calman - 4:24 am on Jan 3, 2008 (gmt 0)

AdSense worked very well for us until the October changes. It performed in a consistent fashion. The October changes saw a decrease in CTR and income. The decrease in income was mitigated somewhat by a very modest increase in EPC.

The decrease in income was significant, but certainly not of the order experienced by others such as HuskyPup. As a foreign publisher, the decrease in income was aggravated, of course, because it occurred at the same time that the value of the American dollar was experiencing a sharp collapse.

Although we already had a fairly diversified income stream, we immediately began a period of reevaluation of AdSense on our site in case the October changes were permanent - which it certainly now appears that they are. We had never conducted such an extensive review in the past, and we might not have conducted one now except for the October changes.

We decided to redeploy AdSense on our site:
-left AdSense as it was on approximately one third of our monthly page views.
-redeployed AdSense on another third and relegated it to less desirable real estate.
-removed AdSense totally on another third.

Essentially, we decided to increase the use of other existing partners on our site to the detriment of AdSense, although we also decided to add one new partner.

The changes were largely implemented by the end of December and will be completed by the end of January. We will see how the situation develops and evaluate the impact of the changes over the next few months. We are now much more open to experimentation than we have been in the past.

We have no problem with AdSense. They have treated us well. Google will run AdSense as they see fit, and we will run our site as we desire. We will certainly continue to use AdSense to the extent that it performs effectively for us.