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My CTR this week is higher than it's ever been before yet earnings (CPC/eCPM) dropped a bunch this week and the same CTR (a record for my site) last week would've been $100-$200 more than this week.
So much for the UPS club...
Not that I'm completely complaining, but it just seems very odd that nearly a thousand more clicks would make a lot less money all of a sudden.
I think I'll get the flash light, the can of crisco and sit in the corner and brace for impact.
More traffic than evr, higher ctr, and lower epcm = less earnings. Bah...
Wha' hoppen?
Ann
My earnings are still substantial, the month will end well, but the sudden shift has been quite bizarre.
I hope this isn't a trend heading into the holiday season as I pretty much count on the next 3 months to prop me up for the year, it's the GOLD RUSH of the year, those 3 magic months that make it all worthwhile.
Don't mess with me Google, I can spell Yahoo...
It only took adsense two months to put me there - and it came at a time that should have been the best month (August) for my site topic. What a shock to the system to get 100K unique visitors and earn a mere 30 bucks for that day.
So that got me thinking... I need to change my tactics and generate some (although) related but new keywords for my site... however, with my limited imagination I can't seem to think outside the square...
Any suggestions from all you adsense pros would be most welcome... as I have just about covered every known keyword and key phrase related to my site topic...
I'm all ears...
And yes Yahoo is looking good but alas, I'm not an American so I will have to wait until they offer international registration...
I run a pristine content site, so this is definitely undeserved.
Oddly, clicks have decreased drastically and I've made no changes to the site. It's difficult to keep on going in spite of setbacks, sometimes.
Google evaluates the "value" of a click from a given page to the advertiser based primarily upon two factors: conversion rates and content type. Both of these are extremely flawed.
Conversion rates are based upon data recorded when AdWords publishers take the steps required to properly gather conversion data for their clickthroughs. There are two problems with this approach:
1 - Only a relative handful of publishers collect conversion data making the sample size too small for statistical analysis to be anywhere near useful.
2 - The faulty conversion data gathered from those few sites is then extrapolated to other sites of the same theme. This is like comparing apples with lug wrenches.
One site about European travel for instance might have a few blurry pictures of the Eiffel Tower along with a couple of sentences describing it (filled with grammatical errors at that).
On the other hand you have EFV's outstanding site filled with great photos and in-depth, grammatically correct reviews and information. There is no way those two sites are going to have anywhere near the same conversion rates.
Google also bases the liklihood of a conversion on the type of page the ad is on. Their own example is something like an ad on a digital camera review page vs. the same ad on a page with photography tips.
This premise is flawed as well. Two pages on two different sites reviewing the same camera can be very different in terms of quality. One page might say little more than "The Kodak Easyshare 7590 is a great camera. It feels good in my hand." That's the whole review! I've seen reviews almost exactly like that.
The other review might be an in-depth article explaining how the 7590 performed under varying levels of light, etc.
And then there are the huge differences between the effectiveness of various advertiser landing pages and the accuracy and precision of the ads that induce the visitor to click the ad in the first place.
The bottom line is that smart-pricing is more random than anything else as far as I can see, and if you really consider the way it's implemented you'll see why.
I have been on both sides of the smart-pricing teeter-totter. I just happen to be on the high side right now as the last few days have been record breakers in every way. But I know there will come a time when it's my "turn" to fall again.
The drop didn't exactly put me in the poor house but it did hurt my feelings.
Ann
But its the first drop in 2 years or so
This doesn't seem odd to me. In a bid market, rates can fluctuate wildly, and there will be other factors affecting the rates, such as the process of 'natural statistical variation'.
When Adsense publishers observe a downward change in rates, it is usually a "red bead" -<snip>
Adsense, like the stock market, is a long term business and trends need to be assessed using the right statistical techniques, not by paying attention to short term bottom-line changes (even though short term figures can be 'addictive'). The latter approach can often be pointless or, worse, cause unnecessary emotional turmoil.
[edited by: Jenstar at 1:08 pm (utc) on Sep. 28, 2005]
[edit reason] No promotional URLs please, as per TOS [/edit]
sample size too small for statistical analysis to be anywhere near useful
That's plausible, but do you actually know that? Is there a source?
How does everyone know that smart pricing is the culprit when earnings aren't what you want? AdWords is an auction; if advertisers lower their bids or drop out, prices fall. Maybe that is what happened.
For my site right now I've decided that Adsense is pretty much the only game I have as an option. I do have some private advertising arrangements but Adsense is so easy I prefer it. I didn't get invited to participate in YPN.
Since I have no control over Adsense (other than ad placement, etc...) I focus on what I can have an effect on (more content, trying to improve rankings, linking). When I look back over the months my regrets are not having spent enough time improving my site, not freting over my Adsense stats.
I've gone from checking Adsense stats as much as a few times per day to looking at them two or three times a week. I couldn't be happier. If the money is there, great. If it is not I know I've focused my energies where they count and when a better advertising opportunity does come along I'll be there, and with a better site.
Excellent post, Broadway, and food for thought to boot.
Cheers
For those seeing a drop, from what? Last month, last year, last week, what?
I'm up from July of this year. I've posted before that I don't think I can use August 05 as a comparison. I got an big increase after the Adwords changes on the 15th of August. I didn't think it was sustainable, the increase all came after the 15th, and I can't identify any reason for the increase other than the pricing changes at Adwords. Still, the extra money was nice :)
Compared to a year ago, I'm way, way ahead.
Most of my site is evergreen, so those pages change very little, if at all, but one section is updated once a week or more.
Adsense isn't perfect, but for many of us it's the best deal around at the moment.
Although I do not have any precise figures, it seems obvious that many publishers continue to join AdSense.
If the growth of advertising inventory on the publishing side is growing faster than demand on the advertiser side, there is clearly going to be somewhat of a dampening effect on earnings for publishers. If advertisers sense that there is lots of suitable publishing inventory available, they will bid less.
Although I have just recently joined AdSense, it seems that this has already been at work over the last couple of years of AdSense. I have read innumerable posts from publishers reminiscing about how they used to have a much higher EPC.
It would be nice to see some detailed historical data on how returns for AdSense publishers have changed over the course of time.
Regarding my own site - CTR has been lower but EPC has been much higher over the last couple of weeks.
The increase in EPC has sharply outweighed the drop in CTR resulting in a higher ECPM. I have no idea as to what has happened - too many variables.
I do not put too much stock in these short-term trends at any rate. I have seen a lot of ups and downs in various areas in just four months on AdSense. I will only get concerned if problems continue for an extended period of time.
For me, AdSense remains the best option for monetizing my site. It requires a minimal amount of intervention on my part and allows me to spend the maximum amount of time producing content.
This will be my lowest month since january. Now I bring my fishing pole to the beach to catch dinner.
* Different Traffic With Different Interests - whatever is drawing the additional traffic to your site happens to bring in traffic with different interests than your traditional visitors. It happens that their interests correspond to the lower-paying ads already displayed on your pages, not the higher-paying ads your traditional visitors were more inclined to click.
* Limited Numbers of Very High Value Clicks - your site generates lots of clicks worth between $.01 and $1, and a small number of clicks worth between $5 and $10 (or more). As there are only a small number of those high value clicks available in any given timeframe, and Google automatically distributes (or rations) them among AdSense publishers, your additional traffic doesn't increase the number of high value clicks and the overall eCPM goes down.
* Highest eCPM on one or two pages - Your 100 page channel or site has one or two pages which generate an extraordinary eCPM, which inflates the eCPM of the entire channel or site. You add new content to the channel, but you don't hit the topic(s) which generate the extraordinary eCPM, lowering the overall eCPM of your channel or site.
I've had a very minor dip in EPC, CTR, and eCPM over the last 36 hours or so, but that's normal.
OK, you know I'm the one always telling people that a couple of days are statistically insignificant but 10 days are not insignificant at all.
When you graph my site over 6 months (or all time) you see two trends immediately which is the eCPM/avg CPC sinking steadily over time and bottoming out this month while my earnings are increasing radically due to higher CTR. It's real hard to ignore graphs that prove unequivically the more I earn the more clicks it takes to earn the same money. Reminds me of trying to climb a loose sand hill where the slipping sand below you seems to keep sliding out from under you faster and faster the higher you get making it nearly impossible to reach the top.
However, it's also hard to complain when making 2-3 times more money than previously except statistically it should be more like 4-6 times more money.
I'm going to be optimistic and assume that the bigger advertisers pulled out at the end of summer saving up for the ad blitz during the holiday shopping season and not attribute it to smart pricing, yet.
Guess I'll go back to working on yet MORE traffic so when the advertisers really bid it up in the next 3 months I'll be there waiting to snag every penny possible.
AdSense is still the best game in town, just wish I knew which game it was playing...
Is this on the basis of increasing your traffic by 4 to 6 times? If so, your stats seem very reasonable to me, because the laws of supply and demand mean that if traffic goes up, CPC will go down.
Incidentally, a link I posted earlier was mistakenly moderator-snipped as 'promotional' (despite the link being for information and the site nothing to do with me). Deming's famous 'red bead experiment' is often used to show that trying to interpret the ups and downs of statistics is folly. It ought to be mandatory reading for stats-watchers!
trying to interpret the ups and downs of statistics is folly
If I could sticky you my 2 charts I would and you wouldn't think it was folly as the earnings graph goes up up up and the eCPM/CPC goes down down down.
Weekly you see the sine waves EFV describes but it's always the same, weekdays are up, weekends are down, no shock there. But over the months those waves make a very specific directional trend which cannot be denied.
the laws of supply and demand mean that if traffic goes up, CPC will go down.
I find it very hard to imagine that out of all the web sites in my niche that a traffic and CTR increase on just my site alone would be big enough to impact the supply and demands of ads content network wide for the entire niche.
Either everyone in my niche would have to be getting an increase in traffic and/or CTR, or I really get a lot more traffic compared to my competition than even I realized which I find hard to believe, or it's smart pricing kicking in which I'd like not to believe.
When EFV mentions any kind of dip it is time to get under your desk.
I've often mentioned dips and peaks in EPC, CTR, and eCPM. I remember saying on at least several occasions that members should be comparing revenues for years, not days or weeks or months (especially for topics that are affected by seasonal demand).
In any given month, I see typical day-to-day eCPM variations of 10-20%. This month, for example, I've had several days that were more than 25% above the month's average and a few days that were 15% below average. July and August (two other months that I checked just now) showed similar patterns.
What matters to me is how this month's average eCPM compares to my long-term average. So far it's running about 30% higher, and it's also well ahead of the eCPM that I was seeing before "smart pricing" was introduced in April, 2004. (Of course, it's hard to make a completely valid comparison between then and now, since the site has grown and its mixture of topics has evolved since AdSense was launched more than two years ago.)
As an Adwords advertister, I can confirm that this is true for me. Yesterday I checked the stats and saw that Adwords has delivered quite a bit more traffic to my e-commerce site than my daily budget allows.
This told me that there's overstock of the ad impressions, therefore I may be able to get the traffic I need with the lower bid.
This does not apply to rare low-traffic keywords, but for those the bids would be low anyway, since there's little competition among advertisers.
Andy
That's plausible, but do you actually know that? Is there a source?
Back in June I conducted a poll (non-scientific) on all of my webmaster-related sites. Multiple votes from the same IP address were thrown out.
Between all the sites, the poll received over 400,000 non-repeat votes - not a huge sample size but large enough to get more than a rough idea. Slightly less than 9% of the respondents use conversion tracking.
I believe that the vast majority of AdWords advertisers are mom and pop operations who barely know how to run a website, let alone set up conversion tracking, and my poll results bear that out.
All the evidence that I see shows that "smart-pricing" is the overriding force behind most major EPC shake-ups.
