Zon KDP Dash Reporting

[Shoe]

Every night the KDP dashboard seems to freeze at 9:00 pm Pacific (4:00 am next day GMT). Is this everyone else's experience?

Around 11: 40 pm Pacific a few more KENP reads might come through but not always. A few seconds after midnight there may be some immediate sales reported, and usually always 2k or so reads.

[TimothyEllis]

Is that midnight Hawaii time at all?

Hawaii time appears to be the end of day for KDP reporting.

Not recently, but I used to notice a huge end of day gap, with reads going in again around 12.30am Hawaii time.

I cant say I've noticed anything unusual recently though.

[notthatamanda]

No, 9PM pacific would be 6PM Hawaii.

Are you in Hawaii Tim?  Jealous.

[TimothyEllis]

No, 9PM pacific would be 6PM Hawaii.

Are you in Hawaii Tim?  Jealous.

I wish!

Looking at it the wrong way then. Serves me right for not consulting the world time app on my browser.

I can't say I've ever seen a gap as early as 6pm Hawaii.

I keep a set of times for the world going, so I know when NY, LA, and Hawaii times are, for anything KDP related. Among other things, and times.

Doesn't stop my brain getting it wrong though sometimes. Who knew dyslexia applies to times as well. 

I take Hawaii midnight as the end of the KDP day. It's close enough, as anything after that goes in the next day. And is 8pm where I am.

[Simon Haynes]

'End of day' is 2 or 3 in the afternoon for me (Perth, Western Australia). After that, US figures start adding to 'today' on the dash, instead of 'yesterday'.

Of course, since the eastern states are 2-3 hours ahead, between 9/10pm and midnight here I can't see the 'next' day where aussie sales from the eastern states might be showing up.

And don't get me started on the 'beta reporting' dash, where 'today' is always zero until late afternoon, when I get a couple of hours of reporting before it jumps to the next time zone and I see ... 0 all day again. I've reported this, because when the beta dash becomes the real dash it's going to make seeing up-to-date sales pretty difficult.

[Shoe]

My KDP main dash end of day reporting matches my actual midnight (Pacific Coast), but the MTD tab rolls into the next day around 5:00 pm PT (0 hour, GMT).

In my KDP dash, sales die after 6:00 pm PT, though some days one or two pop up around 9:00 pm PT. KENP dies after 9:00 pm PT, though a little comes in just before midnight. Basically, after 9:00 pm PT, there's little to no activity until after midnight.

However, if I'm running ads, spend climbs to a four or five dollars an hour pace between 5:30 - 9:00 pm PT. When I stop an AMS ad, it takes about 90 minutes for clicks to stop piling up--so, two-hour delay in AMS reporting? Probably not consistently, though that's the way it's tested out for me at various times of day.

What's most troubling is those high-volume AMS click periods match up with a dead KDP dash (9-12). Now I pause all ads at 5:00 pm PT (counter-intuitively) and my net has gone up considerably.

But none of it makes sense.

[notthatamanda]

Huh.  How long do you leave them paused Shoe?  Till the next morning?

Excuse my sleep deprived brain but speculating, pause ads at 5 PM Pacific time, they stop at 7 PM Pacific.  People who click after 7 pm their time are less likely to buy, just aimlessly clicking around until (Dear Gawd Yes) they can go to bed?

[Shoe]

Huh.  How long do you leave them paused Shoe?  Till the next morning?

Excuse my sleep deprived brain but speculating, pause ads at 5 PM Pacific time, they stop at 7 PM Pacific.  People who click after 7 pm their time are less likely to buy, just aimlessly clicking around until (Dear Gawd Yes) they can go to bed?

I'm now leaving ads paused until 6-7 the next morning.

When I stop the ads at 5, they're usually off the carousels within 15 minutes. It takes about two hours for the AMS dash to stop showing additional impressions/clicks (indicating an up to two-hour delay in reporting).

I'm merely speculating that evening browsers click around the ads much more than day browsers, but are no more inclined to buy than day browsers, hence the heavier AMS spend roughly between 6-9 pm PT (3-6 pm east coast). Confusingly, and non-supportive of my theory, those hours correspond with a jump in KENP, but few sales. It could be those KENP numbers come from activity the night before as people open their Kindles to resume reading where they left off, and Zon gets a chance to update KENP.

[notthatamanda]

Well thanks for speculating with me.  I will watch this a little more.
ETA - I usually check ad spend before I go to bed, 10-11 east coast.  There is usually a big jump overnight in spend.  This may end up being a very helpful tidbit.  Thanks so much.

[Rosie Scott]

Every night the KDP dashboard seems to freeze at 9:00 pm Pacific (4:00 am next day GMT). Is this everyone else's experience?

Around 11: 40 pm Pacific a few more KENP reads might come through but not always. A few seconds after midnight there may be some immediate sales reported, and usually always 2k or so reads.

Yes...but on a different time frame. I'm in EST. Sales and reads dry up around 8:00 p.m. or so and then get dumped all at once at 3:00 a.m. I live a third shift schedule so I track it, and it happens regularly (four to six nights a week). I had about 4,000 page reads show up at once one night last week. There are times when I check it at 11:00 p.m. and refresh the reports in the early morning just to find my sales doubled or even tripled after midnight. It has always taken until 3:00 a.m. for its final reporting, but I never noticed such alarming discrepancies until recently.

[notthatamanda]

I did not write it down but I paused the highest spending of my new campaigns earlier at around $6 (I run small campaigns).  Checked it just now 2.5 hours later,  had spent another $3+.   I'm going to be taking notes from now on.

ETA - And it spent another $1.65 overnight.  Book continued to sell, it is in the top 100 in two subcategories now, so it has visibility.  I'm going to take more detailed data on it and try turning it off again tonight.  But, it's Friday, maybe people will buy later on Friday because they don't have to get up for work the next day.   So I may just leave it running for the weekend and ponder a pause/unpause strategy to try next week.

[Shoe]

The only thing I've really nailed down is that surge in AMS spending, which usually kicks in between 4 pm and 7 pm, contributes little to sales/downloads, confirmed by my ranks falling every evening. If those were meaningful clicks in the late afternoon, ranks would rise every evening.

[TimothyEllis]

Amazon have definitely changed something.

I just looked at BR. Which I don't normally do at this time. (5pm EST Aus.)

Today is one of my worst days in a long time.

BUT....

There is sales and money in tomorrow (today my time), when normally at this time, there never is.

The money in tomorrow, is primarily from sales in Germany.

At this moment, its 9am in Germany, 3am in NY, just gone midnight in LA, and still 9pm in Hawaii.

Which suggests Amazon has changed the crediting of sales and money to when the sale was made in THE LOCAL TIME ZONE for the sale.

I wonder when they changed that, and why?

[PaulineMRoss]

Amazon have definitely changed something. [...] There is sales and money in tomorrow (today my time), when normally at this time, there never is.

We're on the brink of 1st October (and you might already be there!). Start-of-month changes, I guess.

There's definitely something afoot, because BookReport keeps telling me it's not synced. Usually that only happens on the rinky-dink little writing-only computer when I haven't logged into KDP for a while. But today and yesterday it's been happening on both machines, several times a day.

ETA: And Amazon has just dumped a whole bunch of extra somethings (sales? borrows?) for the last couple of days. I'd already recorded the final numbers for them, and now they've changed quite dramatically. Upwards, so not complaining. End of month housekeeping, I guess.

[Marti Talbott]

I don't know if this means anything, but I often notice sales slow on the last day of the month and have wondered if zon holds back for some reason. Of course, it could just be a change of month thing.