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]
...a walking shadow,
a poor player,
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
and then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.
Shakespeare
The maturation of certain algos parallels human development and maturation. Therein lies the rub.
My teenage children hold forth that they know of what they speak, yet they know little by experience. The education of even very bright youth appears inextricably tied to learning by trial and error.
The AdSense algo, my children, my life....it's like deja vu all over again.
Google is making incorrect assumptions about the value of "information" clicks in a category where the record shows that most users are looking for advice on where and how to spend their money.
I agree it would be nice to know how this situation factors in.
Would it typically be 'big ticket' items that requires additional human sales contact?
Perhaps they have a 'big ticket' function in their algo?
I can see them not wanting to comment in this thread about earnings (they would be bombarded), but this in particular is something I would like seeing official comment on.
Many weeks ago I was having some sort of problem with AdSense reporting. Out of frustration I re-applied to Ad Sonar and the next day I was accepted.
The payout with Ad Sonar was so low I was only using them on a very few number of pages. In this thread someone mentioned that, with the AdSense changes, Ad Sonar was working better for them now. Now with the Channel data AdSense allows, possibly my impression of the low payout was more topic related than anything. It will just take more time to figure things out.
I was considering reinvestigating my relationship with Ad Sonar and now, out of the blue, I have received an email from Ad Sonar saying they want me to let them know when it would be convenient for them to call me so to discuss how to improve my site's CTR.
At minimum it seems I will end up giving Ad Sonar some more traffic. AdSense is making it clear that I need a back up advertising network. Ad Sonar actually seems to be trying to win my favor and business.
YES! THANK YOU!
In my site's niche you dont just "click and buy", you make contact with the service provider and send out a snailmail application... learn more... talk to them over phone and then using a snailmail check!
NO WONDER I'M GETTING LOW EPC... they think all my clicks are useless...
Come on google! Not every business model involved "click and buy"...
Some of those affiliate sales are immediate (people clicking on a hotel link and placing a reservation), while others may require correspondence with a human being. Does Google have any way of knowing when sales result from the latter type of inquiry?YES! THANK YOU!
In my site's niche you dont just "click and buy", you make contact with the service provider and send out a snailmail application... learn more... talk to them over phone and then using a snailmail check!
NO WONDER I'M GETTING LOW EPC... they think all my clicks are useless...
Come on google! Not every business model involved "click and buy"...
Right. But, clicks are the only way Google and the publishers get paid.
This is why I think that Google and Yahoo is heading towards:
1) offer contextual ads only (Yahoo does this now) and
2) offering ads in context across a network on a PPV instead of PPC.
And I think the PPV network is going to look something like what you see on the Personalized Google Search now in Google Labs.
I think it's done on a per-advertiser basis, then data is compared with publisher data. Explanation:
Advertiser A has not implemented conversion tracking (Coca Cola)
Adveriser B did (Web hosting company)
Advertiser C did (e-Widgets-online selling company)
Advertiser D did not (didn't bother)
Forget about A and D, and work with B's and C's conversion data.
Work with B's data first - and first of all, compute B's overall average conversion rate, throughout all publisher sites. Let's say it's 1%.
Now we realize that B has a conversion rate of 2% at publisher1.com. Give publisher1.com a good point.
But B has a conversion rate of 0.5% on publisher2.com. Give publisher2.com a bad point.
Now work with C's conversion data.
C has a 10% average conversion rate on publisher sites.
C has a 10% conversion rate on publisher1.com. Leave publisher1.com alone, don't give any points. C has a conversion rate of 7% on publisher2.com. Give publisher2.com a bad point.
At the end of the day, using conversion data from two advertisers (B and C), we have given 1 good point to publisher1.com and 2 bad points to publisher2.com
Publisher1 will have a better EPC than Publisher2 right now, until we process the conversion data again and see if the situation is different. Publisher2's clicks are less valuable than Publisher1's, since overall, they converted less well.
Now, of course, we only used two advertisers (out of 4), and two publishers. Google might be using all advertisers (who use conversion tracking) and all publishers, to calculate "ecommerceness" of each publisher.
Well, that's just an idea, and I might be completely wrong.
The morale of my story is that the fact that Coca cola won't sell cans on internet doesn't matter. Google just won't use this advertiser's conversion data since there are none. And at any rate, Coke doesn't sell cans on the internet - but that's the case for all publishers who run Coke ads, so it will not (should not) unbalance things.
With the data they apparently get and record, Google has enough of it to calculate the real ROI-ness (I.e. value of clicks and/or leads) of each publisher.
This is good - GREAT - for advertisers, IF the discounted costs are propagated to them. I have an Adwords account and so far the price of clicks didn't change at all (it might change in the future, who knows how much data they need to collect before charging people less - a touchy business decision). It CAN also be good for publishers if, this way, Adsense gains more confidence from the advertisers and they pour more money in it (less defaults, more competition for publishers' inventory, ultimately higher CPC and probably EPC).
Let's hope it plays out good for everyone.
I am now getting less than 5 cents a click. Time to reinvest the inventory elsewhere.
