martinibuster - 6:14 am on Mar 5, 2007 (gmt 0)

This discussion is NOT about Smart Pricing
There are many reasons for an earnings collapse, and it's important to list them. If you cannot diagnose a problem then you cannot cure it. Smart Pricing is not the only cause, so let's make a list of what causes earnings to dive.

• Too much inventory
  As more people enter a space, the EPC is going to drop. MFAs in some cases may be a symptom of a niche with inventory that's under strain. MFAs may not be the problem, just the symptom of the underlying problem.

  If there are so many publishers that they're cannibalizing inventory by advertising on each others site, then that niche may likely be suffering from too much inventory.

  Speaking from experience, this can affect an older site, too. The bottom falls out, it's not smart pricing.

• Wrong idea of what constitutes a normal range.
  Too many newbs complain about having been smart priced because their earnings collapsed after their first couple of months. The base amount they're comparing is not large enough if it's only one or three months. If five months out of six you're earning six cents per click, six cents is normal. Twelve cents per click for a month is a newb advertiser that didn't know his content network was turned on.

  And this can affect older sites too. As inventory expands we're going to see lower and lower benchmarks for what represents an average EPC. Let's face it, the content network plays second best to the search network, and it may always earn significantly less than what advertisers are paying per click for search.

• Newb advertisers
  Newbs can cause prices to go up and stay up until they run out of money. If no one is stepping in to keep up the pace then your EPC is going to collapse.

• Savvy advertisers
  Everybody suspects that a contextual click is generally not as good as a search click. Whether that is true or not is besides the point, that's the general perception. As advertisers become smarter they're going to adjust their prices accordingly.

  I suspect that all it takes is one or two bidders dropping their bids to cause a collapse and let the air out of a high EPC gravy train. This is not fact, and I admit it. However, this conclusion comes from anecdotal evidence from watching how the same advertisers dominate certain channels makes me aware of how much my EPC is dependent on these advertisers propping up the cost of bidding on my site.