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]
Traffic coming from your website probably is not converting as well as sites which are earning a higher EPC.
Bottom line is that direct advertisers are willing to pay higher rates for that space than what I have seen from Google the last few days. They know the value because they are not using a computer formula to determine it. They know that if they get 100 calls from members of my site and one of them results in a $15,000 high margin sale that they have done alright.
Google cannot possibly make this type of judgement through an automated system. I think it would be wiser to let the market decide what clicks are worth for the advertisers in the different venues. They know what they are worth and will bid accordingly.
While not 100% I have found it is a fairly accurate barometer as to how effective a particular marketing channel is at sending interested traffic.
If I get lots of people who simply leave after only one page visit from a particular marketing channel, I am fairly quick to dump it.
It is quite possible that some of the AdWords customers which receive your traffic are using the PPV conversion counter and Google is not registering the same amount of PPVs for your traffic than they are getting from other sites which they are rewarding with a higher EPC.
Note, however, that this may also be a short term SNAFU on Googles part and your EPC may return to normal. I have no clue what your site is, so please don't take this personally.
I am simply trying to defend what I believe to be a fair way of doling out EPC - using conversion statistics. I just wish that Google would to more to educate their AdWords merchants and make it more desirable for them to use it .. and therefore make the whole system that much more accurate and fair.
I just don't think that an automated system is going to be as good as one that lets the market of advertisers decide. The advertisers know the market best. Give them the tools to track stats and let them decide what to bid. Any other method is going to make assumptions and miss potential value.
You also have to realize that not all sales can be tracked by an automated system easily. What about cases where the clicks take you to a site and you don't end up buying online but rather with a follow up phone call? There are a lot of variables to take into account.
Google has a company philosophy of automating everything. Unfortunately this has its limits. Not everything can be automated effectively. Sometimes it's better to turn to the market for knowledge (bid prices in this case).
As for the bidding on a site by site basis, this has been asked for quite a bit by a lot of people.
Considering that you can't even bid for content sites seperately from regular search traffic, I wouldn't be holding my breath..
11 "Review" sites on various topics:
3 smallest, no significant change.
1 medium, slight increase in CTR.
7 other sites, slight decrease in CTR, massive drop in EPC (less than 1/2 what it used to be).
So overall, I'm still seeing less than 1/2 the revenue I used to from Adsense. :(
Oh, and as for the "salability" of my readers and their conversion rate, I make more from affiliate sales then from Adsense, despite Adsense's prominant placement.
[edited by: Sharper at 1:46 pm (utc) on April 4, 2004]
You know one thing that sometimes people do neglect (we used to neglect this with our website which had very high uniques and over 2 million page views per day) was the fact that 90% of our users didn't change on a monthly basis.
WebmasterWorld is a good example. Site probably has high page views and high uniques, but those users are probably a very deeply loyal following.
A million uniques which churns from month to month is worth a lot more than a million uniques which only churns on a yearly basis.
Oh, and as for the "salability" of my readers and their conversion rate, I make more from affiliate sales then from Adsense, despite Adsense's prominant placement.
Same here. Before the April 1 changes, AdSense accounted for about 35% of my revenues, with the rest coming from affiliate sales. AdSense has been my #1 revenue source for a while now, but with the advent of Google's variable-pricing scheme, its importance will drop (probably to #3).
If EPC and revenues don't recover from the changes, I'll invest more time in my affiliate partnerships (which I'd been neglecting a bit in the "AdSense era.") Still, I'm likely to keep AdSense unless revenues fall even more drastically, because it does produce revenues from subtopic pages that don't lend themselves to affiliate sales.
A large site takes on many aspects of something.
buying widgets
cleaning widgets
bathing widgets
getting widgets
coloring widgets
talking to widgets
etc.. etc..
If your adsense ads are showing "widget" ads, then your EPC is going to go down because most of your topics are not what google is NOW looking for.
However, people dont make small niche sites on side topics (cleaning bathing getting coloring talking), they normally stick with stuff you can make $$ with... that is BUYING widgets.
So you see, major authority sites that tackle all sides of a topic are getting slammed, but niche sites that are just about directed topics are doing fine...
