Forum Moderators: martinibuster
What is the real problem?
I did a month long research on the changes at Adsense and what I found, describes the reason for decline in Adsense revenue in some sectors. It was not MFAs, it was not smart pricing, and it was not publisher failure to create a great site.
It was click fraud.
In surfing the web for personal interest, not business, I noticed something a couple months ago. Not having much time then, I back burnered the research, and more recently decided to take a deep look.
What I noticed was this. There were adverstiser I used to see on almost all website across the web, as well in search results, who were now only being seen in Google site search results. Deciding to check it deeper, I took numerous topics and over a course of the month, cleaning cookies every step of the way, and using several computers, I discovered that sure enough, many of those high paying adwords advertisers are no longer having their ads shown anywhere other than in Google search results.
It seems that once Google offered those Adwords advertisers the option of having their ads shown on Google search results only, publishers's site search, or publisher's content pages, many decided it was the best defence against click fraud.
With their ads only showing up on Google search results, that limited click fraud to competitors, and removed the possibility of publisher click fraud.
So, having been armed with this research and knowledge, I took a look at my own sites. Sure enough. Adverstisers who were once abundant on some of my sites, now are only advertising in Google Search, not on my site, nor any other.
Beyond that, some of those advertisers were also advertising heavily at YPN, they are gone from there too. But, at YPN, I have seen some new large advertisers take the place of those who exited. That is a good sign. But, I have only seen that trend at YPN, not Adsense. Long term, there is no saying those new major advertisers will not exit YPN, for the higher safety of the ads on Google site search only, unless YPN offers the same advertiser options.
So, while many large advertisers have exited from publisher's sites, not all have. Still enough have to make a difference in revenue to publishers in those nitches.
This explains why some publishers are viewing others as whiners, because they don't see the problem, yet. It hasn't affected their nitch. But, you can be sure if click fraud continues, it will eventually affect publisher earnings across the board.
I can qualify this by more fact finding. These past three weeks are normally a very active time in nitches that target "back-to-school". It is the time that all advertisers related to that nitch, advertise heavily. Yet, I have tracked quite a few major advertisers who last year were advertising on all publisher sites, and this year only in Google search results shown directly on the Google site.
The "back-to-school" advertisers are many of the same advertisers who advertise heavily in before the end of year holidays. I think this is an indication that end of year publsher revenues are going to be way off in the entire retail and wholesale sectors, compared to past years.
Bottom line is, Google gets 100% of the ad revenue, the advertiser reduces the risk of click fraud, and the publishers have decreased revenue.
When advertisers opt out of ads showing on publisher's sites and publisher site search results, there is almost no way a publisher can combat that. The only thing you can do, that might even remotely help, is to opt in to letting advertisers chose to advertise specifically on your website, after creating and maintaining a good site. It is a shot in the dark at best, and can take a very long time to show any encouraging signs.
There is your smoking gun. Click fraud and Google's response to it, coupled with a settled Adwords Click Fraud lawsuit, brought to court by a Adsense pubisher who was also an Adwords advertiser. I call it the Arkansas Solution, named after the plaintiff's home state.
It is taking a month for Adwords to approve ads for the content network, ads that take 15 minutes to appear in the search network.
Approval time is obviously an issue, BUT, I should say that the last time I added new ads, which was a week or so ago, my ads were approved and running in HOURS.
Also, one of the reasons approval times may seem bad is that I think most advertisers may not realize that your ads MUST BE RUNNING in order to be examined. Paused groups/ads don't get looked at.
Anyway, none of that affects your points directly...just wanted to add it in.
But let me know when I can target my CPC text ad.
Nah, don't think that's a good idea at all. If you don't write good ad copy I can wind up with nada, zilch, zero. Much too much control of my earnings in the hands of an advertiser. At least with CPM I get paid something while your ads run even if you can't pull any clicks.
Plus, competition for desirable contextual ad slots would drive up bids, especially since advertisers would know they weren't paying for clicks from gmail, parked domains, MFA sites, scrapers, and other "lowest common denominator" venues.
The only downside I can see is that tiny, invisible publishers of quality sites might get fewer high-paying ads. That's why I think an automated "quality score" (on top of the existing smart-pricing alogrithm) might be Google's preferred approach.
Of course, not all advertisers would want to pay extra for site-targeted CPC contextual ads, so a combination of site targeting and a "quality score" compensation algorithm might offer the best of both worlds: maximum compensation for publishers who attracted contextual site targeting, and better-than-current compensation for publishers who weren't big enough to attract contextual site targeting but were good enough to benefit from a "quality score."
[edited by: europeforvisitors at 5:36 pm (utc) on Aug. 31, 2006]
I'm not sure if you set up an ad to run as "content only" whether it will ever be looked at! You may be forced to set the ad up on search until it appears in the content network. Perhaps another reason ads take significant time to reach "content" publishers.
Unfortunately it is likely Googles profit's are actually higher if they do delay holiday and seasonal ads. Almost invariably advertisers will pay more for "Search network" than for the "content network". Also transient ads such as holiday and seasonal are, I assume, much more competitively bid. Google truly wants the first click to come from the search network, after that the ad is "old news", "second hand", and of course will pay far less on the content network (if it shows at all!).
Is this a conspiracy theory? No, it's just how large organizations work. Middle management will do everything for the bottom line ("the share holders"); and of course advancement. Quality trickles down from the top, after weeks, months, or years, depending upon the organization.
it could easily build a factor into the display algorithm...
Ah ha, you makes it sound so simple, EfV. Your system is one I'd be able to support. I was only looking at it in the current implementation; glad somebody is thinking a bit outside the box.
