Forum Moderators: martinibuster
everything is similar ..days of the week .. sametraffic etc..
My adsense appears to go in cyclic patterns usually at the time publishers start highlighting major decreases in earnings ( think its a 3 month cyle but unsure )
On each of these times my epc / cpm / ctr can change drastically
Couple of times with major swing down i.e. 40% reduction in CPM which I suppose should be considered the bottom line .
This time from march 4th was opposite from previouse occasions and went up drastically .
So on or around March 4th some new data was implemented re: smartpricing / conversion etc.
I am not sure what I may have done in the previouse measuremnt cycle to improve G's view of how good at conversion my sites were except that I decreased to single smaller add units and chopped out 2 sites that appeared to be performing worse ( measured with channels )
My 1 own interesting observation with no proof is that it is applied to the account and all websites in the account suffer if publisher is seen to have poor conversion rates
It will be interesting to view in 3 months time publishers who have implemented adlinks , I have decided not to ( why rock the boat for an unknown )
just ramblings from an oldy but trying to add some usefull information i believe in
steve
How many of you have ever checked out what people are charging for CPC/CPM rates these days? If you're making more than $2 CPM I wouldn't whine, rates are down. If you make more than $4 CPM get down and plant a big wet one one mother earth, knock wood, and count your blessings.
Considering Google won't give us any specifics let's compare to a site that does open the books for all to see and take a peek over at AdBrite. Click on your industry segment and you'll see that the averages for CPC are all over the map, seems to be site specific, but you can see what a site like yours should earn per click.
To see how you fare, run the following formula on your Google stats:
CPC = (TOTAL EARNINGS / TOTAL CLICKS) X 2
I made the x 2 assumption based on Google seems to take about 50%.
According to AdBrite (based on their advertisers) the average CPC by Industry is:
$0.19 - Adult
$0.22 - Consumer Service
$0.44 - Free Stuff and Bargains
$0.29 - Gambling
$0.24 - Job and Biz ideas
$0.09 - Music
$0.10 - Online Communities
$0.03 - Software
Now remember the CPC number is just an average of what Google charged advertisers per click on your site BEFORE they took away 50% of the cash for themselves.
In my sector Google appears to be charging an average of $0.35 CPC. Even after Google's commission it seems I'd fare better sticking with Google than switching to AdBrite.
How do you compare?
I use overture for better results (simply because they have very deep base of advertisors) ,
I drill down to each specific keyword (see what advertisors are paying down at least 10 positions) and across my industry there are about 5 really big players then works it's way down.
I take a mid level bid as my base and cut it in half also even though I know I am getting many of the top advertisors on my keywords.
My share SHOULD be in the .25C range (after G takes half).
I break my but for my website. It is an online magazine with all kinds of valuable content.
Aside from labeling my ads with "please buy from these advertisers," I don't know what else to do to encourage converstion.
Sure, I have links pages with ad blocks, and I don't expect to get a high EPC there, but my ariticles, resource pages, and other pages have taken massive hits in EPC. I hope that this is only a lull, but it is the worst EPC time I have ever had since joining AdSense last August.
I have broken my but to add content and optimize my site. I follow self-imposed rules stricter than AdSense so there is not even the appearance of impropriety.
I've never gotten $1. and $2. clicks. I was happy with my little .30 and .40 clicks with some going higher.
Bottom line, in November, December and January I was doing awesome. Now, I'm pulling my hair out.
Thanks.
I have to take issue, respectfully, with some of my AdSense bretheran characterizing EPC slumping sites as those with less quality
You must've missed my dissertation on Affliate programs in another thread. Same site, same content, all ads specific and targetted to the site but some get virtually no clicks while some get a LOT of clicks.
Was if the site quality that impacted the low performing ad?
Was if the site quality that impacted the high performing ad?
If they all performed poorly we'd blame the site but mixed results leads me to believe it's the ads.
The trick is to simply weed out the underperforming affiliates but unfortunately AdSense gives us no control over this or nature would quickly take it's course and only the best performing ads would be on everyone's sites and we'd all be happy.
If my site were optimized for the highest-performing topics and the CPM for one or two "money" channels dropped significantly (as has happened now and then), then I'd be reeling. Fortunately, my "organic" editorial approach means that I have hundreds of subtopics, so things tend to even out. When one topic is down, another may be up, and others may be unchanged. It's like the difference between investing in a high-risk growth fund and an indexed fund: Over the long term, both may do well, but the indexed fund is likely to provide a less stressful ride.
Now, maybe some of you who are feeling pain also have diverse sites that aren't optimized for specific keywords or keyphrases. But those of you who are keeping most of your eggs in a few high-earning baskets might want to consider diversifying if AdSense is a major source of income.
I have to take issue, respectfully, with some of my AdSense bretheran characterizing EPC slumping sites as those with less quality.
I break my but for my website. It is an online magazine with all kinds of valuable content.Aside from labeling my ads with "please buy from these advertisers," I don't know what else to do to encourage converstion.
Sure, I have links pages with ad blocks, and I don't expect to get a high EPC there, but my ariticles, resource pages, and other pages have taken massive hits in EPC. I hope that this is only a lull, but it is the worst EPC time I have ever had since joining AdSense last August.
I have broken my but to add content and optimize my site. I follow self-imposed rules stricter than AdSense so there is not even the appearance of impropriety.
I've never gotten $1. and $2. clicks. I was happy with my little .30 and .40 clicks with some going higher.
Bottom line, in November, December and January I was doing awesome. Now, I'm pulling my hair out.
I feel your pain. Seams like nothing can surprise me anymore when checking my states and EPC . The bleeding is ongoing and getting worse by the day.
My two cents..
Gmail is diluting overall ad inventory leaving many publishers with low paying ads. We ain’t seen the bottom yet.... look for other options and be prepared. $.02 p/c to be seen on a screen near you very soon. Why G keeps quite and doe’s not inform millions of its hard working “partners” of what the heck is going on still puzzles me.
[edited by: jomaxx at 4:12 am (utc) on Mar. 23, 2005]
Overture bids cannot be compared to AdWords. They are much higher. It's no wonder you're feeling ripped off.
Why do you think I compared it to AdBrite :)
Blame Google if you want to for dramatic EPC drops. I think that's too simplistic. There are other things going on, and I'm getting tired of these threads. Very little thoughtful analysis, and tons of complaining.
FWIW, my site's EPC has moved up and down but over the long run not changed much.
The problem with people saying their EPC is (up/down/same) is that they are not using the right tools to analyze the data.
You yourself say that you've had ups and downs and your EPC hasn't changed much. Taking an average since you joined adsense tells you NOTHING about trends.
When I take the overall average of my EPC from when I started Adsense, my EPC is not too far off from my "normal" averages. But...
When I take a 30 day moving average of my EPC over the last 4 months, I don't see ANY upward trends. It is almost a straight line pointing down. And over that 4 month period my EPC has dropped by about 50%.
Now, don't try to tell me that a continuous 4 month decline isn't a trend. There are obviously many factors at play and I'm not going to try to guess which ones are the culprit.
Of course many people do well in those months. Profits soar and so do the advertising budgets. Sometimes adsense click bids are higher than product profit just to clear inventory that is not selling. You can’t look at that timeframe and compare it to anything else. Try looking at last years Feb vs this years Feb.
Here is how to do some analysis:
First, get a report of ALL of your data from Adsense.
Copy that into a spreadsheet like excel
Make a CPC column
Make a 14 day rolling average CPC column
Move the CPC and rolling column next to your date column
Graph your date, CPC and Rolling avg CPC columns.
Now, the rolling average should show you a nice trend.
My point is that if you only look at overall EPC you aren't going to get anywhere. And you'll just end up blaming Google--which I can see you aren't doing. You're being more analytic. At my site, I see some very interesting changes in the channels I'm using. One that used to be the biggest earner has dropped off, while two others have risen considerably. I have some ideas as to why that is. And I have a plan for adding more content of the kind that seems to work best.
If you only look at overall EPC you'll just get frustrated and assume that Google must be taking a larger share. There are so many other possible explanations for a declining EPC. To start with, what if there are more AdSense publishers in your area, even if there are (apparently) the same ads and advertisers? What if budgets of the advertisers are set up differently? What if the AdSense algorithm has changed to reward a different kind of site? What if....
That's the Industry .. Anyoe else experiancing similiar EPC drop.
Now the overall trend has been down in Air because so many of the Airlines are balancing between operating in the black and bankruptcy.
But the recent EPC hasent been a trend but rather a drop..is it Industry wide with Adsense Publishers?
Please dont comment unless you are in the sector
I do the same, there's over 40 OV bids for my industry today, the top five will each buy you a good bottle of Merlot, the very bottom five a meal at KFC. I get less then half of the cost of an order of fries for my trouble. Even if you take "Smart pricing" into account there is no way on God's green earth our clicks should be paying less than 5% of the advertiser's bid.
Many high-bidding advertisers solely advertise on the search network because they believe that too many users of the content users would create spammy sites to quickly earn some money of these high paying bids.
I was going through my URL filter the other day and there are (along with the major advertisors) hundreds of small fry advertisors that sign up As an affiliate at the major travel outlets . They set up a sometimes just one page with nothing more than a flight scheduler order form .
They do that because they cant generate traffic on thier own ; so they buy traffic from adsense publishers like myself that actually do have targeteed traffic.
We send them the traffic but they cant convert that traffic into sales because as soon as we send them a visitor the visitor looks at the one page -cough- " site" and leaves in disgust (they are looking for a real company )
So some how we get from no conversions to lower EPC for publisher (somehow it's the publishers fault dimwit cant convert) ..and our EPC goes down
does that sound reasonable? could something along that lines be going on?
I went back and disabled snding traffic to all of those types of sites. I dont know if it will help but I dont want to nsend traffic to that nonsesne anyway's
