Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Would appreciate some explanation on how page impressions, CTR (Click through rate) & SmartPricing are related. I think I understand impressions and CTR but I don't see how SmartPricing is related. Heres my understanding...
Impressions: The number of times an ad block is displayed (including ad links)
CTR: Click through rate vs impressions
SmartPricing: Reducing the amount earned from a click in some way.
Also, why do people say "until SmartPricing kicks in", is this not default for all ad sense?
Thanks for anyone who can advise, still building my site and want to get things right up front. I'm thinking about adding some code to disable ads on some pages to improve my CTR, if that'll help (?).
Smart pricing "kicking in" refers to the observed effect that a site seems to have to accumulate some history before the smart pricing calculations take effect. So a new site can enjoy what amounts to brief, full-price honeymoon before AdSense accumulates enough data to calculate the initial smart pricing discount.
The effect of CTR on amount paid per click is somewhat more debatable. But some AdSensers, including me, have noticed that removing AdSense code from particular poorly performing channels (CTR less than 1/5 of site as a whole, say) seems to lead to increases in price per click. Whether this is built into the AdSense algorithm or is a side-effect isn't clear....
I agree.
What are you doing for the site that is advertising on your site?
If you are doing a good job of sending targeted traffic to the advertisers page the chances of a convertion is higher.
Not all advertisers are tracking convertion right now, but in the future they will so your site should add something along the way to their convertion.
Just a thought...if google can tell that a conversion that the advertiser is tracking came from your site they may pay you more.
Hope that makes sense.
what do you say?
So if you had high-paying ads that no one clicked on, you should be GLAD they are gone. A $5 click multiplied by zero is still zero. Better to have a 20-cent click, so you long as you get a click.
I have the adverts on my site already, and I've not submitted the site to any search engines/gained any inbound links as yet so should I remove the ads for now - seeing as I'm the only one viewing my site (sometimes hundreds of times in an evening) during content addition/testing?
One would think a site that smart pricing had hit squarely in the jaw would be one of the first to go when advertisers got the chance to boot it. Apparently not.
The only "smart pricing" that can possibly work is giving the advertisers control over where their ads are shown and letting the marketplace determine how much a click is worth, not an ineffective algorithm. Trying to do meaningful statistical analysis on a data set that is woefully incomplete and then extrapolating the results onto other "similar" sites and pages that are of completely different quality is predestined to failure, and the now ample evidence has proven that to be the case.
Google has started down the right path with more advertiser control and it's paying off handsomely, both for advertisers and publishers (at least the ones who run quality sites).
"Smart pricing" has no rhyme or reason to it - in fact it seems to be more or less random. A few of my sites that had been hit hard by smart pricing are now doing quite well. When did I first notice the increase in CPM and total revenue? Just a couple of days after Google gave advertisers some say on where their ads can run.
You may not be able to detect the rhyme or reason, but that doesn't mean it's not there. I had a similar experience, and here's one possible explanation: my site was not a TOP-converting site, so advertisers had been receiving a discount on clicks from my site. But it's a good, clean site, so I am positive that no one would be rushing to put it on a list of sites they don't want their ads on. But there are then fewer sites available for those ads to display, increasing competition, and so you get a higher payout.
Another factor to throw into the mix is that once that option was available, advertisers might have moved into the content network who weren't advertising there before, or who had stopped. Again, that would tend to push prices up.
The system is complicated, but not, in my opinion, totally random. All we can do is try out different things and see what works on our sites.
Almost immediately I started getting emails from advertisers wondering why in the world I removed AdSense from the site. I negotiated deals with 4 of them to replace the affiliate links with their links. I now make 3 times the amount with that site than I ever made with AdSense, and every penny of it comes from AdSense advertisers.
Google is losing out because of smart pricing, and I seriously doubt that it's just with me. Hopefully they'll go "all the way" with advertiser control and find out how well REAL smart pricing can work.
Well, all I can say is that smart pricing has not had that drastic effect on my EPC. In fact, after I removed some advertisers from my block list, I think it's pretty much back to what it was before Google started using Smart Pricing last year....
