europeforvisitors - 2:57 pm on Nov 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

Facts speak otherwise. They let publishers micro-manage their ads based only on CTR and overall earnings (even though ROI is much more important for sustainable long-term success).

Good point. Maybe they should supply no data except total earnings, so that publishers would stop micromanaging ads and spend their time developing good content instead. :-)

Seriously, though, they've already got people keeping an eye on ROI: Those people are the advertisers, who have placement reports and domain filters to help them determine where ads should or shouldn't run.

[EDITED TO ADD:]

Remember, too, that low-converting but smartpriced clicks could have better ROI, in some cases, than high-converting, full-priced clicks. Encouraging publishers to remove ads from their least productive pages may not be in the interests of advertisers or Google. It may not even be in the best interests of publishers, who--in many cases--have no other way to monetize their low-performing pages.