Major changes to AdSense

Pricing structure and ad relevance

[markus007]

Unless adsense is sending out a april fools joke, what do people think of the changes? Every site has a unique pricing model?

For example, a click on an ad for digital cameras on a web page about photography tips may be worth less than a click on the same ad appearing next to a review of digital cameras.

[edited by: markus007 at 8:08 pm (utc) on April 1, 2004]

[europeforvisitors]

But their "Targeted Ads" were never all that targeted, except on key nav pages. You should see some of the crap their "intelligent placement" comes up with on a page who's primary content is a short story.

Some pages (and sites) just may not lend themselves to AdSense ads. A short story or novel would be a good case in point: How can you expect keywords in the story to translate into targeted ads that result in clicks and (just as important) in conversions for the advertiser? If the story is about Captain Ahab and the White Whale, what kinds of ads can you expect to see--ads for whale meat, whaleboats, and harpoons? And how many Melville readers are likely to be in the market for those products? There may be ways to earn revenues from fiction, but AdSense is unlikely to be the right tool for the job.

[icedowl]

Today is quite dismal - everything is on a sharp downward spiral except for impressions which are at a normal level for this time of day. The ads being shown are somewhat related to my content, though they're very generic and the same ads are being shown repeatedly throughout my site. I'd previously had ads shown that were more closely targetted to my content and a wider variety of them.

Yesterday was strange. All the clicks that were recorded were prior to 2:30pm PST, absolutely none after that time. I'd only had 1/3 of the day's traffic by that time of day. Puzzled.

[anxvariety]

Edited.. I probably shouldn't talk about my EPC direction. Why can't we remove our posts on this forum?

[grelmar]

What I EXPECT is the kind of ads I get on my key nav pages. Ads to writer resources, other fiction sites, sites that sell e-books and regular print fiction.

And it just isn't too much to ask. All the info nedded for AdSense to figure that out is on every page, highlighted links, bold text, key phrases, decent titles in the html <title> section.

But NOOOO! Google just thinks I'm spamming them, because the Title of the story itself is "Full Service", so I get ads for fuel wholesalers.

Death to google. Until they figure out that 90%-99% of people do their meta tags according to what's really important about their page, and use their page scanning algorythms just to verify this, and not as the primary means of classification, Google will continue to blow goats.

IMHO

[Sharper]

I have a bunch of "review" sites on various topics. So far, indications are that using the word review on every page (since the page contain reviews) isn't that great with the new setup. Both EPC and CTR are down some since yesterday on statistically significant numbers of impressions.

Of course, as an Adwords advertiser, I got an email today from Google emphasizing home much less I'd have to pay for content ads now, so I'm guessing that lower CPC to advertiser equals lower EPC for publisher. That was supposed to be offset by higher CTR for publisher, but the new targeting doesn't seem to be any better than the old, at least on my sites.

[anxvariety]

Curious if anyone with the word 'User' more than a few times on the page has noticed an increase in their EPC?

[jabberwookie]

My last two Adsense days have completely sucked. I've been an Adsense user since almost day 1 -- June 23, 2003 -- and today marks a sad day.

It may be time for me to look for other alternatives.

[TonysDesigns]

Yep, me also. Receiving around 6,000 impressions daily on many sites. My CPC has gone down to NIL. Almost 1/5 of what we are used to. This is gone on for 2 days straight now. Hopefully Google can get us back on track.

Has anyone emailed them about and and received a response back explaining?

HELP

[markus007]

I also run adwords, i'm getting clicks from content ads for 4 cents now...

[jabberwookie]

I've been doing 85,000 impressions across many sites with different areas of content (real content - not directory bs) and seen a 45% drop the past two days -- EPC and CTR both down.