Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Smart pricing doesn't work at all as described or intended. If it did the results wouldn't be so seemingly random or fluctuate so wildly.
I haven't seen wild or seemingly random swings that I would attribute to smart pricing. On a daily basis, I do see some fairly large swings, but I can usually connec them to changes in traffic or in advertisers. And those swings have died down as my overall AdSense impressions have grown.
So I'm wondering about this. If the smart pricing factor is updated weekly, as has been suggested here, then its impact should only be noticeable from week to week, and not day to day.
What have other people seen? What kind of changes in earnings or EPC has smart pricing caused, and how do you know it was smart pricing, and not something else?
And what kind of site(s) do you run? That may have an influence--I run a small, fairly focused, content site. Perhaps that kind of site is less vulnerable to fluctuations...
that's exactly what was supposed to happen, because of the following:
Display Ads Balloon 12%
by Wendy Davis, Tuesday, Feb 21, 2006 6:01 AM EST
ONLINE MARKETERS SERVED MORE THAN 138 billion display ads last month, marking a 12 percent increase from December, according to new data from Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance.
-online media daily
on top of that, in the last quarter, online ad spending was up several percentage points... adsense reflected that for me.
so in january, google received the above increase in adwords ads, but paid out less to adsense publishers.
so did your increased earnings come from an increase in adsense epc? or was it because of things like an increase in traffic?
damonhd, i have also seen some dismal cpm numbers from other ad networks as well... how do we account for that, given the big increase in ad spending that they received? i can't imagine that they would serve up more ads for the same amount of money(?)
look at the significance of a 12% increase in ads, directly after the xmas season.
and no, the google quarterly report does not tell you what the actual payout data is.
All you need is a pocket calculator.
Also, what does an increase in the Web's display-ad sales have to do with AdSense? Display ads (or "image ads" in Google parlance) are a small part of AdSense's ad inventory. Most AdSense ads are contextual text ads. (Which is probably just as well, since publishers who want cheap run-of-network display ads can get plenty of them from established banner networks like Burst! Media or FastClick.)
so in january, google received the above increase in adwords ads, but paid out less to adsense publishers.
Sorry, but January was my best month ever, by a good bit, and up more than a third from December.
So if Google were increasing their percent "take," they weren't doing it across the board. And frankly, I don't think they were increasing their take--they were surprisingly few "my earnings are down" threads last month.
What do you get out of assuming that the cause of your earnings going down is Google taking more, other than a reason not to find ways to do better? I don't care one way or another what Google does or doesn't keep. I'm just determined to keep doing better.
so now you are claiming that while the other ad formats increased drastically, the number of adsense ads went down? what, did everyone suddenly abandon adsense? please...
so what % did google pay to publishers? the phrase being bandied about all over the 'net is: "Q4 traffic acquisition costs, reflecting the amount paid out to ad partners, was $629 million, or 33% of ad revenues."
afaik, that data is not in the google annual report that you keep referring to.
hunderdown, congrats on a good month... did your epc go up, traffic go up, is your sector seasonal, did you change the site layout, add content, etc.
did your epc go up, traffic go up, is your sector seasonal, did you change the site layout, add content, etc.
No changes to layout, and only my usual small additions of content.
And I should add that February has definitely continued along the same lines as January. No dropoff.
I started the thread because my experience of AdSense is that it's pretty stable, and has grown increasingly stable as I have added pages and increased traffic. No big swings one way or the other, and I want to understand why folks like birdstuff have the opposite experience.
so now you are claiming that while the other ad formats increased drastically, the number of adsense ads went down? what, did everyone suddenly abandon adsense? please...
I'm claiming no such thing. I'm merely suggesting that you shouldn't bring apples into a discussion of oranges.
so what % did google pay to publishers? the phrase being bandied about all over the 'net is: "Q4 traffic acquisition costs, reflecting the amount paid out to ad partners, was $629 million, or 33% of ad revenues."
That 33% number refers to traffic-acquisition costs as a percentage of Google's total revenues (including AdWords revenues on SERPs), not as a percentage of AdSense revenues. You've probably learned this already from hunderdown's reply to your post in the new "What is Google's cut?" thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]
afaik, that data is not in the google annual report that you keep referring to.
Sure, it is. Here are the numbers from the 4Q 2005 earnings report:
"Google's partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $799 million"
"TAC - Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenues shared with Google's partners, increased to $629 million"
Divide $629 million by $799 million, and you get a payout of 78.7234 percent (or 79 percent, if you prefer round numbers).
Of course, nobody outside Google knows exactly what percentage individual partners are being paid. But the average Google payout percentage is far higher than publishers get from traditional ad networks, where payouts typically range from 50 to 65 percent rather than Google's 79.
that is not logical, which i guess means that you just don't understand how it's relevant... more on that later.
i think that the j#*$!#*$!x blog that started all this 78% payback-to-adsense hoopla is wrong, as i've pointed out in your thread referenced above:
"...It is also bad news for the many VC funded web service startups whose revenue models are based on being honey pots for Google AdSense clicks."
i think that the j#*$!#*$!x blog that started all this 78% payback-to-adsense hoopla is wrong, as i've pointed out in your thread referenced above
If a blog is claiming a 78% "payback to AdSense," the blog is definitely wrong, because it's got the numbers flipped around.
Again, the overall payout to publishers is nearly 79 percent, which means Google's share is just over 21 percent, or about half of what conventional ad networks typically take as their cut. The percentage received by individual publishers may vary, but the overall payout is is public knowledge.
>>>Again, the overall payout to publishers is nearly 79 percent<<<
no, it's not... you are using tac numbers as your basis for computing that 78%, but tac numbers are not reliable, as i pointed out in the thread referenced above... i'll give it to you another way, from a conversation between john battelle and a google rep:
"Me: Well, one of the things that publishers wonder about AdSense is what is the split? How much of every dollar goes to us, and how much to you?
She: Well, we don't divulge that information, but if you look at our SEC filings, you can see our numbers...
Me: Yes, I know about your TAC, and it averages in the high seventies to low 80s, but that number is very difficult to understand - I know that you have set deals with sites like Ask and AOL, and those probably skew the overall TAC. I wonder if you are making up that high TAC by, well, dialing down the TAC with smaller publishers like Boing Boing. I mean, we have no idea if you are giving us high seventies, or taking 60 percent all for yourself!
She: We can't get into numbers, but we can say that we give the majority of the revenue to our publishers.
Me: Huh. That's the first time I've ever heard that - so more than fifty percent?
She: We can't give exact numbers out."
