Forum Moderators: martinibuster
For example, a click on an ad for digital cameras on a web page about photography tips may be worth less than a click on the same ad appearing next to a review of digital cameras.
[edited by: markus007 at 8:08 pm (utc) on April 1, 2004]
I don't think Google will cry bitter tears if the publishers it has deemed to produce lower ROI for advertisers switch to other services, as if their calculations are correct and the other services continue to charge a higher rate for those clicks, AdSense becomes a better deal for advertisers.
My primary complaints about AdSense remain:
* The hyperactive "offensive content" filter blocks ads from popular pages - even when Google has advertisers who would like to advertise on those pages (and who are relegated to less relevant pages as a result of the bad filtration); and
* The contextual filter is not very good at figuring out when 80% of a site is on a particular subject, that 20% of the site might benefit from different types of ads. **** seems to anticipate that its filters are imperfect, and lets publishers suggest themes and keywords. Google should do the same, even if it is cautious about how it uses the publisher-provided information.
That's close enough for government work. Between this and other boards looks like 90% of posters were like me and basically let go, with about 5% unchanged and 5% earning more.
If you have multiple kinds of sites and use channels, I think it may be easier to see which kind of sites are coming out ahead and which are making less revenue with the recent changes.
Will be interesting to see what I get charged!
cheers
viggen
No, every single person on this forum has NOT taken a big pay cut.I don't think there's enough data to make any firm conclusions. Thurs-Sun are my lowest earning days of the week in any case.
Ditto. Too soon for me to tell. The EPM which is all that really matters to me does not look too different yet.
At this point I have no obvious net gain/loss.
My affiliate links trend near a 10% converstion which I believe is rather high, and may have a direct correlation to my lack of seeing a major AdSense CPM drop.
I have set up a test. Identical adverts, identical CPC, identical keywords, but one campaign on search and one on sites.Will be interesting to see what I get charged!
Hey TimeShareGuy, I like this idea... I hope you let us know your results!
"Because the difference in conversion rates between, say, an article on widgets and a gmail e-mail message about widgets is likely to be even greater than the difference between the difference in conversion rates between a widget ad on a SERP and one in a review." - europe
I agree because gmail e-mail, SERP, articles are seperate advertising mediums. Thus the need to let advertisers decide.
"Largely"? Partly, maybe. But it's unrealistic to pretend that there aren't intrinsic differences in value between leads from different media--and it's also unrealistic to expect advertisers to jump through hoops to increase conversion rates from traffic that doesn't perform well and which they'd just as soon avoid altogether." - europe
Whoa there. Read what you said. If you were to teach an advertiser to convert well off of content do you think they would do it? They sure would. Why is it so unrealistic to expect advertisers to learn how to market with a different medium?
Would you market the same in a newspaper as you would in a magazine? Would you market the same on TV as you would on radio? No marketing your products change to the type of media you are using.
I am not saying what google is doing is wrong but if google were to seperate content from SERP from email... and let market force determine the value you would see many more advertisers want to give it a try and learn what works. You can't have the same pricing scheme to fit all.
Even now with a discount provided, it is based on a different advertising medium's prices and value. You still won't see the effect on ROI as you would hope to see. I think google should seperate biddings then work on a better technology to deal with conversion issues and discount from there.
Whoa there. Read what you said. If you were to teach an advertiser to convert well off of content do you think they would do it? They sure would. Why is it so unrealistic to expect advertisers to learn how to market with a different medium?
That may happen eventually, but right now, I wonder how many advertisers would want to venture into waters that are muddied by so many different types of "content" (some of questionable value).
Drop in EPC for the whole month of March is about 20%. Traffic is normal, and CTR is very slightly up 0.1%. Revenue is also down April to date 21% from March.
All these sites are very different in scope. There seems to be no pattern to the drop (i.e. lowest traffic sites didn't drop the most, etc.).
Triple digit days are nearly at hand.
Better targetted ads? I have yet to see any. I really hope they iron out these bugs soon - I don't want to spend half my day blocking inappropraite ads for my site.
Did anyone in the forum come out?
CTR down 20%
EPC down 48%
CPM down 58%
I get this CPM from the stinking NON TARGETED BANNER AD COMPANIES!
Oh, and you know why I think this is the case? About 75% of the ads shown are OFF TOPIC!
I just looked into the channel stats and it looks like this:
- CPC before: $1 to $2 => now 85% less
- CPC before: $0.5 => now 60% less
- CPC before: $0.10 ... $0.20 => now 35% less
I can see this kind of pattern on a medium traffic (high converting) and on a high traffic site (low converting), 500k impressions/day sample. I haven't seen any improvement in ad-targeting yet.
so it appears as if the "high earners" were hit the hardest... on the other side if you were in the $0.10 to $0.20 range before you might actually seen a small increase in earnings by better/different targeting. (a couple of months ago all in a sudden all our ads changed to a different topic which resulted in a 40% higher CTR/income)
They also said to look at my reports for those changes over time.
IMHO, we are a staunch Adsense supporters! We will most likely stick it out to see how it goes on my valuble real-etate that we are giving up on our many sites.
And No I have not came out yet!
I have already changed to a one ad format throughout most of the major site in place of a five ad format. If/when I see an uptrend on those more limited ads I will consider going back to displaying more ads.
And that being said, I know at least some of my targeting still seems really bad to me, so things may still improve. I think this system may need "retraining."
I'll give another report in a few days once I really have some meaningful trends, but wanted to combat the it's all doom and gloom sky is falling commentary.
If it weren't for my knowing about the change, I would think today was normal.
Today's not over and there are many hours of stats to go, so things can still change.
Impressions down 4%
CTR up 17%
EPC up 25%
Revenue per day up 38%
I do enough statistics in my real job to know that these numbers are likely to be within the bounds of normal variation. Having said that, my site usually shows well targeted ads in a competitive sector, so it may be that I've been one of the luckier ones in this reshuffle. The increased CTR might indicate that targeting is more on topic this month than last. That combined with the increased EPC has given a decent hike in the revenue per day. Whether this holds up in the long term remains to be seen.
If you want to cheer up the victims start writing checks for the missing revenue.
