"Premium clicks" being devalued?

Across the board smart pricing drop (theory)?

[androidtech]

I know these posts are like the blind man and the elephant, your perception of the elephant is completely affected by which part of the elephant you touch. In this case the elephant is your AdSense EPC experience being wildly affected by the topics you service, smart pricing treatment, and your web site.

When a sweeping cross-topic event occurs to us, I like to "ping" the group here and see how many others are being affected.

Amongst the topics we cover there have always been the "pennies" clicks and the "premium" clicks. If you have never had the joy of "premium" clicks then that's too bad. As per the TOS I can't say how much they are, but they are a lot more than the "pennies" clicks, I'll leave it at that.

Over the last few days we have seen all our "premium" clicks get devalued sharply to "pennies" clisk. It hasn't been a gradual decline either, but instead single-step plummet.

NOTE: to indicate how dramatic this is, the payouts of the ex-"premium" clicks has dropped significantly below what lesser tier pay-per-text programs like SearchFeed are paying.

I know that this could be due to one zealous advertiser but since its across all the "premium" click topics at once, it has a different feel.

I am not making a statement here, but I would like to know how many others of you have seen the same syndrome, a sudden sharp drop in "premium" clicks. I am not asking about an EPC drop across the board, especially in the last few days, just in "premium" clicks if you were getting any of them.

An aggravating circumstance may be the anecdotal evidence being proffered on the AdWords forum here. Many have seen a sharp decline in AdWords bid costs for a wide variety of popular keywords, but unfortunately a corresponding drop in estimated clicks (traffic) values as well. It is strange this is happening (if it is indeed universal), so soon after the IPO.

Thanks.

[hyperkik]

I think that some keyword purchasers, and even classes of purchasers, get exhausted at a certain point when spamming and fraud eats up their ad budgets, despite Google's effort to implement performance-based pricing. There is no question but that a lot of high-value keywords now have little value. You may have been hit by an advertiser driven "adjustment".

But that doesn't mean that other high value keywords don't continue exist, or that new ones aren't coming into being - they do, and they are.

[ownerrim]

It's impossible to know what's really going on. That's why----despite the cries of "oh no, not this topic again"----it is beneficial to hear people chime in and report what they are finding. So, here's my two bits.

I've done a ton of work on my site and continue to do so. Traffic is going up, up, up. Clicks are up. EPC is down and so is total revenue. It seems that the hundreds of hours of work done over the last couple of months (not seo, but considerable new content) has not resulted in more revenue, but has simply minimized the loss of earnings.

Unfortunately, this is probably to some extent a function of being so highly focused in one niche. But as to why the drops occurred so suddenly in the first place and why so many people are reportting this---I think its most likely google.

To me, and I can only speak for myself, it's a wake up call to start moving away from adsense, at least for pages that can be more productive using affiliate relationships. Also, for sites that operate in a highly focused niche where the same advertisers tend to be seen over and over, it might be considerably more profitable to deal directly with the advertisers and cut the adsense middleman out completely

[hooloovoo22]

yes we get a lot of these threads.
yes there is something to them.
yes I've experienced the same thing w/ premium clicks.

Unfortunately, I think it is to be expected. They will keep lowering the payout % to publisher's and playing with smart pricing until revenues are maximized FOR GOOGLE. Especially now that they have stockholders to keep happy.

It's still the best game in town for me at least, but I'm not surprised to see my effective CPM drop dramatically. Disappointed yes, surprised no.

So what part of the elephant am i touching...

[ken_b]

The nature of Adsense is that it is quite different for different sites. Mine might be doing well in one area, others might be doing poorly in the same area, or the other way around.

For me, this month has brought the largest differences in EPC that I've seen yet. But the "Premium" clicks seem to be going up in value and number, thankfully.

The result is a fairly even balance when adjusted for total ad views, for me anyhow.

[HarryM]

Could anybody enlighten me what they mean by "premium click"? Not against the TOS of course, just an indication.

[ken_b]

Amongst the topics we cover there have always been the "pennies" clicks and the "premium" clicks.

"Premium clicks" seems to be refering to high paying clicks as compared to the average for a site.

At least that's how I understood, and used the term.

[androidtech]

Yes that's what I meant. "Premium" clicks are the high paying clicks that are far above the "pennies" clicks that most topics receive.

Thanks.