Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Q: HOW DO YOU KNOW WHICH ADS PAY POORLY?
A: TRACKING, CHANNELS, STAY UP LATE, PATIENCE, AND NO SOCIAL LIFE
OK, here's the basics of how I figure out SOME of who's paying what per click.
1) Channels per URL, everything on the site more or less has to have a channel. I have too many pages so I had to cheat and combined some low traffic pages that have low CTR but that's cool, it still works
2) Use an AdSense tracker script that can indentify which ad was clicked per channel
3) Sit and wait, watch for clicks on slow channels or just after midnight PST when AdSense stats rollover. When you see any channel in AdSense that has a single click for $0.03 just look it up in the AdSense tracker, see where they went, and VOILA! you have one nailed. However, don't take this as 100% gospel as we're not even sure AdSense updates sequentially.
Will this improve your earnings?
Danged if I know, I'm just telling you how to do it as I can spot them easily on my site.
Don't shoot yourself in the foot with this, be careful as $0.03 is better then $0.00
Why do I say that?
Apply some logic here - I have a skyscraper and a leaderboard on the same page that shows 7-8 ads and they only picked ONE which paid a paltry $0.03. OK, so you low paying ad hunters chase down the low paying ads and get rid of them and now the visitor sees NOTHING they want, ZERO ads out of 8 ads is $0.00 so the $0.03 is looking better, eh?
Just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done.
FWIW, midnight just rolled over, new AdSense tracking day, 1 click, US$0.16, shoot me, I need a life.
Proceed at your own risk.
I just try to get a general understanding of where the high paying clicks are coming from, by looking at my URL channels. I just think there are too many variables to be able to get more than a general guess. The problem is we never really know what ad with what copy was clicked on.
But still I'm interested in what you have done. Have you found that doing what you do helps with income?
Sometimes I see $4 clicks, sometimes I see $0.03 clicks, but I remember that each click is a click I didn't have before.
The ONLY thing I block are ads completely off topic or copy so bad that my cat wouldn't click on it even by accidentally sitting on my mouse, those 20-30 sites just had to go.
My income is up a bunch lately and I don't touch AdSense much, I just focus on traffic and let Google's algo's do what they're intended to do and we both make money. Not that Google is flawless, but it seems that they take care of ads tha don't pay on their own for the most part.
If you think about it, on certain pages a $0.03 ad wouldn't even show up unless it was performing better than the $0.10 ads, it's all what people click on, the more they click, the more we make. Not like we can control ad copy as the worst ads without click may pay the best and vice versa that lowest paying may generate a ton of clicks.
My conclusion was you just can't tell and to leave good enough alone until something hits the fan as I've been flooded with junk once or twice that I blocked and suddently everything bounced back to normal.
Yes, I think you should dump the ads that you make your (and my) cat throw up, and let G handle the rest until you see an actual problem. That way we can do positive things for our site *and* have a social life!
(Speaking of which, we are taking our baby across London for the first time today, to see her grandparents... So it works! B^>)
Rgds
Damon
Anything likely to make the cat chunder has to go, but they are rare, and spammy MFA's are another story.....
BTW, anyone got any tips for removing cat chunder from soft furnishings? :)
I have some half-banners (single ad) with a dedicated channel and sometimes see the same ad pay a few pennies and sometimes close to $2.
So if I blocked an ad that generated $0.03 at 3:30 AM e.s.t. I might be blocking an ad that could generate $1.30 at 3:30 PM e.s.t.
FarmBoy
Suppose an advertiser is paying $1.00 per click.
Someone clicks on an ad at 1AM and Google pays the AdSense publisher $0.05. Someone clicks on the same ad at 1PM and Google pays the AdSense publisher $1.35.
Advertiser has paid $2 for 2 clicks. Publisher has earned $1.40. Even though one of the clicks paid the publisher more than Google earned from the advertiser, the publisher has still earned just 70% of the $2 paid by the advertiser.
Is there any indication this is not happening?
FarmBoy
because of the bidding process, the same ad may not always pay the same.
Good point as my last AdWords campaign was set to pay a max of $0.25 per click and I was rarely charged anything close to that in the content network, usually averaged around $0.13
FWIW, investigating how much my clicks paid out a few times with various channels DID point out where some higher paying clicks were in my niche. Problem was, when I looked to see how much traffic those keywords got it was barely worth chasing, so it appears the few advertisers getting those few clicks are in a battle to the death over them.
