Forum Moderators: martinibuster
If I remove the Adsense ads from pages with a low CTR, does this mean that eCPM for my one well-performing page will increase, and therefore increase my earnings?
I've tried getting my head around smart pricing but it's starting to hurt.
I think it would be great if Adsense does little more about it.
But what if the advertiser isn't tracking conversions? Does smart pricing fly blind? I don't think so. I think it looks at other factors, and they may include CTR.
I base this on experience. Three times over the past year, I removed ads from a low-performing channel--I mean really low. Very low CTR compared to the site as a whole, and low EPC when there was an occasional click. And each time, counter-intuitive as it seems, my overall earnings went up--largely, it seemed, because of an increase in EPC.
Other people have not had the same experience. I do think it's worth trying--if you aren't earning anything on a set of pages, or only pennies, why not try out something else--maybe even an "ad" for a page on your site that DOES do well with AdSense.
Experiment, experiement, experiment. Wait a week or more to see the results.....
On the preview tool you can check a box that will show you the landing page of that ad.
Go to the site filter and block any site that is made up of just Overture / Yahoo / AdWords ads or registration forms to get personal data. Don't just block the page - block the whole site using just site.com - leave out the www and any sub domain extensions.
It will take 4 or 5 hours for these sites to disappear. Repeat the process 24 hours later. Once you do this a couple of times you will recognize these sites as soon as you open them - many look the same.
It's a real shame we have to do this work. AS should be eliminating them automatically.
They need to identify where the product is being presented and throw out the garbage. There should be an approval period for AS to be on a new site and all existing sites should be reviewed. Of course this is going to be costly however for the long term health of the business model it is absolutely essential that it is done.
<end of rant>
Is there a Mac equivalent of the Preview Tool? It only seems to work on Windows/IE, and I'd love to know what ads my US and Australian visitors see
sorry i forgot the address
you can try to google it.
CTR is one action, conversion is a complete other action.
We have absolut no conversion information.
So maybe one page has CTR 10% and one from 10 click converts. Conversion rate 10%
So maybe one page has CTR 2% and one from 5 click converts. Conversion rate 20%
As long as we have absolut no information about conversions, we can only make wild assumptions.
If thats the case then will the pages with a low eCPM have an adverse effect the eCPM of the better performing pages?
Suppose there is one of those sites which blends the ads into the content so well, that they get a disproportionately massive CTR, but, since the visitor landed on the advertiser's page "accidentally", there is most likely no conversion. And the advertiser gets charged for nothing. This could, in the long run, create inflation of the cost to the advertiser.
Most of the scraper sites, "article bot", and other MFA sites do this sort of thing -- all "fooling" the visitor into clicking on the ads.
Because of this, I would suspect that G has taken this into account, and factored the CTR in its relation/ratio to conversions somehow. Conversion rate is analogous to a "gold standard" or a benchmark for the smart pricing algo; it stands to reason that they would have to measure the conversion rate of a particular site, in ratio to its other stats, and CTR is maybe one of them.
In the last few days I've removed half my adsense code and only earned $20 less per day. Now I have more space for other things and am finding other ways to monetize. That's the best advice I can give you.
it stands to reason that they would have to measure the conversion rate of a particular site, in ratio to its other stats, and CTR is maybe one of them.
yeah, that would make some sense. if you have high ctr, then you have to justify this by high conversion in order to not get smartpriced.
unfortunately this stands against the understanding of those forum members, who think that a high ctr generally tends to have a positive impact on your conversion - with which i disagree.
smart pricing = guesswork. as long as nobody convinces me of the contrary, the principle remains:
due to the preselection, there is no reason to believe, that one click out of 1000 (low ctr) doesn't convert as likely as one click out of 10 (high ctr).
the only two things that come to my mind, which should have a positive impact on conversion are:
1. drive in qualified traffic.
2. don't blend the ads. this only pushes your ctr but lowers conversion by fooling users to click.
2. don't blend the ads. this only pushes your ctr but lowers conversion by fooling users to click.
Blending in was one of my improvements in February 2005.
Big increase in CTR, but no effect on EPC.
i knew someone would spring at this point :)
firstly, we are speaking of conversion improvement here. secondly, we could agree upon blending as not a bad practice per se. it just tends not to be beneficial for your conversion rate.
it depends on the approach. if you can manage to blend the ads in your content and thereby not trick people into just clicking, then it's fine. this is something like an elaboration between blending and emphasizing the ads.
Anyway the whole thing is crazymaking. If blending to improve ctr is bad for smart pricing, why is the adsense blog pushing it? Or if it's fraudulent why are they showcasing that adsense publisher who did just that?
Google wants to have their cake and eat it too. But they're taking too many of our pieces.
If they look at them because they think they are part of the site, but only click because they are interested, you're golden. I've seen sites that IMHO go too far in blending, to the extent of concealing the fact that they are ads.
What this all comes down to is, try different things. If they increase your income, keep them. If they don't, try something else.
