EPC Experiment

Big Advertisors versus Small fry

[dauction]

I've been frustrated lately with a declining EPC .

Pages are good content and bring in highly targeted traffic. you couldnt get any more targeted traffic.

Site is nearly 2 years old and is always updated.

Traffic has doubled in that time.

excellent CTR .

EPC has dropped from double digits to single digits. Alot of bouncing around ...alot of up days but overall EPC trend is considerable lower.

Air Travel Industry.

So as I am searching for the problem I began wondering if maybe I am being feed smallfry advertisors that are paying minimum and therefore my EPC is lower ..OR maybe it's the big corporate Advertisors that G is selling bulk clicks at a discount and that is why I EPC is trending lower.

So the past few days using the adsense URL filter I removed every small fry advertisor I could find ...and for the next 12 hours EPC remained the same

So then I reactivated all the small fry and deactived the 10 largest Air Travel advertisors... and guess what.. absolutely no change in EPC .

Now I dont own a Adwords account but SOMEBODY has to be paying more for traffic than others correct?

Or maybe this is smart pricing in all its screwed up glory? dosent mater who the advertisor is or what the bid on terms ..you anly get X amount per click?

Then again it really could be the problem is simply the ad budgets are shrinking because he Airindustry is ripe with companies in and about ready to fall into bankruptcy.. That may still be the overall problem.

Which sounds more plausable - especially opinions from others in the travel sector

[asinah]

Air Travel has very small profit margins in the industry. (Airlines pay 3 - 5 dollar in commission to Travel agents per ticket sold and it makes sense to bid cents on those keywords)

[dauction]

asinah..I have been in this sector for 2 years ...and have always recieved double digt EPC .

I check bid rates (rough estimate) and from what I see advertisors are still bidding mid to high .xx for the main keyword (which appears inmost ads on all of my pages).

And low to mid .xx for all the branch keywords ... similiar to all last year ..those bids have remained basically constant and yet my EPC has fallen

So that's the part I am having trouble sorting out... G has the same amount of money coming in ..but I am receiving less for sending the traffic to the advertisor

BTW..yes , margins are very thin in this market.

Maybe it is because my traffic has doubled the pat couple years and now I am reciving more traffic to the secondary travel terms bring down my overall EPC?

It probably is just a matter of waiting out this black cloud that is over 90% of the air sector. Fuel and labor costs are killing them off left and right .

[Jenstar]

12 hours is not long enough to see any difference, IMO. It can take a few hours just for the filter to take effect. If you want a shorter testing period, you should test for a minimum of three days (I generally test longer than that). And you could see the biggest differences after mediabot comes by again.

However, generally when you block URLs, it will not make higher paying ads appear on a page. It will simply make lower paying ads appear. After all, it is logical AdSense is going to display the highest paying ads available for what it has deemed your page is about on your page, because it wants to make money too ;)

[dauction]

You know jenstar I traveled that line of thought also but since I had already dipped into the single digits it looked like a good time to experiment by removing small and large advertisors at differnt times and see if either move would give a EPC boost.

I'm not sure I follow your thinking with mediabot though.. Once I turned off urls it only took about an hour for them to not show anymore. So how does mediabot figure into the EPC side?

[Jenstar]

It will just do fresh retargeting of the page. Any little algo tweak (or a major one!) on how the mediabot determines what your page is about could affect the ads displayed as well. It is one of the things I watch for in my logs as well.

[dauction]

Ok yes I fully understand that ..but mediabot never has any problems figuring out the correct ads to serve. The ads are 90% on target ...always have been for this site .

After I shut off all the small co urls then I was feed only the industry leading advertisors..and yet my EPC didnt budge..up or down .

So what does that tell me? that I am receiving the same EPC within 1 penny no matter who my advertisors are..that's the part that is bothering me..
it's as if G is only going to pay X for the traffic no matter what the advertisor is paying.. and that's a very disturbing thought that I hope isnt reality

[dauction]

BTW...I never realized how many garbage advertisor websites I was actually sending traffic to through adsense.

So the experiment was good for me in that perspective anyways , I will contine using the URL filter to basically stop sending my traffic to garbage advertisors..

I understand the advertisors dont have the same ability to disable publishers but think they should have at least the same level control to determine whthey absolutely refuse to accept traffic from.