Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I run a site that spans many different topics, so I'm not inclined to think it's related to competition. For the last couple of years, AdSense has provided fairly predictable revenue, and this is the first time I've seen such a dramatic drop. Have any of you guys seen something similar?
Ditto.
Very few publishers will ever have this option. However,if you completely (and I mean completely)dominate your niche and that same niche is filled with scraper sites that don't have a prayer of surfacing in the serps (I am basically saying that their clicks are likely fraudulent--in my niche I am sure this is the case), then this is an option. This option is probably open to less than 1 or 2 percent of publishers. To exercise this option, it's very helpful if you work your daytime hours in the niche and, as a result, are intimately familiar with the industry.
"AdSense advertisers have been able to tell where their referrals have been coming from all along. (And in many sectors, they don't even need to track referrals--they know which sites are important in their niches.)"
I wouldn't be so sure of this. I've had first hand contact with my advertisers and they are mainly focused on their stock trade and, aside from being successful in their business, are relative morons otherwise. In fact, IF THEY KNEW HOW MANY SCRAPERS THERE WERE, they would probably disable the content network.
As far as eCPM goes, I'm with-in what I'd call a normal range for me at the moment, some days it's up a bit, some days down, the trend for me so far is up on a long term basis.
Overall my total earnings are just plodding along as usual, gradually getting better. Some of that is due to new pages on my site, some to to more traffic, etc. Whatever it is, I'm grateful.
As far as knowing what other posters site urls are, I'm not sure it matters that much. Probably more helpful would be to know what sector they are in. Are finance sites taking a bigger hit than travel or sports, etc? But I can easily understand why folks are hesitant to reveal their urls.
In my case, when I compare year to year, for the first few days in May, I see that my CTR has more than doubled, my eCPM has gone up a lot, and the result is my total earnings have more than doubled. My EPC has taken a huge drop, but rises in other stats have obviously more than offset that.
I guess the concern with short term flucuations, a few days or even weeks stats, seems counter productive to me. That doesn't mean I don't understand publishers concerns, just that I think a longer term view is more productive.
Part of that is that I see a fairly consistent pattern in my stats where almost every month I have a few days that make me wonder if I should just take Adsense off the site, and a few other days when I think "Whoa, easy street here I come!". Neither one seems to last though, and in the end they seem to more or less balance each other out, with a little net gain as a bonus.
As far as knowing what other posters site urls are, I'm not sure it matters that much. Probably more helpful would be to know what sector they are in.
Sector is one element, but EPC and eCPM could also be affected by things such as:
- The focus of the site (news, service-oriented editorial, reference, e-commerce, corporate, community, etc.).
- Range of topics and subtopics.
- The nature of the content (articles, image galleries, forums, directory pages, etc.).
- Number, size, and placement of ads.
That's why it would be helpful if we could see examples of sites that are doing well or that are taking a hit.
:)
I saw somewhere here "it is like Alice in the Wonderland - we need to run 2 times faster to at least stay at the same place"
Exactly my situation.
I was need to cut adspace 3 times to get higher eCPM
to compensate drop in EPC more than 2 times.
Moving ad around, removing second ad unit, getting more clicks - I'm running but staying absolutely at the same place in earnings on month to month base.
Moving ad around, removing second ad unit, getting more clicks - I'm running but staying absolutely at the same place in earnings on month to month base.
Very similar story here. CTR has risen in the last few months, and overall earnings have increased due to more pages, higher ctr, and increased pagerank...but epc is a different story.
My epc story is not that it has crashed, but rather that it fluctuates wildly from 1.0x to 0.65x recently and sometimes even down to 0.5x all in a matter of days.
I think this is the point that the "don't cry about it, just work harder people" are missing.
The complaint does not revolve around decreased EPC. The complaint is (and this doesn't apply to everyone's site of course): why does the value of a site shift up, down, and back up again as much as 35-50% all in a matter of days.
I don't think conversion data is behind this. I don't think advertiser bid changes is behind this. I'm more apt to agree with EFV that pricing algo changes are behind this-------but if that's the case, you'll notice that the 35% swings are never to google's loss, only to publisher's loss.
No conspiracy theory. But you'd never let a face-to-face business partner treat you this way. And for the "if you don't like, dump adsense" response: when something else is out there, I'm sure many people will do just that. All yahoo or someone else has to do is sweeten the deal a little to KEEP the publishers they take from adsense.
And THAT doesn't even have to mean more money--just a relationship, perhaps, that takes the rollercoaster out of the equation so a webmaster can focus on what he really wants to do, which is build good content.
anyone else seen an upturn over the last couple of days? My stats seem to have normalised and more.
I'm very hesitant to agree with this. Wednesday's Adsense earnings actually correlated with our expectations for the average epc.
For example Tuesday's and Wednesday's clicks were more or less the same however Wednesday's earnings were 30% more and back in our "normal" zone.
Today, after 12+ hours, is also looking "normal". Enough said, I don't want to upset the Adsense karma:-))
[internetretailer.com...]
The article is about Google's forthcoming site-targeted CPM ads, but it contains a paragraph that says new Google or Yahoo marketing features (presumably meaning ad-marketing features) tend to drive up prices at first. Six to 12 months later, prices drop again--though not to all the way down to their previous levels--as advertisers perform "hard cost analysis" on what they're buying.
So...does anyone recall any "marketing features" that Google introduced to the AdWords content network six to 12 months ago? :-)
I particularly liked the parts where it says:
“The program (G’s new impression-based CPM ad program), which is tied to keyword searches, is currently in beta testing. CPM ads will not appear on Google’s home page.”
LOL, let the publishers carry the burden and be the Ginny pigs. Chip their revenue even more.
And:
“Kugelman adds that Google’s auction-based model for CPM display ads can also benefit Internet retailers of all sizes by showing them the true market price for a CPM ad, as opposed to a flat fee set by the publisher.”
About $4 eCPM which is currently the average cost per 1000 impressions (+-15%) over many other pey per impression banner networks.
Would publishers be able to opt out?
Probably not!
Would publishers be able to filter out low bidders?
Probably not!
And the TOC will probably be updated with a new rule:
"Ads must display on the pages top fold". No footers please.
Good luck with this "new cheap advertisers tool" crap.
I've lost 20% of yesterday's stats compared to our analysis v Adsense and they are usually both the same.
I've written to G to ask what has happened however I am not tolerating this much longer. There is clearly a problem, it's at Google's end and I don't see why I should have to hang around wondering whether or not, with Google's silence, something is going to be done.
We all need answers and we need them now otherwise Adsense is off my sites this weekend.
I particularly liked the parts where it says:“The program (G’s new impression-based CPM ad program), which is tied to keyword searches, is currently in beta testing. CPM ads will not appear on Google’s home page.”
Stands to reason. The CPM ads aren't page-targeted, so it wouldn't make much sense to use them on a site like Google.com that covers an infinite range of topics. They'd be the equivalent of cheap RON banners from FastClick.
The CPM ads are likely to perform best on sites with reasonably focused themes. For example, ads for The Tire Rack (a mail-order vendor of tires and wheels) might fetch decent CPMs on advertiser-selected automotive enthusiast sites, but they'd be lucky to fetch the minimum $2 CPM on a general portal, news, or entertainment site.
Word to the wise...channel data has been messed up past month and a half...it double reports, triple reports. The only way to view true data is aggregate. Don't make the mistake I did believing I was making way more than I actually was.
Sum it up:
Aggregate data = accurate
Channel data = highly inaccurate
[webmasterworld.com...]
Aggregate data = accurate
Channel data = highly inaccurate
I have never seen channel data that is inaccurate. It is caused by overlapping channels.
Most of us probably don't have year-old bid data for our main keywords around (assuming that we even have "main keywords"), but for those who do, Jon_King's experiment might be worth replicating.
