Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Unfortunately, what you suggest is not feasible. Most AdSense advertisers don't have affiliate programs, therefore AdSense publishers can't try them. However there are plenty of affiliates who use AdSense network to advertise. Clearly that indicates that they make from affiliates more money than they spend on ads (or the won't be in business for long), which means that you can replace underperforming ads with affiliate links. The only problem here is that you really have to know your market and some sites have the wrong target audience for products you try to sell.
But then again if you have the resources available to build multiple sites i.e. David build me a blog about DZCap then go for it....
If smart pricing is really determined by sales conversion ratios, wouldn't it make more sense to replace AdSense with a similar unit that used affiliate links to the same advertisers who are advertising on your site? As long as the product or service had a good commission, it seems like you could make more money than the low payouts G is currently giving. It doesn't have to be from the same advertisers, but it could be from the same genre, etc.. This also assumes the affiliate commissions are higher than AdSense commissions.
Spot on.....the aff products must be very content relevant though, for such approach to produce good results. Hence the reason why i am using various CB data feeds (the ones with content relevancy)on some of my sites ....I’m thinking, why promote a few cents per click ads when i can promote at the same spot products that pay up to 60% in commission per sale. Why turn a viewer into someone else’s referral when that same referral can be mine.
PM me if you want some scripts names...
[edited by: Max_M at 2:02 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2005]
I do well with affiliate programs for hotel booking, car rentals, etc., and in fact I earn more from affiliate commissions than I do from AdSense. But let's say that I write a review of a barge cruise in Elbonia: There may not be a good affiliate program that sells Elbonian barge cruises, and even if there is, it may not be worth joining such a program just because I've written an article on the topic. That's where AdSense comes in: It will serve ads for travel agents who sell Elbonian barge cruises, and I'll make money from pages that otherwise wouldn't produce direct revenues.
Also, in some sectors (such as mine), AdSense works well because it generates income when users are in the preplanning stages but aren't necessarily ready to buy. In the doldrums of late November and December, my travel-related affiliate sales slow considerably, but AdSense earnings remain surprisingly decent because people are looking even if they aren't yet booking. This helps to generate cash flow in months when affiliate earnings are down.
Moral: Affiliate sales and AdSense can complement each other nicely. And a caveat: If you're being hurt by smart pricing, don't assume that you'll do any better with affiliate sales, because it's unlikely that you'd be hurt by smart pricing if your readers were in a buying frame of mind.
[edited by: engine at 9:03 pm (utc) on Nov. 16, 2005]
I have 15 sites. 3 main ones. Total 3 to 4 thousand daily page views. About 2.5 to 3.5k dollars monthly.
Mostly unchanged content in 2 years. I was in bed ill for 11 months - no computer access... The click through rate has varied over all sites over time. On avarege has always been say "teens". Now EPC has gradually improved over time. ECPM has also improved over time. Advertisers like my pages! And they convert well obviously. No smart pricing I can detect here?
The thing is my sites are on vastly different topics. But at least the top three are unique in that the answers found there are not available in any book or website. I decided to publish for the web in place of writing books.
Real good genuine unique content always pays. Its always valuable. Thats why I average about 25c to 45 cents per click. And always did do.
If you are getting less as time goes on it seems that your content isnt as useful/interesting/unique as you thought?
Well thats my thoughts. Seems to me smart pricing works fine! Of course it could be me tomorrow! But I doubt it.
It seems smart pricing really does work to the advantage of genuine publishers with something to actually say. The sort of sites that people naturally link to and spend time on. Numbers of pages, numbers of visitors is all pretty uniportant. Conversion rate and the QUALITY of targeted visitor is.
Autogenerated sites with thousands of pages, scraped newsgroup content, directories, etc are all going to be hit by smart pricing because the visitor just clicks an ad to escape! They never wanted to buy.
Review sites if done really well can work though. But not the hundreds I come across that think a review is one paragraph saying the same as 35 other sites taken from the manufacturers pages... I mean a hand written 5 page total test and evaluation type thing! like say dpreview with com on it... (I have no affiliation!)
Also, in some sectors (such as mine), AdSense works well because it generates income when users are in the preplanning stages but aren't necessarily ready to buy. In the doldrums of late November and December, my travel-related affiliate sales slow considerably, but AdSense earnings remain surprisingly decent because people are looking even if they aren't yet booking. This helps to generate cash flow in months when affiliate earnings are down.
This in theory should have reduced your pay per click considerably as a result of smart pricing. My reasoning, If the viewers are not buying via your affiliate links, chances are they are not buying after clicking your adsense ads as well. As you said, they are just preplanning.
If your pay per click hasn’t changed much during slow times then it is yet just another indication that smart pricing has nothing to do with conversions at the merchant end. Smart pricing is a webmasters shafting tool designed to reduce ad costs at the advertisers end, get advertisers to use cpm ads and consequently spend more money per month with adwords while reaching a much larger audience for much less. All at the expense of webmaster’s ad space.
If anything, Smart pricing is as random as random can be. I see this phenomenon across multiple channels. Channels that pay $1-$3 per/c one day, $0.1-$.04 the next and vice versa.
Google can continue going around in circles, smoke screen and sugar coat whatever smart pricing really is. It walks like a duck and sound like a duck....must be a duck.
It is really a means of punishing people who deliver unqualified traffic and probably deliver near zero conversion ratios.
If clicks are converting at 4% normally, and your site is at 3% you might not get hit hard by smart pricing. It is the guy who is delivering .1% conversions who is getting hard.
That is why you have to be careful before you get too caried away "optimizing" your ad position and display. When you cross the line between enticing and trickery, you potentially hurt yourself when they don't deliver.
If your pay per click hasn’t changed much during slow times then it is yet just another indication that smart pricing has nothing to do with conversions at the merchant end.
No, because "conversion" can be defined by the advertiser to mean asking for information, registering for a newsletter, downloading a demo, or any other action that the advertiser considers to be valuable. Google explains this at:
[adwords.google.com...]
Let's say that you're a travel agent who sells luxury houseboat cruises in Widgetonia. Your purpose in advertising is to obtain leads that can be developed into sales. For you, a "conversion" isn't an e-commerce transaction, because you don't have an e-commerce business. You simply want the reader to ask for a fare quote or to be added to your mailing list. That's why you advertise in November for a Widgetonian houseboat-cruising season that doesn't begin until May. And that's why you're delighted when a reader of a travel or cruising site clicks through and converts from a clicker into a lead.
No, because "conversion" can be defined by the advertiser to mean asking for information, registering for a newsletter, downloading a demo, or any other action that the advertiser considers to be valuable.
EFV, i think you are missing my point. Yes i do understand your point, conversions can mean many things....a newsletter registration for example.
Question asked why the same model does not apply to all merchant. For example, one of my sites is stock market related and many of the adsense ads lead to free info packs and newsletter registrations (just the same as in your example). The user may not have bought something but i have no doubt that a good percentage turned into pre-registrations and newsletter subscription leads. I'm also sure that most of the advertisers in question considered such action as conversion and have the tracking code placed over the software download or newsletter subscription thank-you pages.
I guess what i am trying to say here is that conversion IS conversion regardless of the actual action taken at the merchant site. Just as there are newsletter subscription and pre-registrations in the travel industry, there are newsletter subscriptions, enquires and pre-registrations in other industries and i have no doubt that they are tracked by the merchants as conversions to the same degree.
I'm still not convinced smartpricing has anything to do with conversions. IMO, it is a random thing striking at will and is designed to enable (almost) free rides.
I'm still not convinced smartpricing has anything to do with conversions. IMO, it is a random thing striking at will and is designed to enable (almost) free rides.
You're welcome to believe that, but if you do, then you have to assume that Google was lying when it explained smart pricing:
[adwords.google.com...]
You're welcome to believe that, but if you do, then you have to assume that Google was lying when it explained smart pricing:[adwords.google.com...]
Thanks for pointing out this page. It is a promo page designed for adwords advertisers. Things are much more clear to me now.
Reading between the lines heres what is see:
Smart pricing is probably determined by the following factors:
1) whether the ad clicked is a spot on targeted ad (highly relevant to the page content) or was it simply a site wide ad (if the later, smartpricing kicks and reduces the click pay).
2) The sources of traffic....viewer geo location in particular, and the relevancy of the ad to viewer location (googles way of displaying more unused inventory for a cheaper price.)
3) Possibly looking into referring page and looking into keywords in the referring URL....
4) Site rank and daily traffic trends....the more viewers the more possible clicks...webmaster will still be happy with less per click, daily taking hasn’t changed much.
5) Last but not least, conversion history (network wide) with regards to the viewer geo location is being added to the mix.
IMO, the above mentioned probably makes the bulk of smart pricing..... a smart way of sugar coating a bitter pill.
[edited by: Max_M at 5:26 am (utc) on Nov. 17, 2005]
f anything, Smart pricing is as random as random can be. I see this phenomenon across multiple channels. Channels that pay $1-$3 per/c one day, $0.1-$.04 the next and vice versa.
Max_M, Why do you assume that has anything to do with smart pricing? I see that too. That's visitors clicking on different ads.
[edit] Having now seen your new post, I can see where different click values could be due to different visitors being rated differently by Smart Pricing. As publishers, we tend to focus on our sites, and assume it's something about our sites that Smart Pricing assesses.
But if diiferent visitors are judged to be of different value...
Not sure it changes what I'm doing, but it's worth thinking about.
Thanks for your thoughts.
I see click values that vary by a factor of 100, but the average for the site has stayed very stable over the past two years, moving up and down only slowly.
I experienced the same thing... the average is more or less the same at the end of the day. The only thing that concern me most though is the lack of growth. Lately, regardless of the amount of traffic, number of ad panels daily clicks etc....the end of day is more or less the same (within 10%). Here is something even funnier, I removed ad panels from many pages recently, pages that are not performing well and guess what. The daily taking is still the same. Makes you wounder what really is going on.
Do you see the problem?
Some people are skeptical because there are some guys here that have MFAs and pretend to be clean and some may complain pretty loudly.
But if you read carefully, what started the pushback was the revelation that smart pricing was applied on an account basis. The moderator of this forum posted this publicly on her blog and it seems to have been pretty much confirmed. From there we can only speculate to what degree this is an issue and why.
Some people who should know better seem to insist that smart pricing is both good, effective and done in good faith.
What I'd like to know from these people is why they think applying smart pricing on an account basis makes any sense whatsoever.
I've got a handful of sites on various topics. Why should a site about fish be combined with a site about spaghetti and further combined with a site about soccer and affect a business site about the stock market? Either you need to challenge Jenstar's contention about the facts she posted or you need to defend how mixing the above sites serve the advertiser. To me the whole concept looks retarded unless it's used an excuse for Google to skim extra from both sides while doing some marketing to brainwash advertisers on the side.
But in the final analysis it wouldnt make a difference to your bottom line anyway since the average accross all your sites would still bring you the same money overall.
The same is probably true with adwords side since he would pay more per click on some sites/accounts than it was worth but less on others. Net result same costs.
So I cant see what difference it would make overall. Other than wider differences in cpc for both sides, and even less stability. The only difference is that someones account with thousands of mfa sites would get less per click on average than someone with genuine content on a much fewer pages. And thats how it should be.
So I cant see what difference it would make overall. Other than wider differences in cpc for both sides, and even less stability. The only difference is that someones account with thousands of mfa sites would get less per click on average than someone with genuine content on a much fewer pages. And thats how it should be.
No this NOT how it should be. MFA sites should be regulated and checked by the adsense team. Ads over MFA and scrapers should not be allowed. More quality control and enforcement, that’s how it should really be. Will save google a lot of algo spam problems in the process too.
BTW, I forgot to add a very important factor to my points above.
5) The uniquenes of an ip is also a very important factor in the formula. I noticed this first hand on a couple of forums I run. They used to produce very poor results. Tons of impressions and very low EPC. About a month ago I started displaying the ads to guests only. Registered users (logged in users, the ones creating the bulk of impressions) don’t get to see the ads. Daily income from the forum went up 15 folds since I incorporated the change. My conclusion, smart pricing likes uniqe viewers better.
Me> I agree but its too labour intensive. And they just automate everything!
>>> ads over MFA and scrapers should not be allowed. More quality control and enforcement, that’s how it should really be.
Me> But they ARE allowed! They are still of SOME value to the advertiser (but far less). So the smart pricing pays the scraper / mfa less! And myself with real pages more...
> Will save google a lot of algo spam problems in the process too.
me> But far too labour intensive because pages are changed and updated too fast.
there are some guys here that have MFAs and pretend to be clean and some may complain pretty loudly.
Yes, just as we've had any number of "innocent" AdSense ejectees who have turned out to be guilty.
But if you read carefully, what started the pushback was the revelation that smart pricing was applied on an account basis.
I don't think so. People have been complaining about smart pricing all along. I think what really happened is that a few people seized the issue and wouldn't let it go.
Some people who should know better seem to insist that smart pricing is both good, effective and done in good faith. What I'd like to know from these people is why they think applying smart pricing on an account basis makes any sense whatsoever.
Simple. It gives the scrapers, scammers, and push-up-the-CTR-at-any-cost crowd an incentive to behave.
After Smart Pricing was introduced and before I made any real changes, earnings bottomed out in Sept. 04 at $150 for the month. I expect to earn close to $800 for November. Not a huge amount of money but worth it to me. (And traffic has gone up only slightly).
To all of you bothered by smart pricing, don't just be angry about it. It's not entirely random. You either need to find a way to improve your situation by carefully looking at your site, your visitors, your channels. Or if that doesn't work, try a different company or direct ads. AdSense isn't for everyone....
