Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Overall eCPM has increased steadily by around 4 times since the start of last year. Now the eCPM has suddenly dropped 50%.
I've been a believer in blocking MFA, and I've always removed ads from low CTR channels. So far I've tried empyting the competitive ad filter (eCPM dropped through the floor) and putting ads back on poorly performing pages (not much difference as I've got low eCPM anyway).
To explain the problem - CPC has taken a big dive (30%). The number of clicks has fallen by 10%. Traffic has increaded by 20%.
I'd appreciate any ideas.
Lots more real estate (the rise of the MFA sites with thousands of pages on every subject imaginable) so ad space is cheaper.
Users clicking less over time because they are learning to associate adsense with spammy mfa sites.
Advertisers switching off the content network because they too see these mfa sites everywher and they dont like them!
epc is bound to fall and keep falling.
The same thing happened when we were overun with scraper sites last year. They relied on search results. This was cured by algos. Now these people have started not bothering with content at all and using adwords itself and really low bids. mBut lots of different words to still have the traffic.
The number of clicks has fallen by 10%. Traffic has increased by 20%.
Where's that traffic coming from, and what with what purpose are they coming to your site? Are they downloading stuff and leaving? Are they after specific information then leaving? If you have an increase in traffic and it's not converting into clicks, you have to diagnose why.
A 30% drop is common. It's easy to drop 30% of $50/day earnings or less. Harder to do, but not uncommon, on amounts above that.
martinbuster - Traffic is coming from Yahoo mostly, but increasingly Google. Although I did start trying adwords on the second website (tracked on it's own channel so I'm not counting it towards results) about 2 weeks ago.
The adwords traffic is interesting. It's an info site and I serve about 8 pages per unique.
I wouldn't be so worried if the graphs of CPC hadn't been going up so smoothly and then hadn't started going down so smoothly (averaged by week). They look like a mountain range with only 1 mountain. And there is nothing transitory or seasonal about the site. It's something that doesn't depend on the weather or fads.
What do you expect!
Ive seen the "info" sites that buy traffic! They all go straight in the bin. (MFA?)
If you dont sell something directly and your site exists only to be supported by ads then you are part of the problem.
He's been AdWording since two weeks ago, no doubt to shore up traffic from the traffic drop since FEBRUARY.
The two are not related.
But I doubt my adwords indulgence has exhausted the advertisers.
For the MFA comment: the ads are sparse - I'm site building at the moment not money building and I don't want to overdo adsense. But traffic was rising exponentially even before my tiny adwords spend. Traffic isn't the issue. It's mostly CPM.
EDIT> Can't see any MFA in the preview tool either in the main countries. Must be targeting (or advertisers lowering their bids).
I still dont see why if you have a real genuine useful to visitors site you want to waste money on adwords!
If you did advertise on the content network then I would still ban you. Because sending a visitor to another site thats buying traffic to make money is exactly the same merry go round as the ads only mfa sites.
But your ads have most likely not converted as well from your adwords traffic. So maybe smartpricing is hitting you...
Nitrous, you're going to poke someone's eye out with that knee, hehe. ;)
I will repeat with emphasis:
The earnings drop PREDATES his advertising, so it can't be smartpricing triggered by his advertising.
Plus, he is channel tracking his ad spending and click conversion rates and is making 33% for every dollar spent. So it's a good investment.
The reason I asked about the motivations of people visiting your site is because that plays a great deal into CTR and conversions. If people are at your site researching products or looking for DEALS, then if your ads are displaying that, then you've got a great match and you'll end up getting good clicks.
IF your site is informational, like talking about a historical event and your ads are selling History Channel stuff, or WWII memorabilia, then you have to understand the motives for your site visitors and why they are less likely to click, much less to click and buy something.
The other big thing to consider is, is it all possible that your upward trend was an anomaly caused by one or more competitive bidders? This happens more frequently than most people realize.
So what do you do? One angle depends on the focus of your web pages. Are they reviews? Are they shopping related?
Still dont like sites advertising without selling anything but ads! Mutter...
Has he actually got enough traffic/clicks to actually make any kind of assumptions about real trends?
Has he actually got enough traffic/clicks to actually make any kind of assumptions about real trends?
Bingo! Well said (better than I put it). :)
A 30% drop is common. It's easy to drop 30% of $50/day earnings or less. Harder to do, but not uncommon, on amounts above that.
In other words, if you're earning ten bucks a day, and you drop thirty percent, well, that's only three bucks. The percentage swings are going to appear pretty volatile.
Otherwise, as I mentioned in a previous post, you might have to take a hard look at the content and the synergies between it and the advertising.
That's a good point about pre-selling for the advertisers. The site suggests that buying a certain type of product is a good thing to do, but doesn't direct much more than that. That's something I'll work on as it could be of use to visitors. Mind you, that's not something I've altered over the last few months so it's unlikely to account for the change.
A bidding war between advertisers is a strong possibility.
One thing that's occurred to me is I've only really been paying attention to the reasons for the higher earning site's decline. Maybe if I look at the lower earning site in more detail I might see some answers. Or at the very least questions.
I get about 7k and around 600 clicks a day over 15 niche hobby sites. Each site taken alone has violent swings. Added and averaged all of them together are increadibly consistent. Like for two years between 2.7 and 3.9k extremes.
Now individual sites vary by 6 and 7 hundred percent! Its down to advertisers bids, competition, etc. You need big numbers just to rule out the natural variation.
Probably the attitude is keep at it. If traffic keeps on increasing I'll be back to where I was in a few months. Then any increase in CPM will be a bonus. Might look at targetting a bit more towards products too.
if you have a real genuine useful to visitors site you want to waste money on adwords!
What a question to ask in a forum full of people making money off AdSense! I can't believe you actually said: waste money on adwords.
If you have good content, Search engines take their time to index and rank you, not all content advertisers are MFA owners, the same as not all useful sites are at the top of the search engine listings.
If anything, Google should make Adwords simpler and easier to manage for all types of site owners, more of them will counter the flood of new publishers and stabilize our earnings, so let's not turn off Adwords advertises if we know what's good for us.
Oh and before I forget: Burn MFA Burn!
--Hobbs
Buying traffic to get clicks on the same network just gives most of the advertisers budget straight to google.
So are you saying that an advertiser who is bidding ten cents on the content network, and the publisher is receiving a one to three cents, and Google is keeping seven cents?
If that is what you mean, then you are very mistaken.
Google get half and publisher also half.
Actual figs may be wrong (percentage)but its unimportant here.
Now MFA or adsense / content publisher using adwords = same thing because they are an extra layer.
You get say 100 dollars from advertiser budget...
Google keeps half. So real publisher gets 50 dollars too.
Now...
MFA ad pays you bugger all, because otherwise they make no money. Say 10 percent of bid price of a "real" ad.
Now you get 10 percent. MFA gets visitor. Mfa visitor gets 2 click on a proper ad, and pays say a dollar. You got 10 cents.
The mfa gets half dollar. 50/50 split. But then pays most of this back to google. in adwords! The content network, including MFA gets far less of the advertisers budget. Google get more. THIS is why they ignore MFA things.
The MFAS are just feeding googles publisher money back into the system! And leaving bugger all for the genuine publisher.
That ignores the fact that the end user gets pissed off with the merry go round and wont click in future.
And ignores that that advertisers NOW bid lower on the content network because of the mfas than they would have done, they hate them too!
Or they just ignore (switch off) the content network completely as they see it as a mass of scam sites.
Now why are we not actively killing any site that advertises on your pages that does not SELL A REAL PRODUCT OR SERVICE?
WHY FEED THE MIDDLE MEN? if you do its at your own expense!
i think that is a pretty astute observation... now couple it with this:
>>>Traffic is coming from Yahoo mostly, but increasingly Google.<<<
it appears that you need some major seo with google, which could eliminate the need for adwords... sounds like you are maybe in the sandbox? depending on the price, adwords sounds like a good investment at this point in time, look at the traffic you are generating off of it.
i would think that 8 pages per unique off of adwords is about as targeted as you can get, so it can't be hurting your adsense earnings.
wrt mfa's, i have finally started taking the advice of nitrous, and dropped sites like local dot com and nextag dot com... they aren't mfa's per se, but if it has adsense, it should be looked at closely.
i just started it yesterday, earnings are up drastically today, but of course that doesn't mean anything... gotta give it a few weeks.
Actually I'm loosing money on adwords. Pay a dollar get 30 cents back. There are other potential benefits such as increased word of mouth and visibility, and a lot of good questions and ideas from the forum. Of course it could also be a waste of money.
I agree totally agree about MFA. It's interesting to play with adwords - you can pay a crazy low price per click if you are spot on with targeting. It does seem to be a flaw in the system when MFAs are so in favour with GG.
Still trying to figure a good way to turn the tables a little and target their websites with my own low paying ads. It's increased competition for low paying terms that will put them out of business so Nitrous should be thanking me. :)
I deleted my full filter, and started again. From scratch.
Income doubled over the week that I rebuilt the list. From around 72 av daily to 135 foy the last week solid.
Now according to the tool I have no mfas showing in Canada, US and US. The tool works just like it says on the tin. Contrary to David_UK postings! I have never seen a banned ad reapear. It shows the most likely statistically, ads to show generally in each country.
Thats not exactly the same as the ads shown in your specific region. This is where he is confused I think. To see those you need to use the "auto" setting. THAT one is regional. But you whack the greatest number of moles with the google supplied preview tool. We are dealing in ones and zeros here - it does not forget you blocked stuff! That only happens if you get the URL wrong or they make a new domain to get past all the people filtering them.
So because the filter is so small I am going to have to waste about 3/ or 4 days deleting the filter every month and rebuilding it... Because the mfas are adding new urls to get over the blocked ones monthly.
