Major changes to AdSense

Pricing structure and ad relevance

[markus007]

Unless adsense is sending out a april fools joke, what do people think of the changes? Every site has a unique pricing model?

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]

[bluelook]

I could be happy, because I have a review site, but I´m not... competition will rise even more...
I wasn´t expecting this :/

[cpnmm]

To me this looks like they are saying that the more your content matches the exact ads the more you will be paid.

ie photography is a 40% match for 'digital cameras' and 'canon digital camera review' is an 80% match. Therefore if the page is better matched the same digital camera ads appear but will pay better.

This makes sense to me - I have a lot of pages where very loosely related articles are serving the same ads as highly related pages. You should earn more on the more highly related ads as they will convert better for the advertiser.

[europeforvisitors]

I don't know EFV, they are throwing another factor into the formula. To me this changes the formula.

It changes total incoming revenues for Google and the publisher (and, as a result, the publisher's earnings), but it doesn't alter the payout formula. There's been so much paranoia on the "payout" issue that we need to be careful about the wording we use. Otherwise, some publishers are going to get the mistaken idea that Google is varying the revenue split instead of the ad rates.

[Symbios]

Well it is April 1st, although I've used addwords and top ranking on Google Serps goes to the highest bidder, adsense was a good way to generate some extra cash for many webmasters and seemed like a no brainer win for everyone, this is certainly a new twist and I'll be watching my adsense revenue closely, if it drops I'll be replacing it with something else.

[Mario]

I hate to say it but it doesn't look like any of us will be experiencing a rise in earnings with this new payment structure.

Seems like they're short-changing us adsense-publishers and trying to fob us off with supposedly higher CTR rates. Like how are they going to achieve that? We have more control of CTR than they do.

[europeforvisitors]

I hate to say it but it doesn't look like any of us will be experiencing a rise in earnings with this new payment structure.

That's hard to say. If conversion tracking comes into play, some publishers could benefit. At any rate, it shouldn't be too long before the results of the change begin showing up in our Google reports.

[dvduval]

It seems to follow the traditional method for presenting bad news in a business letter:
1. Start out by telling them something good (Increased Relevance, Higher Click Thru)
2. Then give the bad news (Less Money)

Hopefully, Google values their customers enough not to make too big of a profit grab.

For one thing, we all know that Yahoo will roll out a competing product soon, and Google will have to be careful.

[Mario]

EFV you don't seem to be making sense. Of course the payment structure has changed.

[alika]

Well, do I hear publishers rolling out product review sites now to benefit from this change?

[freeflight2]

the "Review sites will get paid more than informational sites" argument makes no sense to me: I'd rate visitors clicking on an ad on a page describing e.g. the last steps before purchasing a home much higher than visitors using a home-loan review site, etc.