Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I am very thankful for AdSense and greatful for what it has given me, but this smart pricing has me looking more and more forward to an alternative.
On Saturday, I saw my EPC plummet. I hoped it was just a burp in the system.
Not the case.
My EPC has dropped to barely over a dime per click. I have tested and tested and am just becoming so frustrated. This is the second time since I began last September that I'm dealing with this.
I don't need .80 or a dollar per click even though I was in that range when I began.
I am more than happy with between .20 and .30 per click.
I have busted my but with hours and hours of content development, linking, and everything else that comes with a site. This has just taken the wind completely out of my sails.
I'll continue building and developing, but Google, if you're reading, please give good site owners some kind of idea as to how to avoid the smart pricing penalty. Keeping it such a mystery is turning a lot of webmasters off.
Anyway, I'm just venting.
That's frustrating, because you can't really control it, but it's not a mystery.
Question: is your frustratingly low EPC uniformly low across your site? I've discovered through channels that certain pages/sections get much higher EPC than others. Here's an example with made-up numbers: A site average of a 10-cent EPC, which includes one or more channels with a 3-cent EPC and one with a 50-cent EPC.
If you have channels with very low EPC for AdSense (and very low earnings), consider doing something different with those pages.
Question: How many ad blocks do you have per page? If more than one, consider removing one. The more ad blocks you have on a page, the more you can dilute the EPC, because any clicks in the second (and third) ad block is by definition worth less than a click in the first one.
Apologies if you've already thought of such solutions, but I thought they might be worth mentioning.
I've had to work hard to bring my EPC back up to the level it was at before Google started using smart pricing last April, but I have been able to do it....
I've done this on two occasions, and immediately afterwards the epc returned to normal. I know they can't alter the algo for a site, but they just might be able to give the hardware a good kick!
I personally think that the algo is a bit flaky, and over-reacts to all sorts of things in a violent, unpredictable manner. Especially if you make changes to the site in order to recover lost epc, then put it back again.
They may of course trash the email, or let the Google "fortune cookie generator" answer it, but hey - nothing ventured nothing gained.
Was smartpricing introduced April '05 then? I hadn't realised this, but that's the time my epc started to slide.
[edited by: david_uk at 8:14 pm (utc) on July 11, 2005]
I removed code from all pages/articles that got very few page views, even those with high ctr. I just kept adsense on my high traffic pages.
Epc doubled, and it has held solid for the last week, after a dreadful end to june and start to july.
Question: is your frustratingly low EPC uniformly low across your site? I've discovered through channels that certain pages/sections get much higher EPC than others. Here's an example with made-up numbers: A site average of a 10-cent EPC, which includes one or more channels with a 3-cent EPC and one with a 50-cent EPC.If you have channels with very low EPC for AdSense (and very low earnings), consider doing something different with those pages.
I have tried that.
The problem is that a given page, mysite.com/Widgets.htm gets .03 clicks one day and .45 clicks the next. I have no friggin clue what to do with it.
Anyway, does anyone know of some threads on here or elsewhere that talk about Smart Pricing and what this might mean for publishers going foward. Thanks.
Don't just look at the channels from day to day. Are there any large variations when you look at an entire month's worth of data?
developerz,
Just browse the old threads. Smart pricing isn't new--as I said, Google started using it over a year ago. It is discussed here on a regular basis, though as may already be obvious from THIS thread, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot that we can do about it.
Smart pricing is something Google does to make the content network (us) less scary to advertisers. I think it's something we should live with, and work at optimizing what we CAN optimize. And when you consider all the things you can do to optimize your site for AdSense performance--ad type, ad placement, number of ad blocks, ad color, page design, site design, and so on--well, you could experiment on a daily basis and not run out of things to try any time soon.
[edited by: hunderdown at 8:50 pm (utc) on July 11, 2005]
My EPC has dropped to barely over a dime
You can't control epc.
You can control what kind of content you put on your pages. Some content draws ads with a higher epc.
You can also work to get more traffic. Highly targeted traffic is best, and you need less of it.
Put those two together and you have a recipe for better earnings.
Is there really a mystery? Smart pricing is based on how well clicks from a given site/page convert for the advertisers.
Not True.. IMO, Smart pricing is Google's way of taking more when they want more and less when they are ok.. I am an adwords advertiser and an adsense publisher. I have never seen any benifit to smart pricing on the advertiser side.. my averages are right at my bids even though I know most of my referrers come from sites and not search.
On the publisher side of the house, I have been smart priced to death even though my sites are well above average in converting in commision junction.
One anecdote does not a theory prove. In your case, the sites on which your ads appear may be converting well. (I'm assuming you are using the procedure to report your conversions to Google. If you're not, then smart pricing wouldn't kick in, of course.) And other advertisers HAVE reported getting what amounts to a smart pricing discount.
You may be right that Google uses smart pricing to skim some more off the top, but that can't entirely account for the large drops in EPC that some sites reported. Folks here have analyzed Google's filings with the SEC, and they have been consistent in reporting that publishers get approx. 77% of advertiser payments. Since that percentage hasn't changed since smart pricing started, for your theory to be right, Google must be paying other publishers more. But if they are already paying them 77% of an advertiser's payment, there's not so much more they can pay them.
My conclusion, taking into account the above and all the posts I've read here over the past year, is that smart pricing is a real discount, that it effects some publishers more than others (even at its lowest ebb, EPC on my site was never worse than half what it was before smart pricing was introduced), and that it benefits some advertisers more than others.
Anyway, not that I can shed any light on what's happening in Buzz's case, but I would try to rule out:
(1) Someone targeting the niche with lowball but highly relevant ads. On my highish-EPC site, I frequently have to filter out bidders who are clearly bidding at or near the 5c mark (in order to turn around and resell the traffic to AdSense) and yet succeed in getting their ads shown.
(2) CPM ads targeting your site. Others have reported this can have a catastrophic effect on earnings.
Thanks.
Presumably smart pricing, earnings dropped to sandbox level despite the CTR rise.
I no longer put adsense on sites and would remove it from the ones it is one were it not for the work involved.
A word to those considering AS, unless you are in a high paying keyword or very high traffic area don't bother!
So, i wouldn't say 'don't bother' at all - otherwise I'd have never got the $1000 or so AS has given me over the past 6 or 7 months.
Question: How many ad blocks do you have per page? If more than one, consider removing one. The more ad blocks you have on a page, the more you can dilute the EPC, because any clicks in the second (and third) ad block is by definition worth less than a click in the first one.
Having more than one ad block on one page does not always have to dilute the EPC. (I realize you wrote that it *can* dilute the EPC). Consider the following example:
Ad Block 1:
Ad1 CPC: $0.99
Ad2 CPC: $0.98
Ad Block 2:
Ad1 CPC: $0.98
Ad2 CPC: $0.98
Ad Block 3:
Ad1 CPC: $0.98
Ad2 CPC: $0.97
It all depends on the number of ads (and their CPC) that are available to you in the auction system.
True, in the example you cited. As you said, I said extra ads "can" dilute EPC--and I could come up with other examples where they more clearly would.
It all comes down to trying different things. My EPC is back to pre-smart pricing levels after trying several different things....
By the way, there's a free tracking script that can tell you what specific ads are being clicked on. This might give you some insight into what's happening, although it would be a lot more useful if you had historical data to compare it to.
By the way, there's a free tracking script that can tell you what specific ads are being clicked on.
My EPC varies hugely on the same page.
For example,
On Friday July 1, 70 clicks generated $XX dollars.
On July 9, 280 clicks generated LESS than $XX.
Another example, 150 clicks generated LESS THAN ONE HALF what 110 clicks generated on another day.
The EPC ranges dramatically for me. Without changing content on a given page, it's basically random. One day, I'll be doing 50c a click, another day I'll be doing 0.04c a click. Then it'll switch to something else, then switch back, then go to something the middle, then half, then double...
Whats sad is that my June EPC figures were averaging twice what my July figures are averaging (I'm making more but its based solely on growth of the site).
It's mind numbing.
A note to phantom... Not bothering! I started my site on a whim, just for the hell of it, and I'm getting ready to clear $400-$500 this month. Course, my hosting costs eat that up completely (They were $300 a month, I had to add a server), but still, its not outside the realm of possibility that with an acceptance into fastclick or casale (unlikely) or whatever I end up pulling down $900 to $1000 a month - i may end up only making $500 a month from the site once it levels off, but thats enough for a trip to the galapagos for a week on a liveaboard.... makes me happy.
Cross fingers. Do rain dance.
