oddsod - 12:16 pm on Dec 9, 2005 (gmt 0)

It's about making things more obscure and using that to skim more profit.

Adsense publishers now have a smartpricing factor based on actual conversions but also on a lot of other mumbo-jumbo... an undisclosed factor. Now the price of your Adwords depends on CTR, price and some unknown factor.

Unknown factors at both ends can be tweaked as an when necessary to raise income to meet any publicly disclosed quarterly reports which the analysts keep a close eye on.