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]

[shortz]

Our EPC is down considerably today also but, some days have been that way in the past. I've only got a 22 day history to base anything on but I certainly hope that the CPC thing does not turn out to be consistant.

Something is better than nothing, I like the way the ads are served and have enjoyed a great 22 days to date..

I'm not going to get too dissapointed for a few weeks I think.. it does bear watching though.

Wayne

[annej]

Up until yesterday I was getting very targeted ads related to the interests of my users. For example, in a section about older cars there were ads related to restoration parts, etc. Today almost all I see are ads for new car dealers.

Same here until this evening, now the targeting seems to be a little better. I'm not seeing anything new and different in terms of better targeted pages though.

I can't tell if my earnings are down today or if the reports are just slow in coming as the impressions are down compared to a typical Thursday.

[ignatz]

I did't get that email. Is this an April fools?

edit - sorry just checked and I did receive it.

I think my current strategy is safe... concentrate on good content, don't worry about adsense ;)

[rainmakerpsi]

Whoooo. I use to have a page with great ads on it. That page mentioned that it uses a DSL line on the server and a T1 for another server. Now i'm getting SBC Ads. Grrrr.
just started today.
This really is bad.

[iownjoo]

heh... My profits are down 90+% per click. There goes a huge chunk of revenue....Unless its a fluke (Hope so but looks like its not)

Was 2-4 dollars a click asking too much? =0

[Webwork]

This announcement presages the next generation of black hat system gaming, where the black hats now make it their chore to determine what word ratios, etc. generate the highest payout, even if the page looks like pure gibberish, and then that maneuver is followed by the ongoing algo tweaking by Google and so on. This does not bode well....maybe. If gibberish results in a better ROI for advertisers then what?

Isn't it logical to say that nice, quality sites with good content should attract better paying more confident advertisers, but, what if the bad old black hat boys & girls nasty websites show higher ROI and greater click throughs? Strange world indeed.

Veg-o-matic anyone?

[europeforvisitors]

This announcement presages the next generation of black hat system gaming...

Actually, it sounds more like a strategy to discourage black-hat system gaming by making it harder to profit from keyword-based sites that were created solely to exploit AdSense.

[Sunflux]

So far I'm not a particularly happy camper for my informational **and** review site... CPC is about the same, but EPC is at the bottom end of my 6 month history.

One thing I'm noticing, my main keywords have two general product meanings, and I notice that Google seems to be alternating displaying pages containing ads clustered to either meaning. So, get a page with 4 ads relating to off-topic meaning #1, refresh and get a page with 4 ads relating to on-topic meaning #2.

Now, in the past, Google didn't really have any trouble matching my topic - almost all ads were on-topic. I'm getting annoyed by all these off-topic ads and am wondering if I should go on a blocking splurge.

So far I've only blocked **one** domain, starting today actually, since it's a product with a name identical to something completely different, and it's showing up **everywhere** as the #1 result on my ads.

[linear]

varya was popularly supposed to have said:

Not really sure how this advertisers pay less but publishers earn more formula is going to work.

My attempt at answering this: by improving the efficiency of matching ads to content pages, which should drive CTR up across the network.

Consider two hypothetical webmasters though--the first tends toward articles/pages on broader topics, perhaps widgets and widget repair with a smattering of interviews with widget makers. Still with a site-wide coherent topic, the articles are mainly general. Our second writes specific, narrow articles: red widgets for April, using hand tools for widget repair, 10 essential widgets for your collection, 5 features to look for in a heavy-duty widget, etc.

Now consider two advertisers--the first buys broad keyphrases, the second narrows things down to specifics.

It makes sense to me that if the system does a better job of bringing the second webmaster and second advertiser together, that is the most efficient case and should result in the highest CTR of all the possible publisher-advertiser combinations. And bringing the first publisher and first advertiser together should result in no worse results than the previous system produced. So there would be a net improvement of efficiency, that should on average produce the thing that varya is skeptical about.

Unless you happen to be the first publisher in this example (and we can discuss the first advertiser), things look pretty good under this scenario, as far as my analysis goes.

Now, enough theory, on with the empiricism:
On a couple very popular pages that I have on the topic of spraypainting widgets, the ads used to positively suck. They were for everything but the right thing, namely spraypaint and associated stuff like sandpaper and rubbing compound. I chalked it up to the articles being long (okay, wordy) so that the algo couldn't suss out the real topic from all the text.

Today the clouds parted, and these pages are serving spot-on ads. I didn't have a channel set up to watch them, but I'm starting one right now. I can pretty safely assume a minimal CTR for these pages under the previous look, I'm just curious to know how well they do now.

And that's how both sides can win.

[ignatz]

As usual, we'll probably have to look at the figures over the course of a month or so. Today is most likely a blip, my daily revenue is twice average at this stage.

I represent a couple domains (pretty badly) on the advertiser side, and from my experience the advertisers are still going to be willing to pay the same if nor more money per click. The complaint I've heard most often is that Adwords doesn't convert as well as some of the other options.

As it stands I imagine when it all plays out, that the average earning per click will go down, but the CTR will go up a bit.

I can't help thinking that the google team knows how happy most publishers are at the moment. So happy that they could probably trim back a bit over time resulting in decent jumps in net revenue.