Forum Moderators: martinibuster
FWIW, some testing I did recently had a higher EPC as well as CTR on the top versus the bottom - and it seemed to be specifically text/keyword location related, not because of AdSense offering lower EPC on higher CTR ad units.
Jenstar, have you done any studies where you increased/decreased something dramatically?
For example, let's say you average $100 per day for your account overall, and one site accounts for 80% of the revenue, and you are only running ads at the bottom of the site. Then you decide to switch and run the ads at the top. Your click thru rate increases by 40%, but your earning stay almost flat. That is the situation I am talking about, and I have tested this situation by changing the ad placements rotating from top to bottom for periods of time to check for differences, and earning stay the same even though click thru rate increases when ads are placed at the top.
If you have alternatives, seek them out. See how they convert bottom and top.
There are so many variables you need to test before you can conclude anything. Honestly, you need to run the test over several months to get enough data.
I used to spend a lot of money on Adsense, I had different bids for each day of the week, depending on the program. I even varied it by the time of the month. Certain times of the month convert better so I would bid higher. I developed this habit based on analysis of months of data. You might want to do the same before you draw any conclusions.
What I have seen personally is that if I consistently increase imppressions that there is a slow but steady increase in revenue, but I am suspicious that there are buffers in place that tend to dampen sudden jumps in hits/imppressions, but certainly think I could be totally off base in my assumption.
More Hits = Less Pay per hit
I could not agree more.
dvduval, this topic has been thrown out many times.
So it has, so it has. And I am one of the persons who usually chips in to debunk these theories.
That's because a lot of those posts are suspect (not the person making the post ....but his knowledge/testing methods).
Now, what if there is something to this theory and there is indeed a drop in EPC as a result of traffic increasing? I would be interested in any larger scale studies/experiments.
More Hits = Less Pay per hit
Does this mean that (a) it is counterproductive to increase your impressions as you will receive less pay per click for an increase in impressions; and (b) those who report an increase in EPC must be seeing a decrease in impressions? I highly doubt both cases.
People are going to ask, so I'll answer ahead of time. did my content change? NO. Did the ads being served on my site change, NO, exact same ads. What changed? NOTHING. Google, in my opinion, decided to reduce my earnings per click to keep more of the profit.
People are going to ask, so I'll answer ahead of time. did my content change? NO. Did the ads being served on my site change, NO, exact same ads. What changed? NOTHING. Google, in my opinion, decided to reduce my earnings per click to keep more of the profit.
Response: I think a more likely explanation has to do with smart pricing. My guess is that when you serve a LOT of ads, you are more likely to be affected by smart pricing algo's based on conversions, etc, than if you serve less.
Related issue: if you double your traffic, and you had high conversion traffic in the first place, regression to the mean suggests your conversion rates will drop, all things being equal. So, it may be the quality of your traffic changes, OR, when google sees large increases, it initially assumes the quality of traffic is lower than it was before.
All speculation, though.
reduce my earnings per click to keep more of the profit.
Geez ... why would G reduce YOUR EPC and not across the board? Why would G isolate your site? With Adsense, your site may be showing a lower EPC while another site may be earning a higher EPC for the same thing that you did.
I still think there is a buffer in which a sudden jump in clicks tends to take a couple of days to actually "kick in".
Well, let me be the first to say I am probably wrong. All of the sudden I am seeing a 200% increase in Adsense earnings.
Bear in mind also that Google may be using unconventional tools in the monitoring and detection of fraudulent clicks. Like changing the ads it serves, the value of the ads it serves, the clicks, CPM or earnings it reports etc. And dumping all the numbers in their Google fraud machine i.e. the one which detects unusual patterns.
re:"What I think happened was that the main advertisers who used my pages starting lowering the pay scale for clicks due to traffic increases."
Another reason for widening the breadth of your site's content i.e. pulling in different advertisers and not being so subject to being yo-yo'd.
Basically, I begin to wonder if (big if), after capturing a certain niche and becoming dominant in that niche, it becomes, to some extent, a waste of time (monetarily) to keep developing that niche, even if said development is genuinely in the best interests of the users who visit the site.
That's surely dependent on the time scale you are measuring the monetary returns on?
Most of the large advertisers use their own tracking system (not the Google ROI tracker). So, IMO, it would be very hard for Google to use the ROI tracking data for any serious traffic businesses. (in other words, I do not believe the accuracy of the Smart pricing if it is based on ROI and if there is really such a thing.)
We are a premium account at Google and Overture with a account manager assigned. We track ROI for every keyword even from Content Match(Adsense).
As an adsense publisher for my hobby sites, I think More hits from the additional impressions may reduce average EPC, if the traffic doesn't have as high EPC as before. I suspect that's what happened. I removed the adsense code totally from a poorly performing site to increase the CTR and TOTAL EARNINGS by increasing overall EPC. (This has been discussed here: [webmasterworld.com...]
I know this is just one of the theories but I kind of agree to it.
1. More impressions & More Clicks w/lower EPC ==> Drop in TOTAL Earning.
2. Removal of low CTR/EPC sites ==> Boost overall EPC enough to increase TOTAL Earning
"More Hits = Less Pay per hit" May happen.
However, "More Hits = Less Total Earnings" could happen, too.
The only reason to operate in the dark as they do is so they can shaft vendors at will. IMHO
I have a theory about this that may make sense to those who have used AdWords in the past. Google lowers the cost per click for advertisers whose ads perform well because Google sees them as being more valuable to users. If the CTR on an ad goes up dramatically, the advertiser pays less for each of those clicks. I have been testing this theory over a few sites for the last couple of months and it seems that when I display ads that get a high CTR, revenues go down. If I switch to something that gets a low CTR, revenues go back up after a couple of days. Currently, I think I have found a "sweet spot" in the CTR where I have more than doubled the revenue of the high CTR ads and a fair amount more total revenue than the lower CTR ads. I have not changed anything on the site other than the color scheme of the ads to get the differing CTR. The same advertisers are displaying and being clicked, no text, code, or position changes.
Of course, there is no proof because of the secrecy involved in the algorithm. It's as if the algo puts a cap based on past expectations. And then there may be some adjustment later to account for new higher traffic over time.
But again, who can really say? Google has all the info and we are just guessing.
But in short: I have had a similar experience: More traffic = Decreased EPC = Very slight gains in Revenue.
Also,I went through same thing, sudden strange drop in epc but its back to a relatively normal level now.
I'm sure its not related to the epc thing but one thing ive never seen anyone touch on is Chargebacks and how they may affect us, like when and how do chargebacks occur if Adwords clients dont pay up?
Actually, my theory would support wanting people to make your page their homepage because the people who go to the page on a regular basis would probably not click on the ads as often as new visitors. This would cause the CTR of the advertiser's ads to go down which would make them pay more to be listed higher...resulting in a better payout per click for you.
...people who go to the page on a regular basis would probably not click on the ads as often as new visitors. This would cause the CTR of the advertiser's ads to go down which would make them pay more to be listed higher...resulting in a better payout per click for you.
This statement is completely wrong!
The CTR from the content sites has nothing to do with the calculation of the actual CPC for a keyword or how much an advertiser should pay and where the ad is placed.
The other CTR which is based on the searches from Google and its partners' sites is used to calculate the ad ranking, position and actual CPC for the keyword.
If the CTR from search sites (not from AdSense sites) is higher, the cost per click will be less.
The theory of "more hits but less pay per hit" is exactly what some AdSensers are experiencing with a multi-ad unit from a single ad format.
I think FromRocky has a good scope on it.
Multi Ad didnt work well for me, went back to a single ad tower.
If Google didn't operate so much in the dark,
people would be less likely to think they are getting shafted.
In what way does Google "operate in the dark"? It gives you reports on impressions, effective CPM, and total revenues, and you can calculate earnings per click (if you're interested in EPC) from the data provided.
Google doesn't tell you what the advertisers' bids are, or how smart pricing discounts those bids, but there's no reason why Google should give you that information since the advertisers are Google's--not yours. As Google states in its pitch for AdSense, "When relevant ads appear on your web pages, people click on them—and Google pays you." Whether that payment is adequate is something that you can easily determine by looking at your AdSense CPM and revenue figures.
