Seeing Crazy Impression Spikes? What’s Going On?

This post was most recently updated on September 19th, 2019

We all know that the ad publishing business is in constant flux; traffic can be radically different from one day to the next depending on the types of content you publish, Google’s algorithms, and plain old user whims. Nonetheless, if your traffic spikes in a single day, it can be a bit concerning. You don’t want to budget the rest of your month on a lucky day, for example. Neither do you want to be the victim of traffic bots driving up your traffic for nefarious reasons?

With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of reasons why you might be seeing impression spikes:

1. Make sure the impressions are from real people. While Google typically does a very good job of ensuring that they don’t assign impressions to bots — after all, they aren’t in the business of losing money! — sometimes, a bot slips through the cracks. Check your analytics software to make sure that the impressions aren’t coming from bots and that it doesn’t look suspicious. For example, hundreds of hits within a few minutes from the same IP address might indicate a bot at work, and you don’t want Google to penalize you for that.
2. Check the priority levels of the ads that are being filled. It’s entirely plausible that the ads that are being filled are high priority line items and that there was just a very big ad buy that day. If high priority line items are being filled on all your ad units, you could have an inordinately high level of ad impressions. This is good news; it just means that your ad units are running effectively!
3. Check which pages are getting the spikes of impressions. Is it just one page? If so, is there a reason why that could be a popular page today? Or is your whole site spiking in impressions? If it’s the former, then it could be because you’ve published something that’s getting shared on Twitter, Facebook, or other viral means. If it’s the latter, then it could be because Google’s algorithms have changed in your favor.

Whatever the reason for the traffic and impression spike, you should make good use of it! If you aren’t earning optimal eCPMs, then you’re leaving money on the table. Contact us today to start increasing your ad revenue by 25-50%.

Kean Graham

Kean Graham is the CEO and founder of MonetizeMore & a pioneer in the Adtech Industry. He is the resident expert in Ad Optimization, covering areas like Adsense Optimization,GAM Management, and third-party ad network partnerships. Kean believes in the supremacy of direct publisher deals and holistic optimization as keys to effective and consistent ad revenue increases.