Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Smart pricing lays the full responsibility of the conversion rate in the hands of the publisher.
If an advertiser makes a bad ad copy or sells a bad product there is not much a publisher can do about that we get punished for that with smart pricing.
With adwords it's the other way around if you have a bad CTR your ad campaign gets disabled and it's the advertisers responsibility to make sure you get a good conversion rate and CTR.
Also why is google hiding so much from us about this smart pricing I would like to have an indicator when smart price is effecting my earning positive or negative in my stats reports so I can work to improve it so the advertisers get a higher ROI.
So why is there no smart pricing with adwords?
I know why because google has gone mad google is now evil :(
... forcing publishers to accept smart pricing--publishers who aren't happy with their AdSense revenues do have other options
Sorry if I gave the impression I was trying to force anybody to do anything. The OP was about whether smart pricing was smart or dumb. My take is that it's not in the same league as Albert Einstein and that publishers will vote with their feet (hence Google's new referral program to try and maintain the publisher base).
(hence Google's new referral program to try and maintain the publisher base).
or maybe grow the current publisher base? I've read a post on here about a publisher waiting for his $100 from YPN before he(she?) dumps them, I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.
or maybe grow the current publisher base?
You reckon it took them a few years to realise they could grow by paying a referral fee? The timing screams "competitive pressures".
The good news is that today there is no real "other side". You can rotate between YPN, Chitika and Adsense and see what's best for your site. I like that. It makes it easier for the best program to "win".
The timing screams "competitive pressures".
Google has had a cash cow with Adense for a long time but it has been inevitable that others would develop similar programs and cut into their market share.
The mystery to me is what in the world took the competition so long? It's not like anybody had to get nuclear power plants built and online in order to compete in the contextual ad market.
Have you researched this at all? You're usually real sharp and not big on buying into anybody's PR.
In this case you're speaking generalities. I suspect once you've done some research you'd be saying different things. Just curious, although it's not a big deal either way.
If it works for you I can understand you being OK with SP. But even your case makes me ask questions. My sense of it is that you are a quality type person. Building quality sites, not spam type. Same here. So I would think your site, my site and other quality sites should not have gotten "hit" by SP back when. We should have been rewarded.
To those of you, and you know who you are: do you even believe in objectivity? Is G--gle really infallible?
To those of you, and you know who you are: do you even believe in objectivity?
Do you? How many publishers who complain about smart pricing (or even the idea of smart pricing) are doing so for reasons other than their own immediate self-interest?
Fact is, advertisers aren't going to pay full retail for clicks that are unlikely to convert. Without smart pricing, the AdSense network would need to be far smaller than it currently is, and whole categories of content would have to be eliminated. (The only alternative would be to have advertisers bid by site--i.e., to have site-targeted CPC ads, not just site-targeted CPM ads. That would be impractical, and it would almost certainly leave most mom-and-pop publishers with no AdSense ads at all.)
If it was just about self interest that would be one thing. But we're complaining about substantive things. Like ridding the system of MFAs, which benefit the advertiser too.
As an advertiser I only have their word I'm getting a discount. As with adsense, there are many daily variables, and I can't see any real difference between content and search.
Like apparently 90%+ of advertisers I don't use conversion tracking. In my case there are no applicable options. I'd *like* to use it, but they don't offer me the only option I want. The ONLY thing that will tell Google if the ads have worked for me is conversion tracking, and as I don't use it, it's just pure guesswork on Google's part. They aren't telling me that they will discount my content clicks if I use conversion tracking, and I suspect if I did use it, there wouldn't be any change.
So as an advertiser it's a nice idea but I'm not sure it's happening.
As a publisher, my experience is like everybody elses - make changes for the good and it works to cap your income. It's happened so many times in the past, and to so many others that it's not coincidence.
My latest change? Jagger promotes my site to number 1. It was at number 3, but since the update I have had an increase in traffic and an increase in clicks. CTR is only slightly up.
I know that some will say that I may be maxing out the advertisers budgets, and this may be part of it, but the change I see when graphing the data is a repeat of past patterns. I think smart pricing is working only to maximise google's profit at my expense.
I don't think maxing out is happening - we aren't talking UPS club figures. The changes I see would be well within modest advertiser budgets.
I could believe my clicks were of poor value if my site was on page 10 of a search on my keywords, and it had only mediocre content. A couple of my sites I would be happy to accept that argument on. However, my main site has always been in the top 3 of Google since starting adsense, is a renowned authority on the topic and of high quality content. Something I believe Jagger has used to place me at the top.
Re the pattern:-
I have a graph that looks at certain statistics. It's a weekly graph and I've scaled the data sets so that the lines run as close together as possible to see changes. It's always been the case that small changes in clicks and overall earnings will roughly follow each other. Get a medium to large change in clicks and the graph of earnings starts to fall back. When the clicks come down again, smart pricing then gives you another whack as it deems you less profitable than before. It takes a couple of weeks to recover.
Based on the above, it's my belief that smart pricing hates change, so I try to make any changes gradual. Hovever, with the sudden increase since Jagger's promotion I can't change the fact that the clicks have gone up - nor do I see any reason why I should. Smart pricing should take into account that Google have changed my page ranking and not discount, but they haven't done that. They have simply increased their share of the profits.
Also based on the above, it's my belief that smart pricing does indeed work to effectively cap your earnings by increasing it's share in the profits when you get an increase in visitors clicking. It then kicks you by decreasing your share a seconf time when the visitor spike is over.
You've figured it out with your stats presented here David. So I guess we the people have a pretty clear picture. And Google doesn't seem to care.
They will probably respond as YPN and Chitika get better. I for one will never return to Google with the vigor I started with the program. Even if people report a major correction.
Normally I'd have been a loyal Google partner for life, but don't think they've been honest enough or decent enough to merit the loyalty. If I make 5-10% less from YPN, I'll stick with them if all else remains the same. I don't have the time or inclination for Google's mind games.
