Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Just check in if you are one of the ones with a higher EPC while others are complaining of a lower one ;) I know those who are seeing a higher EPC can get lost amidst all the "ACK, MY EPC HAS DROPPED" posts that have dominated recent threads, so I thought I'd start one going the opposite.
I am checking in to report that as of late last week (about the time when some started seeing a lower EPC) I am seeing a higher than usual EPC.
higher epc, same ctr, higher earnings
better traffic ;-)
Overall, not much change.
I find it fascinating in the different discussions that I've seen in the past few days at how 05/05/05 seems to have been a day where epc seemed to change for quite a few (both up and down).
Something must have changed at that point. Reminds me of when Google do their backlink/PR updates - there is always more discussion by those who've lost SERPs on these days than those who've seen increases.
My earnings is small compared to most people in here but if it will be continually as good as this month then I'll be very happy.
Btw sinds 05-05-05 my EPC and eCPM are actually up.
Bddmed
A single channel with B2B offers has suddenly much higher EPC, the rest is down, but in average 8% up
I agree that both "up" and "down" threads are perhaps pointless - only real point is to see if you are alone or not.
Generally I have found AdSense to be cyclical over time, with a long up and a long down curve.
Bottom line is really:
1. Is Adsense a zero sum game at the moment. In other words do some publishers gains balance othe publishers losses
or
2. Have AdSense changed their algo in some way to take a higher percentage for Google.
As the b's are so secretive, one has no idea if this is so when you see changes to your own stats. And whenever you see a big change (last week stats offline 14 hours, followed by an outage in main Google SE itself) happening you look to see if your own figures have altered, and if they have is it "1" or "2" above
since there are so many up and down threads (seem to be more down ones than up ones) it seems that the bottom line is more 1 (zero sum) than 2. if google was taking a bigger share, then it seems that very few people would experience increases in EPC.
also, if google is taking a bigger share, i dont think it could account for some of the huge drops that people are seeing. if google was taking 25% and they upped that percentage to 35%, publishers revenue should not be affected by more than 15%.
perhaps there could be a #3 on your list... providing discounts to advertisers on the content network; this would help improve advertiser ROI at the expense of publisher earnings..
Increase in EPC over last month = 4.94202%
Increase in EPC over similar period last month = 3.81883%
No adjustment for the fact that there were two Sundays and two Saturdays in April but only one Saturday in May so far.
as of late last week
Increase in EPC over last month = 11.13224%
Increase in EPC over similar period last month = 10.44521%
Again, no adjustment for the fact that there were two Saturdays in April but only one Saturday in May so far.
One account down 13.105%
You mean since they corrected/modified the page view/impressions stats reporting?
Actually, if you look at my initial post, I was referring to strictly EPC. When calculating EPC it doesn't matter if there are one million impressions or one hundred impressions - if the earnings and clicks are the same, the EPC will be the same, since EPC is based on earnings and clicks alone. EPC is a better statistical comparison than eCPM, because of the two options a publisher has when calculating eCPM.
Can anyone speculate why the EPC went up? I saw ncreegan saying better traffic. Do you have data to support that? and what does better traffic mean? filtering out traffic from India and China?
I don't actively filter any country, but only because my traffic is already 98% US anyway. Additionally, I belive a lot of the foreign traffic I get is from Americans in another country. I'd hate to alienate anyone based on their geographic location.
For me, better traffic means increasing traffic from sources that earn me more cash. For one site, this means getting more links from resource sites, and for another, it means getting more links from more research oriented pages.
Also, certain types of page content will earn a higher EPC than others.
Finally, I feel that I've been able to improve performance every month because of my own careful research. Not only would it be "no fun" if I gave all my tips away, but since the program is so dynamic, what works for one likely won't work for another in the same way.
They stated that they thought I was benefiting from recent changes with the Adsense program. Maybe they are right. I don't know.
I will say that the change was abrupt and on 5/1/05. I think you could also explain the increase by suggesting that a big advertiser entered my niche on the first day of the month. As my earnings have waxed and waned over the months I have always felt it had to do with the pocket books of the advertisers as opposed to fluctuations and changes with Adsense.
Without any evidence I've always been of the opinion that new advertisers join up with AdWords. Let their ads be shown on the "content" network (because they don't really know what to do or choose). Blow through a lot of cash a lot faster and with less results than they hoped. And then afterwards opt out of the content network and just go for the SERP's advertising.
I'm not stating this to belittle the Adsense content network (after all I am part of it and rely on the income). But this was just my impression of how things often seemed to transpire.
TJ
Actually, if you look at my initial post, I was referring to strictly EPC . When calculating EPC it doesn't matter if there are one million impressions or one hundred impressions - if the earnings and clicks are the same, the EPC will be the same
I'm sure you didn't mean to be patronising :) - if you look at my post I made no suggestion that EPC is in any way influenced by the number of impressions. In fact, as you know, I have often pointed out inaccurace stats/inaccurate use of stats. I even argued against the absurdity of "average" CTR ;) across different publishers' accounts - a stat that some here believe is a figure worth examining and obsessing over. I'm surprised you drew the conclusion you did; I thought it was quite evident in my post that I was using the "since they modified reporting" as a date marker. Never mind.
What variables do matter when comparing metrics from two periods are things like the number of weekends (for some sites), the season, national holidays, major publicity campaigns, items in the news etc etc.
It's nice to see a few people reporting increases.
