Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I see my CTR starting to climb (almost double) after the first week. However income isn't following that trend -- it's basically gone down a little (not significantly yet).
After I make a change of this proportion, how long should I wait to decide whether it's "worth it" for me? I mean, it's great to double my CTRs and all, but that's not yet translating into income. Should I wait a month? 2 months?
Thanks!
However there are a few channels that have a lot of impressions and low ctr, one being a link unit in my site's footer that has very very poor ctr.
Should I remove? My overall ctr would be 2-3 times better if I remove them.
However, this doesn't seem to work for all sites, and it's also possible that you axed too many channels. When I did this, I removed code from pages that either were getting NO clicks at all or very few, and low-value clicks. If you take the code from pages that are bringing in some income, then that loss might cancel out any beneficial effect from improved CTR.
Re removing code from a channel in a footer, that's a somewhat different case, since you're talking about pages with multiple ad blocks and only removing one block. I would CERTAINLY take the ad block you have in the footer off. That's generally not a good location for an ad. Try that, wait a week, consider other options.
Don't do too much at once.
I also did some tweaks on the ad colours and switched placement and units on some ads.
By removing the ad overall clicks of course dropped. My tweaks brought overall ctr up slightly (+0,2 - 0,3%), but the clicks remain less than what I had before.
The result? +30% growth in ecpm and going higher by the day. Overall revenue is up about 1/3.
What does it mean? Is it my tweaks or the removal of the footer ad? Hard to say. I'd assume the second option though.
Here's another, somewhat different. I have no more than one adblock on most pages of my site. Last year, I had a channel that was contributing 10% of impressions but had very few clicks. I removed the code. Fewer impressions for the site as a whole, same number of clicks, so a better CTR--and earnings went up by about 20%. There's nothing else that can account for it. Similar experiences on two other occasions.
I've read the AdSense Blog and JenStar's posts on Smart Pricing, and unless I missed something, AdSense has never said that CTR isn't a factor in Smart Pricing if they don't have conversion data. The closest they've come is to say that CTR isn't related to "advertiser ROI"--which is not the same thing at all.
It's possible that CTR is correlating with some OTHER factor that is included in Smart Pricing. I don't know. Until I see it proved otherwise, I am using channels to identify pages and areas where I either need to improve CTR or take off AdSense code.....
I know that nothing is known for sure about this (hmm that sounds like a Donald Rumsfeld quote) but using CTR as a factor in a pricing algorithm is not a bad idea as it will send a signal to publishers to improve poorly performing ad blocks, something that would be good for the CTA programme in terms of revenue. Whether Google does this with SmartPricing?
How much more proof does one need :)
Thez, what you are doing and this thread are very useful, and I may end up making more money as a result :-). But I do still have some questions before considering your experiment as 'proof'.
The 70% increase, in itself, is not particularly meaningful because it depends on what the "standard deviation" is of your site. If your standard deviation is, in effect, 10% of your average earnings, then your proof is very compelling; if it is 100% of average earnings then the 70% change could simply be a coincidence.
I described in [webmasterworld.com...] how to calculate standard deviation. To 'finalise' your proof, would it be possible for you to work out what the standard deviation is for earnings on your site, and say what it is as a percentage of average earnings. This would be greatly appreciated, thanks, as it will put the 70% change in perspective, showing whether it is more likely a coincidence or a result of your removing low performing channels.
Secondly, when you removed "low performing channels", exactly what did you mean by "low performing". My limited understanding of smart pricing suggests that problematic channels would be ones with a relatively low EPC. Although low CTR or eCPM can often be associated with a low EPC, they do not necessarily mean the page is poor performing. This is because you might be getting a very small number of clicks, but if they all convert then they bump up your smartpricing performance.
So, what were the exact criteria you used to decide which channels were low performers?
Removing ads (or showing fewer ads, to reduce page-load time) on pages with few clicks seemed to reduce income for me. *I did not measure revenue per click or per page.*
I may try a more subtle scheme, but my experience suggests that crude measures may well not work.
YMMV.
Rgds
Damon
So if what you are saying is true, if I remove the bottom one, I will probably get less clicks but the clicks I do get should pay more per click?
What if I change the Leaderboards to 2 ad banner sized... that would also cut the number of ads shown by half. Would that have the same effect?
Compared to 1. Nov - 9. Nov before I removed the footer, and to 10. Nov - 15. Nov there is:
- 47% increase in eCPM
- 27% increase in average daily revenue
From last 3 days average revenue is 45% higher compared to last week. Clicks have increased about 10%.
The footer ad performed really badly, only 0,2% ctr and 1/10th of my overall ecpm.
Just the low performance in ctr and ecpm.
My number of daily clicks is way over 1,000
I think I'll try removing some low CTR and low eCPM pages and see what happens. Even if we lose revenue as a result, we're not going to lose a lot.
I'll start with ones that are also low EPC pages, because I'm not sure about the impact of low-CTR/low-eCPM/high-EPC pages.
Trying different size adblocks is a somewhat separate issue and perhaps worth an experiment....
It's the sum in the end of the month that counts, not what you make in a week or the last two days.
It's the sum in the end of the month that counts, not what you make in a week or the last two days.
Indeed. And there are so many things that affect performance. I've seen pages on my site shift from being one of the top five to having minimal earnings, or vice versa, just because I did a site redesign and the path to that page changes....
The big lesson is to analyze what's happening on your site(s) and keep trying to find ways do to better. This is just one aspect of that.
Earlier this week I removed ads from pages reporting low CTR, eCPM and EPC. Recorded page impressions and clicks fell accordingly. Earnings dropped a bit, but not out of the normal range.
Then, at the end of Thursday the SmartPrice algo was updated on my account. When I come home today earnings are about at least 30% higher than my best expectations - well above the normal range for a Friday in mid/late November.
One swallow does not make a summer, of course. I'll need to do some proper stats in a few days time. And we have had Freak Fridays before. But so far so good.
I'm pretty sure google said CTR has no relation on smart pricing.
However, I imagine the reason things are looking better, is that you have less ad real-estate to offer, and hence are only showing the more valuable ads.
Chances are you are showing better ads on average, that are better targetted and more likly to convert. So the conversion rate is better, hence you start getting paid more for the ads.
I don't think this is any kind of google consipiracy, just the nauture of statistics.
Just my thoughts.
I'm pretty sure google said CTR has no relation on smart pricing.
Nope. They said that "CTR has no relation to advertiser ROI." That is the most they've said about the CTR issue, unless I've missed something.
But I don't think I have. If you can point to a less ambiguous statement by Google, I'd like to hear it.
Until someone does, I'll continue to believe that Google has not ruled out CTR as a factor in Smart Pricing.
Also, 21_blue took the ads off low-performing pages. He did not remove one of two or three adblocks off of a page. So what he did did NOT make only the top-value ads show.
If we are going to get anywhere discussing this, we've got to read what other AdSensers post carefully, and read that Google says carefully. Otherwise misunderstandings can turn into accepted fact,,,,
The pages I removed represented about 20% of page impressions and 5% of revenue.
Freaky Friday was followed by Super Saturday and Sunday is starting to look Special as well. Visitors have been down in the last week or two, but the increase in EPC has made up for this in the last two and a half days. But two and a half days do not a trend make, so we'll have to see how things pan out.
It will be interesting to see what happens to EPC when the SmartPrice is updated at the end of this coming Thursday If SmartPrice is calculated over the whole week, then as I removed these pages on Tuesday (meaning that last Thursdays EPC change will have been based on a part week) then hopefully EPC will increase again (?).
However, I'm also making change to my primary landing pages to reduce their clickthrough rate and encourage genuine widget-seekers to explore the site more. I anticipate this will also increase EPC, but it's a bit like changing two pegs in the game of mastermind: any further change in EPC won't be attributable to any one factor.
The only ad block I have that looks like a candidate for removal is the one on my main page in the footer. It gets a ton of impressions, but only a few clicks, and it contributes 2-3% of revenue overall. This block is clearly lowering my overall CTR, however it is improving the CTR on my main page.
If I chop it and it is page CTR that matters then smart pricing should punish me (but only to the tune of 2-3%). If it is raw CTR that matters I should get a big reward.
Unfortunately the mastermind analogy is going to hurt.. we are getting near to Christmas and year end and I am anticipating rising revenue regardless, so it will be hard to know whether it is smart pricing or simply increased competitiveness.
There may also be page CTR factors, I don't know.
Note too that the number of impressions that the removed ads generate is, of course, important. If they generate 10% of impressions then removing them will have much more of an impact than if they only generate 1% of the impressions.
You may just have to try it. I'd suggest trying it for a full week or longer--since Smart Pricing doesn't update dailiy. And try to choose a fairly normal week, which will be a bit tricky this time of year.
Hunderdown, were those pages also low EPC (in comparison with the rest of the site)?
So far I've only been removing ads from pages that are low on everything - CTR, eCPM and EPC. However, I wonder if it is EPC that really counts. I realise that there is an argument that Smart Pricing operates on a site-wide basis. But in the Adwords blurb Google say that the Smart Pricing algo takes into account "many factors", of which the performance of the site is presumably just one.
So, a relatively low EPC page on your site could indicate that the advertisers are getting discounts due to the "other factors". These other factors could, in turn, be knocking down your account Smart Pricing assessment.
If that is correct, it suggests that low CTR/high EPC pages are OK, because the 'other factors' aren't coming in to play.
