Forum Moderators: martinibuster
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]
Explain that!
First off, the ads you see aren't necessarily the same ads that your visitors see, due to geo-location. When you visit your site, you might still see the same ads, but perhaps a significant section of your visitors are seeing something different, something with a lower EPC.
Statements like "Most publishers are seing a decline" can not be supported. The best that can be said is that most publishers posting in this thread have reported a decline. Surely we don't believe that the participants in the thread encompass the entire Adsense publisher population, and that all publishers have reported in.
Thirdly, these changes went into effect on April 1st, the beginning of a month and the beginning of a quarter, two factors that could have a significant impact on advertiser spending. In other words, revenue changes and epc changes might have nothing to do with this change.
Fourthly, there isn't enough information being shared by publishers to enable us to draw any significant conclusions. Are the folks seeing a drop in revenue running Adsense on 1 site, 10, 300? Are they using channels or other tracking scripts to identify revenue and ctr on a per domain basis? What are the traffic levels? Is the variation in epc and epm within the normal range for the site?
Fifthly, the time period has been too short to extrapolate much of anything.
I run Adsense on six sites. The majority of the clicks and revenue come from one of those sites. I use both channels and a private tracking script.
On April 1st and 2nd, the distribution of clicks and impressions among my sites was normal. Revenue was kinda low on April 1st, and on the high end on April 2nd. Both days were well within normal the normal earnings per day range for me (neither was unusually high or low). EPM on the 2nd was phenominal, but I can't really draw any conclusions from that as it was only one day.
I don't see how I could be able to identify any real trends in less than a month, and frankly, real comparison is impossible since I can't compare to the same time period last year. Since this is the first year, I'm really just collecting baseline data. Only in the second year will I be able to draw any meaningful conclusions about what is "normal" for any given time period.
First, waiting for a year of data to make a business decision appears real slow to me. But maybe it's just me.
Second, if lots of people suddenly report earning slashes of up to 70%, I highly doubt this has nothing to do with the letter Adsense sent us all about the changes.
EPC and/or EPM dropping because of advertiser pool fluctuations is all fine and dandy, but as far as I can judge, this has definitely little to do with it.
As far as I'm concerned, Adsense is still the best ad network out there for sites that don't have 50M+ daily impressions, but the profitability of Adsense to me is getting very close to a point where I start actively looking for a regular banner ad alternative.
The folks talking about 'too early' to identify trends sound like yer classic number crunchers. Trend is, that most of the publishers here are some of the more knowledgable and experienced.. and many are reporting a 70-80% decline in EPC with the same amount of traffic and CTR..
I have a year of data to compare today and yesterday too.. it's very clear what's happening.
I use a clicktracker as well, approx the same number of clicks, same ads.. only thing different is the payout!
Where's dogboy!? :)
I have a year of data to compare today and yesterday too.. it's very clear what's happening.
Just out of curiosity, where did you get your data for April, May, and early June of last year, before AdSense launched? :-)
I said that there is no way to know whether or not fluctuations beginning April 1st are normal for this quarter and season without being able to compare to the same time period last year or the year before.
[edited by: varya at 6:34 pm (utc) on April 3, 2004]
Just out of curiosity, where did you get your data for April, May, and early June of last year, before AdSense launched? :-)
You're assuming there weren't people using the AdSense program before it was released to public.
I'm very close to a year.. besides the point, my conclusion has been reached. AdSense is becoming an affiliate program.
