AdSense 'Smart Pricing'

Is it worth it to show adsense on under-performing sites?

[drshields]

I have a question about Google's 'Smart Pricing' which I have seen some members of this board complain about.

Currently I have three sites that I maintain. The one that gets the most page views - about 5,000+ page views/day - get little-to-no clicks. I think I've probably gotten 1 or 2 clicks from the site in the past two weeks, since I started tracking with channels.

On the other hand, I've got two smaller sites, which average approximately 1,000 visitors a day each - my CTR there is VERY high, approximately 10-20% CTR on a daily basis.

My question: Am I hurting my overall earnings by displaying ads on my site with the most traffic but no ad clicks?

[hunderdown]

The answer is: possibly. People have had different experiences when they removed AdSense code from under-performing channels. My earnings went up, and a few other people have reported the same. Others have reported that it made no difference.

Given that you are hardly earning anything from that site, what have you got to lose by experimenting? Pull the code off and see what happens.

[Vlad]

I would say that it does. Try taking the ads off for a week from the underperforming site and see if it does anything. You're not going to lose much anyway :P

Also think about why people are not interested in the ads. Are the ads not related to the pages? Maybe moving them to a new spot will improve CTR, changing ad format might help too, maybe replace ads with adlinks.

Is it a forum by any chance?

[drshields]

Yes... It is a forum actually. Does Adsense traditionally do pretty poorly on forums?

[david_uk]

My experience was that removing the inder-performing ads caused my overall ctr to rise, and my bottom line $$ figure to rise. I'd say that if it's not working remove it - what have you got to lose?

[viggen]

I replaced the low performing pages (forum, blog front page) with YPN, since then Adsense EPC has gone up noticable, plus YPN is giving me much more on the previous low performing page.

I would defenitely try to remove/replace the low performing ads and check how it will affect the other pages, as previously said, not much to loose...

cheers
viggen

[europeforvisitors]

I removed the AdSense code from my lowest-performing pages, and both my EPC and overall eCPM dropped slightly. Go figure.

Of course, it's possible that those pages converted exceptionally well for advertisers even though they had low clickthrough rates (though I have no reason to believe that).

The bottom line is that you can't know the answer without testing.

[JoaquinG]

You can't answer without data, google must give us this data, conversion ratio of ads.
Please

[sven1977]

It made no difference for me either to remove ads from low performimg pages.

[europeforvisitors]

You can't answer without data, google must give us this data, conversion ratio of ads.

Google doesn't have conversion data for every ad (or even, probably, for most ads), because not all advertisers use Google's conversion-tracking tool.

Also, when Google does have conversion data for a specific ad or advertiser, it can't share that data with publishers because that would require disclosing an advertiser's trade secrets.

[gendude]

You could always remove AS from under-performing sites and use Yahoo or another advertiser on those sites instead, that way those sites are covered, and it leaves your high-perfoming sites open for AS.

[ronburk]

My question: Am I hurting my overall earnings by displaying ads on my site with the most traffic but no ad clicks?

Unlikely. That number of clicks is so small compared to your total that it would be difficult for it to affect your overall ROI for advertisers. OTOH, if it's really that small, why waste your space and your visitors time with it?

[david_uk]

Unlikely. That number of clicks is so small compared to your total that it would be difficult for it to affect your overall ROI for advertisers. OTOH, if it's really that small, why waste your space and your visitors time with it?

In my case, at one point I put an additional ad block at the bottom of my main earning page. The additional block had a similar number of impressions to the high earner, but virtually no clicks. The overall ctr was obviously half of the original, and over time the epc dropped. I'm guessing that smart pricing picked up the change and smartpriced me accordingly. Removing the additional block restored the ctr, and the epc / earning bounced back within a few days.

Since then I've always made sure that all of my ad blocks work for me, and if they don't then they go.

Since we know that smart pricing is account wide, then if one site gets a lot of visitors but no clicks, it may be affecting the others earnings. I would cetainly try removing the ads and see what happens. I'd advise anybody considering dropping ad blocks to make sure you have some way of measuring and asessing changes.

[drshields]

I thought I should give the members here an update:

I took Viggen's advice and replaced the low CTR ads (on the forum and on the site that gets a lot of traffic) with YPN Ads. After about 3 days, my result is this: Earnings up about 250-300% when taking both adsense and yahoo into consideration.

I realize I am still a small player in this adsense game; at this point, adsense is basically paying for my high speed internet connection, and maybe a few beers on the weekend.

Regardless, while I was previously earning, on average, $2.00/day with Adsense, I'm no earning (over the last few days) approximately $4.00/day with Adsense, and $.50 cents/day with Yahoo. Like I said, small money compared to the people out there earning hundreds per day (I'm working on getting there) however going from $2.00/day to $4.50/day is no small measure!

Of course, it could have something to do with the fact that I have been trying to SEO-itize my site the core, and now I am #1 in my niche on google.

Thanks to all those that responde to my original concern. I would say my conclusion is that by removing under-performing ads, I am much better off.

[david_uk]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad (but not surprised) that it's worked well for you.

Keep monitoring how it's working for you, and keep experimenting with layouts and placements.