to jump.

Also the updates of the different stats aren't always synchronised. It is common to see large earning for few clicks or low earnings for large number of impressions during the course of a day. This arises. for example, because the earnings field has been updated but not the Impressions.

The stats are totally reliable when they become yesterdays stats and a new "todays stats" begins. So it makes no sense monitoring the stats during the day as they are often meaningless. You should do all analysis based on previous days stats.

CTR and eCPM Calculations

Here are some example calculations and what they mean:

channel	Page impressions	Clicks	Page CTR	Page eCPM	Earnings
	1000	100	10%	200	$200.00
c1	300	35	12%	133	$40
c2	600	45	8%	100	$60
c3	100	20	20%	1000	$100

The interesting columns are the CTR and the eCPM.

The CTR should ideally be high which means that the ads are getting clicked. You should be aware that the CTR can be affected by adding additional ad units to you pages.

For example if you had just one page containing 1 ad unit and the CTR was 10%. If you added another ad unit to the page you could see the CTR fall to 5%, as now each page view is 2 page impressions.

The idea when adding extra add units is that the number of clicks on the ads increases. This may well be the case but still result in a lower CTR as the following illustration shows.

Page views	Page impressions	ad units/page	Clicks	Page CTR
100	100	1	20	20%
100	200	2	20	10%
100	200	2	30	15%
100	300	3	30	10%

In the above table I have kept the page views constant and varied the ad units/page and the number of clicks to show the effect on CTR.

Therefore to understand changes in CTR you need to be aware of any changes you have made to the number of ad units. If you were getting a CTR of 10% (yellow highlights in table above) and then decided to decrease the number of ads from 3 to 1 you may find your CTR has jumped to 20%. The question is .. is that good? Well not if you are now only getting only 20 clicks (green highlights in table above) as opposed to the previous 30 clicks.

What affects CTR?

Increasing the the number of ad units per page doesn't normally increase you CTR as shown above but does generally increase the number of clicks ( what you really want).

The position of your ad units and the colour scheme you choose have a marked impact on the CTR. I have seen CTR go from 2% to 10% by changing the ad unit positions and colour scheme.

When conducting tests yourself on the best ad unit placement and the best ad unit colour scheme then please remember you can only compare the resulting CTR if you keep the number of ad units per page constant!

Effective CPM

CPM is a useful way to compare revenue across different channels and advertising programmes. I use it mainly to compare page performance as each page can be made assigned to its own channel.

Basically a high eCPM means that the page is displaying some very high paying ads. You should take a look at the high eCPM pages and see what keywords they target and create additional pages based on the same/similar keywords.

In addition if we can find away to increase the CTR of the channels with high eCPM then our earnings should increase. When advertises bid for adds they pay a Price per click which Google share with the publisher of the ads and becomes EPC (earnings per click) .

EPC is determined by the advertiser when they bid on the ads. It is not determined by the publisher, but as a publisher it is wise to target high EPC keywords/areas. In the tables below I've added an extra column (earnings per click- EPC) to illustrate this.

channel	Page impressions	Clicks	Page CTR	Page eCPM	Earnings	EPC
	1000	100	10%	200	$200.00	$2
c1	500	50	10	100	$50	$1
c2	500	50	10	300	$150	$3

If we increase the CTR of both channels by the same amount ( 5%) and see what it does to the earnings. You can see that the channel with the higher eCPM had the greatest impact on the earnings.

channel	Page impressions	Clicks	Page CTR	Page eCPM	Earnings	EPC
	1000	150	10%	200	$300.00	$2
c1	500	75	15%	100	$75	$1
c2	500	75	15%	300	$225	$3

Summary

To maximise earnings concentrate on increasing the number of pages with a high eCPM and try to increase the CTR on those pages