Forum Moderators: martinibuster
It is rather early to make any definitive conclusions yet, however we already can see some consequences, analyse the changes, and make some forecasts.
I have noticed that number of AdSense impressions on my website has dropped on 1st of September rather significantly. The reason became clear after AdSens's "new features" email has arrived. Obviously, many webmasters has received this email earlier than myself and without any delay rolled out multiply AdSense ad blocks per page. Consequently, pool of available ads got exhausted due to increased by publisher's supply of ad spots and possibly there was knee-jerk reaction by some advertisers who pulled the trigger and dropped ads on content network until they re-evaluate the changing playing field.
It is safe to assume that not all webmasters have immediately increased number of AdSense blocks per page. It is most likely that for next few weeks pool of available ad spots will grow even further. This is a huge change on the playing field which will benefit some players and make the game more difficult for others.
Let's see how the market has changed and who are set to win and lose because of this huge change. Generally, the advertisers are the winners here. They instantly received significantly increased supply of ad spots while at this point demand for ads is not changed or maybe even decreased because some advertisers got scared off the market.
Overall, the publishers are the losers in this game at least in short term because market will inevitably bring prices paid for clicks down due to described above changes in supply and demand. The drop of price of click might not be compensated by increasing number of ad spots simply because CTR and CPM do not rise proportionally to number of ads on a page and demand for ads became rather stretched causing way too many PSA's or default ads.
It appears that this change affects various groups of advertisers and publishers differently. Most likely it will significantly increase click bandwidth for low tier of advertisers, those who do not bid into top 5-10 bids for a keyword. It might also somewhat decrease click bandwidth for high tier bidders, because more click will flow to low bidders.
One of possible side effects of all these changes might even improve the quality of the content network overall. It is possible that all those websites which were developed specifically with goal of maximising AdSense revenue and target specific keywords will tend to not have enough ad supply to fill all 3 AdSense blocks with high paying ads or even maybe not enough of any ads for all the ad blocks. On the other hands websites delivering "real life" content will be matched by wider set of relevant keywords and will display top bidding ads for a few related themes simultaneously.
In medium and long term this change benefits all players. Advertisers will get better ROI and volume of clicks and consequently more advertisers will move into AdWords space from other networks, existing advertisers lured by ROI might increase advertising budget as well. This in turn will benefit publishers. And of course, the most benefits will eventually be collected by Google’s shareholders (please note that this is NOT an investment advise).
It is also interesting to note Google's timing rolling out this feature. Perhaps, they were expecting knee jerk reaction by some advertisers and sharp rise and supply of ad spots. In order to minimize it they launched it 1st of September when ad market seasonally heats up. Apparently they also know that it is bad idea to start a war, launch new presidential candidate or new product in August, so they have waited until the September as everybody else.
Good move Google.
Vladimir Martchenko
2nd of September 2004
[1][[b]edited by[/b]: fdmaster at 2:09 pm (utc) on Sep. 2, 2004][/1]
So it could well be an overall lowering of the CPC. this can easily be ofset by me by adding more boxes
Great move by google lets see how things even out over the next few weeks
Don't forget we only have the option as publishers to display more than one ad unit we do not have to.
Allowing more advertisers onto a page will be help some of the smaller advertisers to get their bids right etc and publsihers should benefit from testing different layouts, numbers of ad units etc to see which best works for them.
has it gone down to exactly a third of previously or some way above?
(presuming you have added three per page....subsitute "half" if you have only added two per page)
1 million impressions in 24 hours (since the ad units went online)?
Warning: Lower CTR might mean a higher odds of geting account deleted.
I think that Google should make some efforts improving the quality of his advertiser's network.
Th only I can see, once and again, are new steps making it esay for content cheaters, pseudo-directories and search engine spammers. Why would really an user find up to 15 adverts in the same page? Why would need a regular publisher show low cost adverts?
As my sites grow, I better understand some advertising networks (i.e.: Overture).
P.S.: I'm seriously thinking about build two or three pseudo-directories and open an Adsense account with the name of my wife, the address of my mother and check-it from his computer.
