Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Greater customer service (The representative should be highly qualified and trained)
Google has designed Adwords to work as an auction system where advertisers bid for space. If the content system allowed those suppling their space to accept or reject a price range then wouldn't this consitute a true auction system or market place? If a publisher's reserve price is higher than what bidders are willing to pay, then that publisher would have to adapt by lowering his price or forgoe a sales opportunity. Likewise bidders adjust their bids in accordance with current market prices shaped by demand and supply forces.
Even if this isn't possible how about more detailed stats?
Ah well.......there's nothing wrong with thinking out aloud
[edited by: Scurramunga at 10:03 am (utc) on May 14, 2006]
Withdraw to paypal.
Why? It'd just be nice to be able to get in touch with someone with an occasional question - or idea - that's all.
For example, I have a couple of simple questions right now - but I can't be bothered to go through the whole "email tech support, get a canned response" rigmarole right now - so I haven't bothered.
I understand the need to keep headcount down - but if you restrict account managers to publishers earning very well - how many could there be? - We know that 95% of publishers earn very little.
And since each account manager could probably service several hundred such high-earning publishers (like Marcus said - how much support do you actually need) - I don't think it would cost that much to do.
One of the reasons I joined Google was to show relevant ads on my site in CONTEXT. I can't say that advertising that makes me 1 to 5 cents per click, diverts a potential customer away from my site to a page filled with directory style ads is what I like about AdSense. Who knows, the results may be surprising with publishers starting at one level CPC, and then realising those 1, 3 and 5 cent ads really add up in the long run.
I agree TheDonster. Allowing publishers to be able to set the minimum CPC for their sites would certainly hit the MFA/arbritrage crowd where it counts most ($). If allowed, expect to see a drastic reduction of players from that camp in the content network if the 1-5 cent option suddenly dries up for them!
put (entered amount or %) of my APPROVED adsense earnings aside in a way of Google Wallet or something, and make some easy function to use it to buy domain or webspace.
...or at least syndicate it with blogger (your company) so I can make some pro acount or something... things started to move for me, and I would like to pay domain and hoasting, but if I transer my blog to my hoasting, don't know if I'll manage to keep my PR, traffic, etc etc...
In short I'm prepared to pay large amount just to make my blog professional but don't have way to do this... since I don't use internet payable credit card....
I agree TheDonster. Allowing publishers to be able to set the minimum CPC for their sites would certainly hit the MFA/arbritrage crowd where it counts most
I think that most would priced out of the market. Unless of course MFA's are in profitable areas and are playing with large profit margins, which I doubt.
Adsense representative (Publishers who make over $30.000 per month should have an adsense representative.)
What makes you think these folks don't already exist, or that it takes $30,000.00 a month in earnings for a publisher to qualify for a rep?
It would work because ALL legit adsense publishers would certainly .........
There is NO reason to believe that ALL publishers, legit or not, would do anything. I'm not running around reporting other publishers, it's up to Google and the Adsense team to police the system. My job is to worry about MY site.
Most of my clicks are way above that, but I have noticed an increasing number of 3-5 cent clicks creeping in, as the adsense arbitrage tactic becomes more wildly known and practised.
Google, publishers no longer want to be milked like prize holsteins for cheap clicks by the arbitrage crowd.
Google, publishers no longer want to be milked like prize holsteins for cheap clicks by the arbitrage crowd.
Well put, foxtunes!
I've started blocking out these sites when I find them -- and I'm noticing my 1 and 3 cent clicks are disappearing. But what is even MORE important to me, is that when I started researching some of these sites through various online utilities designed for such things - I noticed that they were sending between 50 and 200 spams per week to test mailboxes setup specifically to test those sites. That's INSANE! And I don't ever, ever want my users to have to experience that ... so I'm comfortable that even though it may cost me a few dollars in the long run (since Google obviously thinks those ads will pay if they're ending up on my site), it's a small price to pay for delivering a much better visitor experience to my users. I'm blocking them all now, whenever I find one that's massively spammy like that, and keep looking for more every day.
Nice one Toomer, the ad filter is a good tool to use, but if you're in a competitive niche that 200 list will soon fill up.
Regarding smart pricing, I wonder what happens if over a course of a month when you've sent hundreds of clicks to the arbitrage sites, and those site owners, or google's algorhythm say the traffic doesn't convert.
It's like adding insult to injury, will we get smart priced because the MFAs don't convert?
I'm definitely getting more of the deceptive "Get free widget here" ads. The landing page just has a few lines of text with two 336 google or yahoo ads visible.
Why do we have to waste time policing these? Of course we want to make money from adsense, but there's also the matter of offering a useful service for our visitors.
These MFA ads give a negative user experience for our visitors, and in the long run undermine the integrity of the program.
It's like adding insult to injury, will we get smart priced because the MFAs don't convert?
I for one would love to hear the official word on this question from ASA.
Regarding smart pricing, I wonder what happens if over a course of a month when you've sent hundreds of clicks to the arbitrage sites, and those site owners, or google's algorhythm say the traffic doesn't convert.
Given that my sites are new, I'm running AdWords campaigns from time to time to draw a bit of traffic in. From that side of things, I get the sense that there's some extra steps you need to take to tie into Google to provide whether your ads convert or not...
I was trying to picture how this must work - for larger sites, they must be tying it right to their back-end ordering systems somehow ... so that they can track the clickthrough from the moment it hits their site, all the way through to the order confirmation. I would guess those details are provided to Google somehow.
For sites that do not do this, I would imagine they are not counted by Google. For instance, I haven't configured anything in my AdWords account for showing Google how many people "convert" once they're on my site ... because I don't sell any products.
So, for the sites that don't have any means of converting and communicating those stats - I would expect that Google doesn't use them in its calculation of smartpricing.... and given the level of sophistication of the MFA'ers, I'd be hard pressed to believe that they're tracking their own conversions and passing the stats to Google.
Although if they did, they would likely always try to return a 0% result so that more and more people are getting smartpriced, and their CPC's would go down.
"How are conversions determined?
A conversion is registered when an ad click leads to an event that you consider valuable. Depending on the business, a conversion can be defined as:
* A purchase
* A signup or registration
* A request for more information
* A page view
* A demo download / game play
The page where you confirm that a user has successfully taken one of these actions is the conversion page. The Google Site Stats text block is placed (generally, the Thank you for your purchase/subscription/visit page), and is then seen by the user after a conversion occurs."
So for me, I can't measure conversions - because I have no signups and no products to order. The only "valuable" event for me is when someone reads my content, and decides to check out an ad that is related to the subject. Since I can't "place" the "Google Site Stats text block" on the eventual page that pops up for a user that clicks on an ad ... I can't provide conversion tracking to G.
The same would be true for MFA's ....
1. Ability to set minimum rates for CPC and CPM ads
But I'd ad it should be on a per page, per URL, and or per subdirectory basis. An optional parameter, (perhaps with a site wide default), passed to the Google Javascript.
This still allows Google to sell 1 cent ads and the webmaster can place them on appropriate pages. Higher quality page, higher price.
Frankly I don't understand why Google doesn't automate this for us. Optimizing on a per site basis should increase Google's income dramatically by assuring quality clicks, but it doesn't seem like they do this.
Clearly Adwords does block out low bids in many cases, but somehow MFA advetisers are working around the system.
A detailed information page or Google Blog article that address many of the publisher concerns raised on Webmasterworld. Publishers would benifit if Google could just confirm or dispell a few of the myths we read. For instance, it would be good to have more information on how to avoid being smart priced down to 1-2 cents a click. I am sure that many publishers would value hearing Google's word regarding the implications of smartpringing (if any) as a result of allowing arbitage ads to remain. If arbitrage ads are not the root of the 2 cent click scurge, causing even well established sites to suddenly suffer from the 1 and 2 cent click scourge perhaps just a little more information on this mysterious beast called samrtpricing would be helpful. I understand Google needs to keep detailed information about it's algorithms secret, however this information could be more about gerneralised do's and don'ts for webmasters based on google findings, rather than information about the way smartpricing operates
Just as I have found the heatmap very useful for ctr optimisation, I think that tips that aid publishers to optimise content for higher ad conversions would help publishers and advertisers alike.
There are many myths that publishers talk about besides the ones I have just mentioned, so a 'myths' page in the form of a blog article or alongside Google FAQ's would help.
[edited by: Scurramunga at 11:44 pm (utc) on May 15, 2006]
Ronburk wrote:
- Any movement to address the issue of limited channels. a) Google-supplied JavaScript for letting publishers collect the click info themselves; b) just a simple increase in channels; c) something else I can't think of, but clever Google can.
- The ability to collect per-click price info, even if it's via Google-supplied JavaScript that requires us to do the collecting on our own servers. Just like Google, we really want to use data mining to improve the service we provide to both visitors and advertisers.
Or, at least, more channels for testing and tracking on a per-page basis. Thank you very much.
Some of our channels have CPM rates that are all over the map. Site targetting in that case in very hard.
A publisher-controlled Google search box
Ah, I just discovered Google co-op, which seems to offer a large degree of flexibility in constructing customized search for my visitors.
What I'm still trying to figure out is whether, with Google co-op, I can just have a search box on my site, or whether I have to get my visitors to do a tedious "subscribe" process. The latter is definitely not desirable. I just want visitors to my website to be able to do a one-off search that produces the customized results I've designed -- I don't want them to have to commit to having all their future searches fall under my purvey.
- "advertise on this site" link (at least per domain)
- ad filter / ban list
- ability to run cpm ads
to see which ads (advertisers) are clicked ;)
2. Get rid of all "New or used dead sheep at Big Auction House" ads. And make them pay hefty fines when they don't ACTUALLY have the item they advertised!
3. Don't accept ads for those "Fill out our 2 minute Survey and Get a free Trip to Antartica" ads which ask for your e-mail up front then REQUIRE you to complete a purchase from 20 out of 100 different affiliates, which then transfers you to another similar site to start all over without ever getting the trip. We have actually had numerous e-mailed complaints from our visitors complaining about these and we have to track them down one by one in order to filter them. It's extremely difficult when you're not sure what page the visitor saw it on and you don't know what geographical area they are browsing from. This would be another excellent reason for having a report of what ads visitors clicked on in a time frame.
4. A way to customize or eliminate the "ads by Google" line. It's tacky.
5. Finally, my standard request for every one of these wish lists to date: An "avg pay per click" column on all the reports!
And since it's just a dream list. I'd love to see graphical statistics plotting options in the reporting section so I don't have to export offline to Excel to show the boss AND ALSO a trend flagging option on the channel detail reports to alert us in real time when a channel's avg EPC, CTR or CPM suddenly drops more than 10% (or some other statistically significant amount) below a 30 day running avg (an automatically generated e-mail would be nice too :). This would allow us to analyze at a glance what channel(s) are responsible for a significant drop in overall daily revenue and possibly correct the problem quicker.
I would like to see more customization on ad sizes (for text only ads) and type face selection for ads.
