Forum Moderators: martinibuster
The increase in CTR might have resulted in lower conversion rates, depending on what you did with the ad and page layout. If that were the case, advertisers presumably would be getting higher "smart pricing" discounts, which would mean lower earnings per click.
Everyone says this - but I just can't "buy it" -- google does not have enough conversion tracking on advertiser sites to price the ads this way
it has to be based on the refer / keywords of the traffic / time spent before back button . . .
it has to be based on the refer / keywords of the traffic / time spent before back button . . .
Advertisers can define "conversion" pretty broadly. A conversion doesn't have to be a sale in GoogleSpeak: It can be a "business action" such as an inquiry, a newsletter subscription, the number of pages read, or (unless I'm mistaken) a user's time on the site before hitting the back button.
One thing publishers forget is that you should not be tricking your visitors into clicking on your ads (i.e. by blending it into content a little too well).
That will only hurt you when people Back button out of the advertisers site really quickly.
Rather you should lay out the ad in a clear manner, so those who are potentially interested will see it and visit the advertiser, knowing exactly what they are clicking on. Then the advertiser gets quality traffic, your smart pricing stays high (even if you are getting less clicks for it, you're getting more interested clicks), Adsense's system works and we all win.
but again unless EVERY advertiser is running the google site tracker - google would not see the "end result" of these business actions
so smart pricing has to be something else!
But how can G on one hand encourages us to tweak ads layout and bg color to get more clicks, on the other hand, once we did it, G cut our EPC.
Have you added URLs to your filter list lately?
I have not added new url filter recently.
Actually, three days after the drop, I got an email from G asking me to remove adsense ads label (Related links) or to use "Sponsored Links" instead. I just removed the label and reported to G about the change. G sent me an email again expressing thanks for the compliance.
but again unless EVERY advertiser is running the google site tracker - google would not see the "end result" of these business actions
Short answer: Averages.
Longer answer: Google's smart-pricing algorithm is probably based on any number of factors, including what it is able to track about users' behavior after clicking through from a site.
Have you added URLs to your filter list lately?
We have been advised in previous threads to remove most of the filter urls in search of profitability.
[webmasterworld.com...]
There is it seems a dichotomy between removing poor ads with high back button potential and retaining those same ads because they have good EPC.
As mentioned before In the thread above I have removed all my filter urls. I can somewhat confusingly report NO change in CPM over about a week, to shorter timescale possibly?
I would suggest that the reason for lack of change in CPM could be due to the conversion rate dropping because the ad landing pages are poor. Whilst my cpc has risen because the poor ads are paying better, creating some form of equilibrium.
It seems we simply do not have enough control over the displayed ads they are either on or off. I think a really good case all round is building for Keyword filtering.
[webmasterworld.com...]
I said I recently changed the placement of ads (blending into my pages) on some pages resulting in doubled CTR and earning. you may say that this change leads to low conversion because users may be misleaded to click an ad. I agree, and G may lower the EPC for that channel. However, many other channels without such layout change were also influenced by the EPC cut.
Regarding URL filtering, I do have some urls filtered out long time ago because they are totally mistargetted ads.
So I still could not figure out why G suddenly cut my EPC.
Even if only 1 in 20 advertisers use conversion tracking, it still gives Google an idea of how 5% of the traffic is doing.
Think of it in the way that most polls work. Less than 1% of the population is polled, yet they get a fairly accurate prediction of what the results of the election would be.
I think that Google uses a lot of ways to determine their smart pricing, (back button, time on site..), but conversion is probably their biggest.
That seems the be the number one thing advertisers want.
I disagree with that, in my area all the big players are fighting for market share and spend large amounts of cash to get it. I don't think its safe to say that webmasterworld spammers/marketers are representitive of the kind of people that spend the most on adwords.
WebMasterWorld members aside, A search on Google for most popular searches will show that most advertisers are trying to get clicks to have visitors buy, subscribe or sign-up for something.
Realize that I was using the term "conversion rate" in a broad sense.
However I do agree with you that there are many webmasters that use adwords to generate hits and build market share as you stated.
[adwords.google.com...]
Google has the data and can "look" at refers and actions which could drive smart pricing
I have been in adsense since the beginning - and in general I seem to see lower earnings towards the end of each month - I think because advertiser's budgets are tapping out.
Also remember that Google recently had a "come back to content" discount offer for Adwords advertisers who weren't advertising on content sites.
This, I believe created a larger pool of higher paying advertisers - many - myself included - stopped their content campaigns after a short while.
Looking at the trends for my sites - there's almost always been lower EPC during the last week of each month.
The recently poor showing of targeting and even blank ad space (where was full of highly relevant ads for months) seems to possibly point toward internal / core changes going on...?
Anyhow that's my Google speculating for this month - we are all still having fun though yes? -O>
Sometimes I see a jump at the very end of the month. (Maybe because some advertisers are bidding higher to use up their monthly budgets?)
