Unproductive banners

Do the affect earnings?

[david_uk]

I have had a downturn of earnings recently. I'm not a subscriber to the "bad day what's wrong" type threads as I find there are peaks and troughs that you simply have to ride, looking at the longer term view. However, I did get to wonder if there was a reason, so emailed Google.

I know I can't repeat what they said because of the TOS. In truth they didn't say anything anyway! I got the usual bland, mostly not-relevant-to-the-question asked type reply from the Googe fortune cookie generator.

However, piecing together anything they didn't say, and matching that to the nearest conspiracy theory in this forum, I am wondering if there is any truth in my musings.

Basically, I've added additional banners to some of the longer pages, and added banners to a new site that's currently under construction and not getting more than a handful of visitors, and only the occasional click. My eCPM has gone down since the additional banners as you would expect. But I think the trend I'm seeing is a gradual lowering of price per click. The figures are all over the place, so accurately pinpointing a deffinite trend is not that easy.

What I'm wondering is if the lowering of eCPM is seen as a lowering of conversion, which somehow affects bid price?

I've taken the unproductive banners off, and am considering removing the banners from the other site until it's completed and attracting traffic.

Any thoughts?

[Jenstar]

Did you use channels to track the different banners on the same page? That will allow you to study the differences in EPC for the two or three different ad units, as well as the number of clicks.

This will also allow you to make changes. If you find the second ad unit getting 10x the clicks, it would make sense to switch things up so that your first ad unit appears in that space, since the first ad unit will show the highest paying ads of the three.

[doingthistoolong]

Pardon my ignorance, but when you refer to banners, do you mean actual banner advertising, or any image linked to another URL either within or outside of the site? I guess I am wondering how the google bot could make the distinction?

Have several images used as part of links to other parts of my site - ie. an image which is part of the "headline" to a new story - and I am wondering if I get penalized for this?

My revenue per click is off 66% since Feb 1 (around the time I added more of these image/link/banners). It is off about 90% today (although it is early). Site traffic and total clicks are up substantially.

BTW, I don't subscribe to the conspiracy theory, but rather the old adage: never attribute to malice what is better explained by stupidity (including my own stupidity)

thanks for the help,