Forum Moderators: martinibuster
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Maybe if there is too much text the mediabot gets confused.
So its annoying - the quality page earns nothing and the rubbish page 11% clickthrough and epcm of over 30$.
Sorry - that's the way it goes! Most of my income is from the main index page of my site. That simply contains a few paragraphs about the site, and the content visitors will find - no "content" as such. The pages where there is a lot of content that I have spent hour researching and writing very often do badly DESPITE very well targeted ads. I don't put ads on a lot of pages for that reason - historically they don't work. I think that the amount and quality of the content has a bearing on clicks. Visitors that are there to read the page probably won't click on ads it seems to me.
The catch is that such sites usually cannot get free traffic in any quantities (because they suck). Some do, you just need to look at Google's SERPs to see that, but the vast majority of them get just a trickle.
I have the same experience.
Pages with poor content get high CTR and V. High CPM .
Main website draws visitors through Search engines. Still my site is not very highly ranked so I have to use adwords. My poor content pages pay for my advertising cost in promoting my main website.
Maybe not very ethical but seems to work.
AdSense is a business, not a reward for building a good site.
You were right (unfortunately), although the opposite is true for the founding principles of the program.
Do you know what direct mailers do? They create 3-5 different versions of the same package and test it in small samples (5000 addresses). When they find out which one worked best, they send it out to the entire mailing list.
IMHO the opposite is the truth when it comes to quality web pages!
There's a huge difference between direct mail and the web however the the advertiser's response reactions should be similar when seeing a successful campaign.
What is the main difference?
Quite simply direct mail depends upon the receiver being prompted into action to satisfy the perceived desire created by the copywriter whereas quality pages keep the visitors interested and whom then probably have no interest in clicking an ad when leaving since their desire has been quenched, however relatively poor pages may find the visitor trying to exit as soon as possible through a relevant ad to source their information.
The act is trying to get the right balance of informing enough but the visitor wanting more hopefully through relevant ads.
Quite often irrelevant ads appear because there is so much information on a good page that it really cannot decide which ads to display therefore specifically ensure that your titlebar, metatag and keyword description refelct accurately the main elements of your page as well as any h1, h2 tags etc.
I hope this helps generically however your mileage may vary!
we are talking about different things. Entirely different things, in fact.
But the OP is asking why does his "poor" content page earn more than his "quality" content page.
I'm trying to point the OP in the right direction as to:
1. Why his ads on the quality page are not relevant.
2. Why his poor page may do much better in comparison.
Sure, there are a lot of great "quality content" sites that keep their owners stuck in poverty.
Unfortunately, for many sites, I could not agree more.
If you find out that certain "lower quality" pages deliver more AdSense clicks and more revenue, you should stick to that format. It's about money.
And I would venture THAT is nearly the most impossible kind of pages/sites to construct! It would take a great deal of expertise and knowledge to get that fine balance between poor and quality pages and then, THEN Google come along with a new algo and blows it out of the water since the new algo decides that it is not relevant enough...
I have not seen the OP's site however I would have thought that more relevant targeting would not be that difficult, after all, Adsense does allow one to do this with the addition of some code and a five minute search through the Adsense help would resolve that.
I've never had to do it however anyone with that experience should jump in now and advise exactly how to do so:-)
If you don't accept this system you are free to devise other means to support your efforts to build your website.
I think it is OK to have more than one goal in mind when building a web site.
That's an interesting opinion simply because many of us who have successful relevant Adsense sites for our niche widgets probably did not build them with anything other in mind than providing the best information on the Net and maybe trying to promote them thrrough our various trade associations etc.
Mine were, and still are, built to provide global trade information sources and technical data. I've been quite amazed with the addition of Adsense and its success over the past couple of years or so.
A few years ago hardly any of us could monetise our sites since there was no such vehicle as Adsense to use, now newer publishers are perhaps building their sites with Adsense more in mind than the quality which the early sites have.
It's a very fine line to tread:
if your ads support the production of your content you have what is known as a "going concern" instead of an expensive hobby.
Absolutely, however how many sites have fallen from grace during a Google algo update? Just check the search forum out for the squealing that goes on there!
If your intention on a page is to trick the visitor you've crossed the line,
However that line varies for everyone depending whether one is an expert or a novice trying to source that specific information. Horses for course and all that...
but if some percentage of your visitors find the ads more inviting than your content you've developed a sustainable model, buy yourself a drink and celebrate.
Yep, I'm up for that one! Whose round is it? :-)
But the OP is asking why does his "poor" content page earn more than his "quality" content page.
It's probably a combination of topic and audience.
As for the comment that direct mail can outpull fancy Madison Avenue campaigns, that isn't because of the direct mail campaign's bare-bones aesthetic quality; it's because direct mail is specifically designed to generate responses (hence the term "direct-response") as opposed to establishing brand awareness, and the audience for direct mail is generally targeted to a greater degree than most TV commercials, newspaper ads, etc. are. It's also worth noting that some direct mail has extremely high production values: Direct-mail brochures for luxury cruise lines, for example, tend to have a more upscale look and feel than glossy travel magazines do.
For what it's worth, most pages on my travel-planning site have a common look and feel, and I doubt if there's any substantive difference in "quality" from one page to the next. Yet some pages earn far more money than other pages do. Why? Because of their topics and who's looking at them. If I write a review of a $700-a-day cruise, it's going to attract a higher economic class of reader (and higher-bidding ads) than an article for student travelers or hitchhikers.
Once I began running the AdSense program I adjusted to the reality that it presented. It has proven sustainable but the site looks different now. :)
Yes, I have suffered greatly at times from the vagaries of Google's algorithm having been banned for 54 days for reasons I have yet to determine. With a little searching you will find many of my squeals from July 29, '05 to Sept. 22 on this board and others. I have expressed many strong opinions about Google's methodolgy but it is the water we must swim in today.
That's the point I made, or thought I had done so, in message 10:-)
EFV - Good points
Yes, I have suffered greatly at times from the vagaries of Google's algorithm having been banned for 54 days for reasons I have yet to determine.
Sorry to hear that, any ideas whatsoever? Perhaps that would make a good new thead except the mods would want it in Search and I don't get there much these days!
Your experience is a lesson for all of us, even the "more experienced", it can happen to anyone at any time for no known immediate reason.
Perhaps the site with lots of quality content is providing enough info to the user that they don't need to go any further by looking elsewhere, whereas with the crappy site with little content, the user doesn't find what they are looking for there and clicks on an ad that might provide them better luck
Exactly so, that's the point of the discussion. But the author of the quality site resents the crappy site because it makes more money with less effort. Life is not fair and this reality degrades the quality of the web generally. I don't see what can be done about that except to compete as best you can. In the end the quality site will prevail but the end is no where in sight.
If I write a review of a $700-a-day cruise, it's going to attract a higher economic class of reader (and higher-bidding ads) than an article for student travelers or hitchhikers.
Right.
Which in turn develops a particular writing/designing tendency.
A better web? Nope, just an old same story - world is made for the rich.
It would be a good addition to Google's search results algo to prefer sites with low Adsense CTR, as they are mostly a proof of good content site where the surfer has no need to go further.
Of course, smart pricing should be adjusted too. ;)
...where the surfer has no need to go further.
I have a feeling that someone already said that.
:)
Of course, smart pricing should be adjusted too. ;)
Perhaps the site with lots of quality content is providing enough info to the user that they don't need to go any further by looking elsewhere, whereas with the crappy site with little content, the user doesn't find what they are looking for there and clicks on an ad that might provide them better luck
For what it's worth, I get some of my highest eCPMs from articles and sections of my site that supply comprehensive, in-depth information on their topics. Why? Because quality content attracts people who are genuinely interested in the topic, and when they've learned what I have to tell them about the topic, they're likely to click on relevant ads--and, just as important, their clicks are more likely to convert for advertisers (which means lower "smart pricing" discounts for advertisers and higher EPCs for me).
The idea that junk content earns more money than quality content is contradicted by CPMs in the offline advertising world, where quality editorial content aimed at desirable audiences will fetch higher CPMs than a local shopping supplement or a third-tier magazine does.
Still, editorial quality is just one factor: As I mentioned earlier, topic and audience (more specically, what the audience is looking for) matter, too. Consider two hypothetical travel sites:
- Site A is a travel-planning site about Elbonia that caters to active travelers.
- Site B is a general travel-narrative site that caters to armchair travelers.
On both sites, an article about Elbonia might attract ads for Elbonia hotels, tour packages, cruises, etc. But Site A will have clickthrough and conversion rates for those ads than Site B does, because its audience is researching how to spend money on Elbonian travel, not reading passively about Elbonia.
(Side note: I can't resist mentioning the guidelines for production companies that The Travel Channel released a few years ago: the guidelines stated, "Our viewers aren't interested in travel, they're interested in watching television." Advertisers have figured that out, and as a result, The Travel Channel has fewer travel-related commercials than you'd expect of a cable channel that's nominally about travel--which just goes to show that topic and target audience have a big effect on advertising revenues.)
Sorry to hear that, any ideas whatsoever? Perhaps that would make a good new thead except the mods would want it in Search...
The idea that junk content earns more money than quality content is contradicted by CPMs in the offline advertising world, where quality editorial content aimed at desirable audiences will fetch higher CPMs than a local shopping supplement or a third-tier magazine does...
The higher CPMs there could easily be driven by the brand-building prestige of being associated with the higher quality content and if there were a way to actually measure the "click-through" offline the model would collapse entirely.
It reminds me of the apocryphal quote attributed to John Wannamaker, "I know half of my ad budget is wasted, I just don't know which half."
if some percentage of your visitors find the ads more inviting than your content you've developed a sustainable model, buy yourself a drink and celebrate.
That may be a "sustainable model," but it's likely to depend almost entirely on search referrals or PPC traffic because of high visitor turnover. IMHO, a better model is to attract visitors who'll come back to your site at every stage of the research and buying cycle, and who'll click on ads because they're interested in buying what advertisers have to offer--not because they find the ads more inviting than your content.
"I know half of my ad budget is wasted, I just don't know which half."
And I was always led to believe it was Henry Ford who'd said something very similar!
There ya go, I learnt something new again today.
And yes, I did check it out:-))
Perhaps the offline advertising world has it wrong, their empires do seem to be fading.
Not really. Magazines and other offline media that can deliver quality targeted audiences continue to do extremely well. For example, CAR AND DRIVER's ad revenues grew nearly 25% in 2005, HOT ROD's revenues grew nearly 39%, and BOATING was up 16%.
The higher CPMs there could easily be driven by the brand-building prestige of being associated with the higher quality content and if there were a way to actually measure the "click-through" offline the model would collapse entirely.
Actually, there's a very simple way to to measure "clickthrough rates" in offline media: Just divide the number of responses by circulation. But it's a mistake to assume that response rates are the sole measure of advertising success. Ads are run for any number of reasons, such as building brand awareness so that--for example--the person who's planning a vacation will go to Expedia.com or the person who's thinking about a new vehicle will test-drive a Ford Explorer.
Direct-response advertising is merely a niche within the advertising industry, which is one reason why AdSense now offers site-targeted CPM ads in addition to contextual ads. And one of the big research firms recently predicted that online display ads are poised for greater growth than text ads are. (I've seen a big increase in display-ad revenues on my own site lately, with most of the ads coming from big-name corporate advertisers.)
...a better model is to attract visitors who'll come back to your site at every stage of the research and buying cycle...
Sorry to burst that bubble but I suspect this is something you'll continue to believe even if I could prove it wrong with hard stats--which I can't of course, so it remains a difference of opinion.
