Any Ideas or Suggestions?

April 2006: 46 Cents eCPM - Smart Priced to All Time Lows

[cg6453]

I posted a topic in march about the HUGE drop in my ECPM and its sad to report that it has continually plummeted to low amounts. Previous to March 27 i was making $50/day in average, my ECPM which averaged at $1.86(which isnt great) the ECPM has now dropped to 46 cents a day making my daily income about $8-11. I know for the people making $100s a day this wouldnt seem like a significant drop but I was enjoying the $50/day for only 3 months of havin adsense. I have researched the board and the only thing I can think of is that I have been Smart Priced, any ideas or suggestions, the page views and CTR has remained the same with the ECPM drop, Thanks in advance.

Previous Post

"I have been a long time reader, first time poster. Has anyone else noticed their daily earnings drop in the last few days. My page impressions and click rate has been consistent through the month however my ECPM has gone down by half if not more the last 3 days in a row. I have had adsense for the last 3 months and have never experineced this, anyone else in the same boat as me? Or any anyone have any suggestions?
Thanx "

[Scurramunga]

About the time you posted, my earnigns had suddenly dropped from 30% down to 40% down. They have bounced back very well however they haven't fully recovered.

[andrea99]

My earnings have been lackluster but not dropping precipitously. A slight sagging over the past 3-4 weeks. Depressing but not distressing. :)

[cg6453]

Scurramunga

Did they bounce back by themselves or did u take any steps to solve the issue, I know for some the drop may not seem big but its going from $1500 a month to $150 a month and to me right now thats a lot

[Aircut]

i am also suffering from all time lows

my ecpm dropped from 18$ to 6$
clickthrough rate from 5.5% to 2%
earning from 250$ day to less than 60$

my traffic is all natural and is steady. i asked to be oped out of site targeting but still not seeing an improvment.

from 6-7K/month i will be ending at around 2.5K

huge drop.
any advise?

[cg6453]

Aircut

I am in the same boat as you, not the same amounts but the same HUGE drop, its really frustrating and I actually dread checking my stats to see the new lows

[martinibuster]

the only thing I can think of is that I have been Smart Priced, any ideas or suggestions...

Here's a post from yesterday.

How to make Smartpricing work to your advantage
A four-step, EPC-based strategy to maximise income and beat junk ads
[webmasterworld.com...]

I also put that thread in the Library in case someone suffering from smartpricing wandered by to do some research. ;)

[Scurramunga]

Did they bounce back by themselves or did u take any steps to solve the issue, I know for some the drop may not seem big but its going from $1500 a month to $150 a month and to me right now thats a lot

cg6453

The first action I took was to assess which pages had been the worst affected. I took a couple of actions. The actions ranged from reducing the amount of ads on a page down to one block, to removing all ads on the worst affected pages entirely. (keep in mind that I would only place two ad blocks on my best performing pages normally)

I found that I started to see small gains within 48 hours and further gains within 5 days. After that I slowly started to restore the pages and ads back to normal. My ecpm is now somewhat normal again after that massive drop.

[edited by: Scurramunga at 6:00 am (utc) on April 13, 2006]

[cg6453]

Scurramunga

I have removed the low performing ads steadily this week so I am hoping that next week will shed some light on the income drop issue, I appreciate the info and hope that this is just a temporary slump and will resolve very shortly

[Scurramunga]

cg6453,

Keep in mind that when you do repopulate the ads that it would be wise to hold back ads that have underperformed consitently well below your 'standard' in the past.

However as others here have suggested it might be wise to revisit those poor performing pages sometime in the future. However before revisitng those particular pages, I would first add more highly focused content to them and consider other optimisation improvements such as ad format and positioning changes.

[cg6453]

I was thinking about removing all the ads for a couple of days anyone tried this or have any ideas about it?

[Aircut]

the only thing I can think of is that I have been Smart Priced, any ideas or suggestions...

i am not so sure. the trends of generating less clicks must have something to do with the quality of ads served.

i am seeing more ads of the type "all the info you wanted to get on widgets" replacing genuine interesting ads. users simply don't click on them and we are loosing revenues.

i was chasing those for few days with no evil.