Google AdSense

As silly as it may sound but - yes. This might be the smartest/cheapest marketing trick you might pull off...

For selected areas of ecommerce, the Adwords advertisers are getting very, very good at formulating their ads (thus pushing CTR rates up), no doubt partly thanks to the evolution in analytics tools that help them know what works.

Fried Chicken. Always works.

While it's tempting to compare today to yesterday, this month to last month, etc., everything pretty much starts over each month. Sometimes the horses come shooting out of the gate, sometimes they seem a little off their feed.

My personal opinion is that many Sam and Sally Timebuyers are at the beach and insertion orders are a bit late being turned in. Time -- and only time -- will tell.

A twisted way for Google to get us off of our summer relaxed butts?

Probably Brett just hired an ex-Googler. First task: to implement an algo for determining discussions that should be featured on the home page... ;-)

No one could blame you. With affiliate programs, it doesn't matter what everyone else thinks is best. Instead, "the proof is in the pudding." You gotta go with what works best for you.

I am wondering if sites having to do with domestic (US) travel, home sales, dining, etc., traditionally strong summer sales markets are seeing the same effect.

Advertisers usually only buy into deeply discounted advertising programs when they feel that no matter what, people are not buying.

I am in Massachusetts -- our Governer has just passed a "Sales Tax Holiday" for weekend of Aug 12 --- (the 5% state sales tax will be waived on all purchases up to $2500)... this is because retail dies in the summer.

I did spot a few VERY odd ads:

WIDGETS
widgts widgets
widgets.com

Where widgets is a keyword I rank a little bit for but it's by far not a goal of the site. I'm speculating it might be that GOOG is trying to offer a broader range of topics (subjects outside of my niche)

Off to seek a wintel box to be able to run the preview tool to find the to be banned URLs, perhaps the @#$% MFAs are indeed back and they need to be trimmed again. Oh joy!

Ususally I've little dip on the last few/first few days of a month but nothing this dramatic. Anyway will hunt for MFAs and wait a few days, often it stabilizes back.

My site is a travel destination on the Oregon coast so it appears whatever is going on it's not a seasonal problem.

I don't drink, but it's getting midy tempting right now. Too bad I can't even afford a beer with these miserable earnings.

update: today's ecpm is $34.
that's more like it!

Also, many accounts are now in the CPC site targeting beta. We've moved high-performing sites into CPC site targeting and lowered content network bids for non-targeted sites.

If many advertisers are doing what we're doing, cpc bids on the median sites should go down while the cpc bid average remains the same. A few sites should be experiencing big increases, while the average site experiences decreases.

Hint: Look at the Adsense TOS - most of us don't want to get kicked out of their program, perhaps you don't care.

...

And has been there ever since.
CTR is the same.
Traffic is the same.
Advertisers are the same.
SERPs, rankings are the same.
No new sites on the market.

But when it comes to clicks, the average cost per click was halved overnight... and then halved the next day, and stayed so.

Sounds like smartpricing to me, but the site is too good to be smartpriced. It's on topic, it's original, it's everything you'd dream of.

...

My guess and the site's editors' guess was that yes, summer must see low competition in the area. We're sticking to this idea, and they won't change a thing.

...but ... you know... a change overnight?

I don't really get it.
I liked how someone said -- referring to the Google SERPs -- that it's now in summer mode.
I can't help but notice how accurate that remark was.

...

I'm not an AdSense expert, I'm an SEO.
I'm not sure if they should/needed to email AdSense support.
Has anyone seen such sudden seasonal changes before?

For the 1st time, in June 2007, Google didn't match analysts expectations regarding their quarter earnings, they missed market's expectations by 5%. Thats a lot in terms of the company's market value and this is the reason why Google's shares haven't performed so well lately.

Google has been significantly increasing the size of its organization and, of course, their expenses. This has been translated into their bottom line

If you were the CEO what do you do? (understanding that you don't want to downsize, make employees lose their perks or reduce your hefty bonus scheme).

What do you do if you were Eric Schmidt? You would go downstairs and say:

"Jeff*, my boy, you know, I've been thinking,... hmmm, maybe we've been too generous with our community of small adsense publishers, after all, don't you think we are the ones adding the real value to the Internet? I'm sure you agree with me Jeff, don't you? and by the way... I would like a little knob on my screen called 'sharing', so that I can move it up or down as much as I need results on our bottom line"

And this is the way Google got F-U by Wall Street.

* Jeff Huber
Vice President, leads the technology development and innovation efforts for Google's advertising and monetization systems, including Google's AdWords and AdSense programs.

As it has been mentioned many times on the forum, not all publishers find declining revenues. Many are seing an uptrend also.

It has been mentioned that placement reports are available for adwords advertisers. Many publishers seem to miss the point that it may no longer be assumed that a good informative site (with unique content etc) will have good conversions. Google (previously) seemed to be relying on 'other' conversion data and some guess work while determing smart pricing. NOW they are letting the ADVERTISERS judge the VALUE of a click from a particular site.

IMO , a good way to get an idea if the particular site is converting is to try some Referral ads. If the site is getting some conversions, you can be sure that advertisers on the PPC side also have good conversions and are likely to UP spending and CPC.

Affiliate statistics can be useful, too. If your site is generating significant affiliate revenue, it's likely to be reaching an audience of spenders.

You know Carlito, after being in the corporate world for 26 years, that sounds a little TOO real!
From what I have personally seen with companies, that doesn't really sound too far off at all.

The people I worked for were good at first, but as profits grew, they realized they could grease the wheels of their machinery with the blood of the workers way too easy.

That's why I left.

Lynch them! Lynch them!

I don't think it has anything to do with August. My observation is that *every* month there is a thread about low eCPM.

There are so many factors affecting the daily data, it's near-impossible to immediately distinguish between the first signs of "smart pricing" or other significant changes, and a meaningless fluctuation.

In the context of the eCPM Trends threads, it would appear that the current day is the trend. On September 1 I imagine there will already be a September 2007 eCPM Trends thread.