What is the minimum you would leave for?

If somebody wants to lie to me and give me money that is fine with me.

That just proves there's room for two views, neither of which is wrong.

True

getting back to the original topic. I have just been accepted by ad*o*ar (is there a seperate category for this?) so I will soon find out. So far the targeting appears a bit patchy but my cpc is comparable with google. So I might do a stratightforward comparison and show one the door.

I am getting very close to the point of leaving adsense behind. Since the whole "smart pricing" switch, it's become almost pointless for me to use the space. I'll probably give it a little more time just in case something magical changes, but i have little hope.

Why not keep AdSense on a limited number of pages? That way, you can monitor performance and restore AdSense to more of your pages if CTR, EPC, and/or total revenues increase later on.

Why not keep AdSense on a limited number of pages? That way, you can monitor performance and restore AdSense to more of your pages if CTR, EPC, and/or total revenues increase later on.

Good advice.

Also might keep accounts from being deactivated by Google for inactivity, if they do such a thing.

>>keep accounts from being deactivated by Google for inactivity

Accounts with zero clicks for a period of two months will be terminated without notice, according to the terms.

All other contextual advertisers can be discussed in the Advertising forum [webmasterworld.com] since this one is just for Google AdSense.

>Why not keep AdSense on a limited number of pages? That way, you can monitor performance and restore AdSense to more of your pages if CTR, EPC, and/or total revenues increase later on.

Even better why not only use AdSence after you can't milk your merchants anymore.

How many of us have repeat visitors? How many of us have visitors that already bought and come back again?.....God knows why, but that is a whole different thing.

I use Adsense as my last resort. The visitor already bought, the visitor already clicked on the merchant's CPC links, I can get paid again for this visitor in any other method than them clicking on a PPC AdSence Ad.....so that is the time to remove the other content and serve AdSense up to them!

Now, if you are an AdWords sponsor you should want to kill me and this concept. After all it is killing you, you are paying for traffic that has already made a purchase!

Percentages: Your comments may be valid for certain types of publishers (e.g., owners of affiliate sites with highly focused topics). But for those of us who have content sites with many different subtopics under an overall umbrella theme, the real strength of AdSense is its ability to "fill the gaps" between affiliate programs.

For example, I have a European travel site, and I make a good deal of money from affiliate programs. But if I run an article on barge cruises in Burgundy or cooking classes in Tuscany, there's no direct match-up between those pages and my affiliate programs, because I don't have affiliate partners for barge cruises or cooking schools. That's where AdSense comes in: It can display ads for companies that sell barge cruises or Italian culinary tours. In other words, the AdSense ads represent new opportunities for revenue, not just a chance to pick up whatever crumbs got left behind after my visitors clicked on affiliate links.

IMHO, the ability of AdSense to monetize subtopics is one of the network's greatest strengths--especially for content publishers in broad, profitable niches.

If your traffic doesn't cover advertisers costs, percentages, then your EPC will drop until it does. If your site leads to less conversions then the average website for that term then see your EPC slide :)

If your traffic doesn't cover advertisers costs, percentages, then your EPC will drop until it does.....

I don't know.... this assumes a perfect market that is able to recognize the traffic from single sites and reward or punish them. However, this is not the case and a particular site can make a killing out of those imperfections.

I don't even think this applies to the whole adsense program as the advertisers' perception of value and not their actual costs is more important IMHO.

Why not keep AdSense on a limited number of pages? That way, you can monitor performance and restore AdSense to more of your pages if CTR, EPC, and/or total revenues increase later on.

This is in fact what I've done.

The problem is that, with Adsense Smart pricing, I can't specify a minimum EPC, so I either have to live with it, or just switch it off completely.

I wouldn't mind donating clicks to some charity of my choosing, but I DO mind sending B2B traffic for (practically) free.

I wasn't happy switching it off, because the ads often are so well targeted, that they can add value to the content.

Btw, the number of Adwords advertisers for my type of content (which is very broad, covers most old-economy manufacturing sectors) seems to have increased a LOT since April 10, when I started.

EPC remains low, but the sample on a handful of pages is no longer representative. I may give it another try after the summer.

And btw, I haven't been able to find a correlation between page "quality" (by my human standards) and EPC, in fact pages with LESS content had 50% higher EPC.

...in fact pages with LESS content had 50% higher EPC....

Interesting observation.... Hmmm if the smart pricing works the following way:

Base CPC = SERP CPC

and then certain amounts are deducted due to {words that trigger a discount} or {concepts that trigger a discount}. Writing small and directly to the point should improve your chances for less deductions. Of course this is bad for those of us that can't get to the point unless we write 2 paragraphs.

There are a few improvements that I'd love adsense to make:

1) Realtime stats - why not? Other affiliate programs do it. I can press F5 over and over and watch my impressions and clicks rise with other agents. That gives me a great feeling to know that I can trust my affiliate agent.

2) Less restrictive TOS - Why should google (or advertisers) care WHERE the ads show up, as long as they're generated dynamically based on page content? Honestly, if I were in the business of selling snowboots, I'd love to be on a simple auto-generated "directory" doorway page that some user found by typing in the term "snowboots". To me, that's getting my ad to a user interested in my product. I'd only be charged if the interested user actually clicked on the ad, and the title and description are (more or less) up to me. People sell mercedes benz's in the classified ads. In short, Google should lighten up and let the ads fall where they may. If the advertiser's campaign isn't working, then he should consider improving his title and description or opt out of the program altogether.

3) Google should limit the paranoia that adsense publishers feel. I actually read a post that said, "OMG! I accidentally clicked on my Adsense ad. Will Google ban my site now?" Aanother post said, "Will Google ban me if a true user clicks on more than one adsense ad on my site?" Geez.

4) Google should allow us to visit the sites of advertisers from our own pages (This is a familiar tune).

Right now, if Overture or Yahoo! were to launch similar programs, I'd probably bail on G. They just seem too "pervasive". We need some competition.

Honestly, if I were in the business of selling snowboots, I'd love to be on a simple auto-generated "directory" doorway page that some user found by typing in the term "snowboots". To me, that's getting my ad to a user interested in my product.

I don't agree, and I'm sure that many people who created content won't agree either.

This is a BIG problem of SE SERPs, not of Adsense.

If those "spammy doorway/directories", machine generated (= ZERO ADDED VALUE, which some "editor" would have added, even if minimally qualified), were filtered from the SERPs, there would be no $$$ incentive for them to exist.

That would be in a perfect world... Oh well...

Why should google (or advertisers) care WHERE the ads show up, as long as they're generated dynamically based on page content? Honestly, if I were in the business of selling snowboots, I'd love to be on a simple auto-generated "directory" doorway page that some user found by typing in the term "snowboots"....

If making money in the short-term is your only goal, yes I will agree with you. But encouraging people to leech off others that have the knowledge is not a good thing to do IMHO.

I remember someone posting here about another topic something to the fact of "this is a prime example of two differing opinions on one topic, both of which are right". I have to say that this is a prime example of "two differing opinions on one topic, only one of which is right"

haven't been able to find a correlation between page "quality" ... and EPC, ... LESS content had 50% higher EPC.

Similar experience here. The more "quality content" we create, the lower the EPC goes on those pages!

Could be coincidence, but it's odd that some of the dollar-clicks are from pages with content such as:

<catchy on-topic intro sentence> followed by
<be sure to bookmark and check back as we are expanding this section substantially>

I suspect that with less content, the bot gives the title more weight, and there is less chance of discount triggers.

Google should allow us to visit the sites of advertisers from our own pages (This is a familiar tune).

They do. Here's how:

1: Click the "Ads by Google" link on any ad block.

2: Select the desired advertizer url.

3: Copy the url and paste it into your browsers address bar.

4: Hit the enter key on your keyboard.

It's really that simple.

OK, that's what, 3 more clicks than just clicking on the ad itself? Is that too much for Google and the advertizer to ask?