EPC goes up when CTR goes up?

Can someone explain this?

[ari11210]

Hello all,
I am wondering if someone can explain what I am seeing in my AdSense stats. I have been running AS for a few months now with pretty stable results. Not making much, but it was about the same each month. A few days ago, I moved the placement of my ads to a space that they would be more likely be clicked. Since I have moved the ads, my CTR has almost doubled. This makes sense to me.
What I cant understand is that it seems that my average EPC has also gone up, also almost doubling. Can someone explain why my EPC would go up just because I am getting more clicks? Anything to do with the targetting changes that went into affect a few weeks ago?
Thanks for your help
Aaron

[Telco_Guy]

I too saw an increase in EPC starting a few days ago. The site is a forum and is still young, but growing rapidly. I was thinking that there must be a high paying ad that has shown up, but now that someone else is seeing the same thing then maybe there is something else to it.

[seogrrl]

I've notices this as well. I'll also tell you something I noticed. On one of my sites, I was getting a high $x.xx almost $xx.xx per click. But this site didn'have adsense on the home page. Once I added it on the homepage the cpc dropped to $.xx per click. When I took the ads off the homepage it went back to a high $x.xx. I looked at this in two different ways. One the traffic that the homepage was sending was not as valuable, maybe not a good conversion rate. Two, an overall price theme was attached. This sites cpc is worth .xx but when the value of the site all together went up when the add was removed from the home page. Just a thought.

SEOGrrl

[ken_b]

Ctr sometimes goes down and EPC goes up when you are displaying ads that are more generally targeted.

Targeting should show different ads for mor targeted phrases.

For example,

widget A very general term, brings the widest range of ads, often with a higher EPC because of greater competition for the term.

Blue Widget A little more specific term should draw a narrower range of ads which might well have a lower EPC because of less competition. CTR might be higher though, because the ad more closely relates to the page topic.

Antique Blue Widgets An even more specific term should draw an even narrower range of ads. Most likely, because of less competition for the term, these ads will pay even less per click, but should also generate an even higher EPC.

Antique Blue (manufactures name) Widgets Now we are really getting spcific. The result will be even much narrower range of ads, most likely with an even lower EPC and higher CTR.

The home page problem might be related to the nature of homepages themselves. Quite often homepages end up being pretty general in scope, depending on the how broadly the subject of the website is covered.

Home pages also sometimes seem to set the "Theme" of the ads thatare shown on the rest of the site. That might seem logical, but it can lead to problems with targeting.

I had a similar problem and ended up removing adsense from my homepage, which seemed to help the ad targeting for the rest of the site.

I suspect that the homepage issues are more problematic the larger a site is.

[jomaxx]

seogrrl, it's hard to interpret what you're saying without knowing the relative number of impressions and clicks you were getting on different pages. Maybe it was just dilution, maybe not. That is an ideal situation for using channels to track different parts of your site.

[seogrrl]

I believe as ken stated that the homepage is very generic as the other pages are indeed optimized to more specific types of widgets and the homepage is getting the lower click thru now. I am now getting spikes up and down so the more specific are propably getting the higher click thru.

Watching the areas through the channels is indeed an option, thanks for bringing that up!

SEOGrrl

[dhatz]

On one of my sites, I was getting a high $x.xx almost $xx.xx per click. But this site didn'have adsense on the home page. Once I added it on the homepage the cpc dropped to $.xx per click. When I took the ads off the homepage it went back to a high $x.xx.

The people who get these $x.xx EPCs must be in very competitive (in the online-adv sense) markets.

The test site I run Adsense on, gets B2B-type ads from companies, some small, some bigger (e.g. "Bayer Polymers") and still a dozen clicks earns less than one click of yours. Same with non-english content (german, french, italian, spanish).

I think it's a supply-demand thing, because just a couple of advertisers appear next to Google's own search results. So basically these advertisers are getting a free ride.

Oh well... I'd better go setup a Viagra site with subsections on anti-martingale bet-sizing strategies (to cater to the casino / betting folks) <grin>

[seogrrl]

Through the experience with my sites, the advertisers are in competitive high end markets. for example one widget from one client is 7k. That is where I am seeing $x.xx per click.

I have a few sites with extremely competitive areas but the clicks are only $.xx. Obviously the advertiser that is getting 7k for selling one widget will be more likely to pay $x.xx or even $xx.xx depending on their conversion rate.

SEOGrrl

[seogrrl]

Oh and Ken,

I wanted to thank you for sharing the insight on how the click thrus can fluctuate.

I'm going to do some testing and see what I can do with that great bit of information.

Thanks again!

SEOGrrl