Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Has anyone else noticed a serious decline in EPC since about a week ago? I am seeing earning drop as much as 70% with no drop in traffic, CTR, or ads displayed on the pages.
Has there maybe been a smartpriceing update that is costing AS publishers? Just wanted to see if anyone else had noticed. I would imagine the answers will be no as someone else would have posted about it by now.
Thanks
As long as our revenues are increasing, we don't care much about EPC. At the end of the month, it is the revenues that we bring to the bank, not EPC.
Traffic has only increased by about 15% over last month, but EPC and revenues have gone up substantially more. I have no idea why, really.
Recently (this week in particular) my EPC and other categories i.e. CTR, plus bottom-line $ have gone up nicely and am very well satisfied.
This is with few and minor changes to content and also across a good size and diverse network of sites so my feedback is not due to an anomaly attributable to a relatively small sample size.
[edited by: trader at 3:58 pm (utc) on Oct. 21, 2004]
(anyone know why this occurs so often)?
Misery loves company? It feels good to know that you are not the only person in the planet experiencing downturns :o)
Plus, we like to see whether this vague concept called "smart pricing" is affecting everyone the same way -- e.g. downturns.
Seems like the "woowoo" happy feeling I get when I add some new pages that generate heightened EPC .. is often followed the next week by the "doh" unhappiness of overall reduction in EPC.
The routine is becoming a monotony of iritation .. increase new traffic/ad views by a factor of 2 and increase overall revenue by .2
But then again, it sure beats working for a living.
Dropped 40%.
I thought it was AdSense targeting change but I am pretty sure it was pricing difference.
M
In the same time span both my total number of impressions and total number of clicks have also increased, so my bottom line has shown some growth.
However there's a clear inverse correlation bewteen number of impressions and earnings per click.
The more impressions I serve, the more clicks I get, but the less each click is worth.
I don't know if I would have seen the same drop in EPC if I hadn't increased traffic of course, but it's certainly seems that I'm swimming against the stream. I have to run faster and faster (i.e. put more and more hours into site development) just to stay still, and I have to work twice that hard just to see a small increase in revenue.
The "black hole" policy of Google is annoying. They get all my data, but I only get back vague hints about what they do with it and how they figure out what to pay me. If they weren't still the best deal in town I'd leave and find someone else who was a bit more transparent in their operation. But they are the best deal in town, and I guess they know that!
I am trying to just take it all in stride because I'm sure my earnings will go down (and up) again. All I can say is that I am glad that my earnings did go up. I assume that it is that way for all of us. Up, down, up, down.
It's good that people have threads like this because I guess we need to know that others are having similar results. (It isn't just us.) Makes us feel better.
I know that I would have been really concerned about last month's downturn had it not been for the threads on this message board—I was then prepared for it.
M
Generally speaking I agree with that post from above, not that it is correct but only the observation. It seems that way quite freqently, almost like G decides to adjust your EPC up or down based on your overall stats and the bottom line.
Sometimes I can't help but wonder (far fetched?) if they somehow figure by lowering your EPC as impressions/clicks increase that will make you work even harder at optimizing the adsense and adding more content in the future?
It always seems we need to work harder and harder to keep the revenue status quo or make a little headway.
Often it appears that is the case but in all likelihood it is far fetched and not so. I know many publishers need to work harder and harder to simply stay even or make advancements.
Does anyone here think this could be true?
P.S. Comments here or any other posts I make are not negative toward G. I sincerely believe G is the greatest and am extremely happy with them overall.
I think what would be useful in these threads is if publishers complaining of a downward turn in earnings state the type of site they have. Eg Travel (Hotels), Travel (Flights), Games (reviews), Games (Sales) etc.
This way you will have some pointer as to whether it is your sector and seasonal factors or your site.
Now I'm going back up again—I won't say it's quite as good as it was before the downturn. I did make some optimization changes to my sites to increase impressions and CTR slightly so that accounts from some of the improvement. But I feel like I've mostly recovered from the downturn. How long this nice increase (or recovery, depending on how you look at it) will last is anyone's guess.
My sites are diverse in subject matter. The two most popular subjects are related to a creative hobby, and education (i.e. my site is often used as an educational reference). Don't know if this helps or is relevant.
Has anyone else noticed a serious decline in EPC since about a week ago?
I don't track EPC, because effective CPM is a much more useful metric for publishers. And I'm happy to say that my CPM has been climbing: October has been better than September, and late October has been better than early October. This has come as a real surprise to me, because I'd expect revenues for a European leisure-travel site to be dropping off with the gloomy, stay-at-home month of November just a week away.
I don't know what the reason for my site's rising CPM has been; the most likely explanation is an influx of advertisers for some of my topics and subtopics. Another possibility is that Google has adjusted its "smart pricing" algorithm in a way that benefits certain types of content or sites.
And it getting worse :(
My trafiic is ~ stable but EPC is lower and lower...
You're right,
I should have accompanied that with a reminder that swings in earnings are normal and the pro ratings just a crazy theory i should have kept to myself.
<This way you will have some pointer as to whether it is your sector and seasonal factors or your site.>
I'd need a mods opinion on posting details like that, or Adsense Guy cause of the pros and cons of it?
I guess seasonal and sector factors are what most of us go through.
