Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Smart pricing is killing me. I have ads from advertisers that bid several dollars for the keywords that triggers the ads on my pages. However, we only get paid 2-3 cents per click for those ads. Would adding those pages to another domain help? Or is smart pricing done on an account level, and not on the domain level?
I have ads from advertisers that bid several dollars
Really? You talked to the advertiser, and that's what they're actually paying on average on the content network? Most AdWords advertisers are slow to reveal what they're paying to anyone; it's usually not as much as any "bid tool" will wild-ass guess for you, and it's invariably less than they pay for the same word on the Search network.
Smart pricing is killing me.
Could be. But if you ain't talking directly to the advertiser, you probably don't have as good an idea of what they're paying as you think you do.
or not ;-)
If you are using a keyword tool to tell you what the ad is paying, and that's all you've ever got per click then I'm sorry to say that they aren't exactly accurate, and have falsely led you to believe you would get that for the keywords on Adsense.
One of my domain, recently, increased EPC 5X,
while all other sites heavily smartpriced.
I think very, very few advertisers are prepared to pay several dollars per click on the content network. And if there is a way to know what individual Adwords advertisers are bidding I would be very much interested in some more info about that.
I guess you saw some maximum bids (probably for search, perhaps not for content) on some bid tool (like the one from Overture), and perhaps now you think that this maximum bid is what they are supposed to pay you per click. If that is what is going on, you are completely on the wrong track.
It's like thinking that if you buy a lottery ticket, you are supposed to win a million dollar everytime because that's the maximum payout.
This perhaps has nothing to do with smart pricing...
Anyone else have an idea if smart pricing is done on a domain or account level (or both)?
Thanks!
Smartprice isn't the only reason why your page may pay so low. There may be negative keywords that repel high paying ads. You may have too many ads on the page. There may not be much high paying competition (bids are automatically reduced to 1c plus the next lowest bid) etc..
Now photo200 has had an experience that looks like it may now be domain level.
Ideally it would be page level.
It would be nice to know. I always thought doing it by account level has made a lot of people take ads off their low preforming pages. Yet it seems like AdSense would like to have more ad space on publisher sites.
I hope AdSense adviser will pop in and update us.
A while back it was made very clear to us that smartpricing is done on the account level
I don't think it was ever said that smartprice was only done on an account level. The Adsense website makes it clear that it is done on a page basis also. Smartprice has lots of factors.
A while back it was made very clear to us that smartpricing is done on the account level
Could you furnish a link to support that?
Google "Smart pricing and your Adsense account" including the quotes and pick the first link. Bear in mind that this is a 3rd hand report.
My stats strongly suggest to me it is done on both a page and an account basis.
Could you furnish a link to support that?
I'm not Annej, but I do recall that JenStar (a former moderator here) was the person who said Google had told her that smart pricing was done at the account level. You should be able to find the thread if you don't want to take our word for it.
Also, as has already been pointed out, smart pricing doesn't necessarily occur only at the account leve. When smart pricing was introduced, Google used examples of different type of content that could be expected to convert at different rates (e.g., a camera review vs. a page of photo tips).
Common sense would suggest that the smart-pricing algorithm looks at multiple factors. Also, smart pricing may be only part of the compensation picture. The percentage payout may vary from site to site, too, based on "signals of quality" (a Google Search term), how much revenue a site generates for Google, and so on. Finally, there may be only so many high-value clicks available for any given keyword on any given day, simply because Google may want to spread inventory around for the good of the network and advertisers.
But then changes may have been made since then.
So we have one Adsense staffer commenting to one publisher to support the whole idea that SP is account wide. That's not really enough solid info to say with any confidence that SP is account wide, no matter how many times the single comment is repeated here or elsewhere.
We aren't supposed to post blog links here, but you can find the post on the official "Inside Adsense" blog that was posted a couple days after the WW thread above was posted.
Nowhere in the Adsense response do they indicate one way or the other if SP is account wide.
I suppose it might be account wide, or might not be, but Adsense is apparently not saying. At least as far as I have seen.
The timeline for the original posts goes like this:
10/25/05 - WW thread first appears
(title: Google called me today [webmasterworld.com])
10/25/05 - Jenstars blog thread is posted
(title: One poorly converting site can "smart price" an entire AdSense account)
10/28/05 - Adsense response appears on the Adsense blog.
(title: A look inside Google AdSense The facts about smart pricing).
If anyone can direct us to an official Adsense or Google comment or page saying Smart Pricing is account wide this would be a good time to do so.
So we have one Adsense staffer commenting to one publisher to support the whole idea that SP is account wide. That's not really enough solid info to say with any confidence that SP is account wide, no matter how many times the single comment is repeated here or elsewhere.
Again, smart pricing is unlikely to be as simple as many people here seem to think it is. Google has stated officially that smart pricing involves many different factors, so--if there is an "account-wide" factor--it's just one factor. It's not even likely to be the most important factor, to judge from Google's official statements about how smart pricing works.
Instead of agonizing over things they can't know or control, publishers should put their energies into things they can control, such as creating content that attracts desirable audiences whose clicks are likely to convert for advertisers.
I agree that SP might have some account wide aspects or impact, the keyword there is might.
I just don't agree that it's a proven or documented fact. And I think we ought to be careful about sounding like it is a proven or documented fact.
I'd be glad to be proven wrong on this whole thing.
In the meantime I'll work on the assumption that Smart Pricing works primarily on a per-ad, per-page, maybe even per-site, and possibly even per-account basis on some limited degree, in that descending order. But that's just an assumption.
Others can believe what they like.
Smart pricing is killing me. I have ads from advertisers that bid several dollars for the keywords that triggers the ads on my pages. However, we only get paid 2-3 cents per click for those ads.
I still don't understand why you think you are being smartpriced. As several posters have pointed out, there could be many reasons for getting 'low paying' clicks.
Did you used to get several $ per click and have now slumped to several c per click? If so, then you are being smart priced.
OR your advertisers just decided to bid separately for content network and switched to $0.05 bids. No reason why this kind of change needs to be part of a mystery algorithm, plenty of different business decisions on the part of advertisers can dramatically impact a publishers earnings.
It does not mean, naturally, that other pages are not taken into account in less direct (implicit) way.
Vadim.
