Forum Moderators: martinibuster
It's hard to see the stats, but I happen to catch it one day as the stats rolled over from one day to the next and didn't have any clicks yet. But I did have CPM ads. And the ecpm was under a dollar where my usual ecpm on that channel was around $12. Am I wrong to look at this as proof?
Is it worth banning CPM ads, and how can you tell which urls use it?
On the flip side, now it sounds like if you are using adwords, to use CPM is a good idea to catch inexpensive clicks.
You can set your prefs for text only, but that still lets text CPM ads run on your site as I understand it.
I didn't know you could email google and ask them to remove CPM. Has that worked for anyone?
I didn't know much about CPM but finally did some analysis. And the result is that it reduces EPC. I've seen some people here state otherwise, but I'm 90% sure about this.
I'm 100% sure that my eCPM has been higher since site-targeted CPM ads began running on my site.
That stands to reason: Even at low CPMs, CPM ads represent valuable filler ads for pages that have low clickthrough rates and eCPM. Plus, there's no reason to assume that all site-targeted ads are purchased at rockbottom rates.
If site earnings are dropping substantially it must be a competitor!
For my site with relatively high CTR, lower traffic, the CPM ads tend to displace the ads that pay very well. The CPM ads seem to home in on the best paying pages that had conventional ads. The poorer performing pages are not getting the CPM ads. One ad displaces many. Remember the higher CTR/quality ads are shown first, who knows at which location in an ad unit the best Pay per click (performance) ads are displayed.
How can Google compare the performance of one CPM ad to 5 different, different per refresh too, ads. One of those 4 or 5 ads displaced may have paid 100's of times more than the CPM ad. It appears CPM ads may also be shown once per unique visitor, using a cookie to block multiple showings, so don't go by your impression count to estimate income.
Google is also experimenting with showing the same CPM ad in two ad units! Big text, little text, or graphic as well. I've discussed this with Adsense support in email.
For the CPM ads I've seen, the earnings are 1/5 to 1/10th that of the conventional ads.
Also the CPM ads have been extremely poorly targeted, reducing site CTR by quite a bit (statistically very significant).
It appears larger, and higher traffic sites benefit from CPM ads, while smaller, lower traffic sites suffer.
Adsense has a lot of work to do to blend these two disparate systems of advertising equitably.
Excuse my ignorance, but what are CPM ads? Is it that site targeted thingy?
Lex_Luther, Here is some information on CPM ads.
[adwords.google.com...]
And the ecpm was under a dollar where my usual ecpm on that channel was around $12. Am I wrong to look at this as proof?
Technically yes ;)
Say you watched as stats rolled over and you had 100 impressions and zero clicks with a $1 eCPM. But there is no way to know how many of those 100 impressions were CPM ads, and only the ones that were CPM ads would actually count towards the $1 eCPM you saw. There might have only been a single CPM ad impression, and the rest were regular ad impressions with zero clicks, hence earning no money except what would have been earned for a single CPM ad impression.
Then there is always the issue of the way stats update, getting data from different servers which are updated at different times. Even if all 100 ad impressions were CPM ads, stats might show 100 ad impressions, but only 10 of those impressions had been updated for the eCPM stats.
I am fairly confident that the CPM ads are running at the competitive eCPM rate.
I wish Google would let us paste a list of URL's into the dialog box. Or to be truly modern they could say "load URL's from sitemap.xml file?"
Start watching your statistics at midnight PST, the start of Google's day. At least currently as soon as one page has one impression, and there is no click, and you see a value other than zero in the eCPM column of your stats, this should be your earnings per thousand impressions for some CPM ad on that page. Once there's more than one impression, you really can't tell what percent of the time Google is showing a CPM ad.
You would think it would be 100% of the time on the more poorly performing pages to get the most diverse audience, which should be the target of CPM ads; you're trying to reach customers that don't know about your existence, customers that aren't looking for a product from that advertiser, shots in the dark.
Watch your eCPM column at this early time, sort by clicks then look for non-zero ECPM on pages that have no clicks, these are pages showing CPM ads, if there's one impression then the ECPM is probably a projection of the earnings per thousand impressions for that ad.
Take a look at that page on your site, you may see a CPM ad you may not. This is the mystery, when and where the CPM ads are being shown. You now have absolutlely no idea what Google is showing on your site (not that you did before). The ads can be locality targeted, and you will likely never see these ads. But remember locally targeted ads really only have value to a small percentage of the nation (sorry world!).
I try to avoid anything that localizes a page, unless the page only has to do with a locality. Google really homes in on any comment of locality (great for travel sites!). Say the word "California" on a page and you will probably get localized ads even if you were mentioning the location of the most recent Earthquake.
So far this morning I've seen no CPM ads which is rare at this late time. I have blocked a couple ads that were excessively displayed or very untargeted for a given page.
Finally Adsense certainly can finagle the statistics per the TOS, so this methodolgy, may work, may not work for long, etc. Also I hope they are carrying over that 0.01 cent earnings to the next day.
