Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Anyway, usual disclaimers:-
Mileage may vary, get permission from whoever pays the bill before you use the phone, mobile networks may charge differently from landlines and so on.
In a nutshell, looking at the period of this month to date, with the last 9 complete days being cpm free, impressions are up 1%, clicks up 7% ands ctr up 2% over the previous part of the month with cpm ads.
Nothing stellar there, but the other metrics are quite interesting.
EPC up 35%
eCPM up 33%
Earnings up 34%
These figures are site wide, as the removal is sitewide. I would say that the improvement in some of the smaller channels has been better than the higher traffic pages, but no real pattern to it. I've seen the usual daily ups and downs, but in general I prefer to look at longer term trends. I will keep monitoring of course.
I've known you can remove cpm ads for a while but never bothered. Reason being that the stats show miniscule numbers of them being shown. So the obvious question is what other changes have happened.
Well, I've done NO work on the site the last week or so. I wanted to make no changes whatsoever so as to rule out the effect of changes I've made. There haven't been any "Upgrades" during the period of the test, and I've not seen an improvement in ad targeting. So it's difficult to see what has caused this particular rise in fortunes. However, the fact that dumping site targeted ads coincides with an immediate eCPM rise of 33% can't be dismissed as a coincidence either.
I think the only thing that can settle this is if we knew what the relative volume and earnings from CPC and CPM ads was across the network. AFAIK, G doesn't release that information.
My theory, ahem...
From the users point of view the ads become the same and are simply ignored, ad blindness, but since we don't need the click we shouldn't care and the user should be a bit happier since they aren't annoyed by the ads as much. So the users perception of the site goes up a bit, we like that.
Now when the CPM campaign leaves we should get a spike from the visual change as we could expect from rotating colors or similar.
Also, if the campaign is all encompassing you could add a few leaderboards to your footer and clean their clock!
[edited by: Lagamorph at 2:58 am (utc) on Nov. 1, 2006]
the concept of one advertiser filling all my ads slots
I've seen an increase in Adlinks clicks and income on sections of my site when those sections have been heavily loaded with site targeted ads in the regular Adsense adblocks.
Adlinks and Site Targeted ads seem to go well together.
Web_speed, OK, so how do you know that the OTHER ads in that multi-ad panel were also CPM?
I never said that they all CPM, i said that it is very likely that there is a mix of CPC and CPM ads in the same ad panel and gave an hypothetical situation. You may get 1 CPC and 3 CPMs text ads in the same panel OR 4 CPC text ads and one CPM ad etc.
And if you have more than one ad panel on a given page the number of CPM text ads shown to your viewers can go even higher (to 5-8 per page).
[edited by: Web_speed at 3:30 am (utc) on Nov. 1, 2006]
How do you guys get anything accomplished at all?
yeah, i had some very good laughs reading through this thread, astonished at the missing knowledge of some adsense participants of the relevant implications of cpm ads.
i'd like to point out again:
Whatever the ads were, nobody seemed to want to click on them.
how many people click on cpm ads is completely irrelevant for your earnings!
how many cpm ads do we receive at all? i bet all publishers aggregated these are below 1% of all impressions. although the original statement that this tiny fraction draws down your earnings significantly is interesting but not very likely. on average, you should fare well with cpm ads in the mix.
so let's get to the interesting tidbits of this thread.
first nugget:
First, traditionally, and economically, you use CPC ads for branding (by writing ads that people will NOT click but display your brand), and CPM for ads you want people to click. You don't brand the other way around because it's too expensive. This seems to be knowledge that was well known in the banner era, but seems to have been lost these days.
never heard that before. i assume you have not confused cpc and cpm in this part. thinking about that again (and again) this may very well make some economical sense from the advertiser perspective. never thought of this before: cpc for branding, cpm for clicks, this is wicked! but why is cpm so rare in our ad blocks then? all advertisers wanting to do branding with text ads? nah.. or are they too dumb to recognize that it's cheaper to set up a targeted cpm campaign to receive massive clicks?
second nugget:
My experience with Adwords has been that site targeted ads are not necessarily image ads filling up an entire ad banners. In a few instances i saw them appearing along side other text ads in a 4-5 ad panel on a given site.It was my OWN ad (as an adwords advertiser) on a site i targeted. It showed up alongside other text ads in the same ad unit panel.
whow, site targeted ads alongside other (cpc/cpm?) ads in an ad block? this is news! we really need to have this clarified by a google employee, right?
whow, site targeted ads alongside other (cpc/cpm?) ads in an ad block? this is news!
According to the AdWords Help Center, site-targeted ads are available only as expanded text ads and image ads. An expanded text ad is defined as "a text ad that fills an entire ad unit on its own, rather than being grouped with other text ads."
that's funny! millions and millions of $$$ spent on internet advertising, and everyone has been doing it all wrong?
>>>According to the AdWords Help Center, site-targeted ads are available only as expanded text ads and image ads.<<<
""We are currently testing a cost-per-action pricing model to give advertisers more flexibility and provide publishers another way to earn revenue through AdSense," Google said in an emailed statement."
[informationweek.com...]
efv, google sometimes does things that are not covered in the adwords help center, o.k.?
[edited by: jatar_k at 6:33 pm (utc) on Nov. 1, 2006]
never heard that before. i assume you have not confused cpc and cpm in this part. thinking about that again (and again) this may very well make some economical sense from the advertiser perspective. never thought of this before: cpc for branding, cpm for clicks, this is wicked! but why is cpm so rare in our ad blocks then? all advertisers wanting to do branding with text ads? nah.. or are they too dumb to recognize that it's cheaper to set up a targeted cpm campaign to receive massive clicks?
Actually, I believe the reason we don't see more site targeted ads has to do with how absolutely clumsy and terrible the whole system is, virtually from top to bottom, from the advertisers point of view.
It's incredibly time consuming (and sometimes almost impossible) to find and select sites, manually look at the ad placements on their pages, create ads, wait for ad approval, test, retest and retest again, and so on. With site targeting the work falls to the advertiser, unlike with contextuals.
If an advertiser lucks out with a site targeted campaign, that can work out well, but the process is so labor intensive to be done right, that you have to factor in that cost into the equation.
So, the way I look at it is if I have to pay $5.00 cpm AND all the time required to find sites for ads, I'm MUCH better off cutting google out of the loop completely and advertising direct with the site owner who may or may not be a part of the network. If I can get impressions at 25 cents CPM, then I can perhaps justify the work, EXCEPT that the only placing I'm going to get on a site at that rate is in a spot where no one sees the darned ads anyway (like an ad block virtually hidden at page bottoms where nobody goes).
Short answer then, the site targeted system is bad, bigtime (unless it's improved this last month).
Finally, on branding or name recognition. A pure branding effort involves exposure to eyeballs, and not necessarily involving any immediate action. So, you set up a CPC ad intentionally so nobody will click on it, but the ad is replete with your memorable site name PLUS a memorable slogan. (that's before google had their display algo which takes into account ctr). When you want clicks you set up a cpm campaign, since you don't pay for the clicks, and you do everything you can to get people onto your site (remember all those horrible display ads that cause fits?)
To understand the branding name recog. thing, think about the bestx.tld sites, or ebay ads which at this point nobody in their right minds would actually click on. But we DO remember them, right? Not fondly, so it's the opposite effect, but it's the same principle.
Anyway good luck to y'all. If more posts were like yours, David_UK, EFV and a fair number of others who still bother (many have given up here), I'd plan on posting in the future. Anyway, might be back, might not be in the near future. If the conspiracy theory thread hijacking stops, it would probably help.
efv, google sometimes does things that are not covered in the adwords help center, o.k.?
Purleese! Don't you know nothing! Google doesn't make changes without consulting EFV first;)
OK. I'm going to ignore the side debates that seem to have grown up about this very simple post and report the month end figures.
I had site targeted ads removed on the 18th October. The end of month figures since making the change are as follows:-
Impresions +2%
CTR +1%
Clicks +8%
No changes to the site since making the change, all the traffic from the usual source - organic.
Daily earnings +28%
EPC + 23%
eCPM +23%
In the last couple of weeks I've seen the usual highs and lows, but the earnings figures have deffinitely improved a great deal. Now, despite the ONLY change being dumping site targeted ads, is that the cause? I have to say I'm not totally convinced. For that to be the case, I would have needed to have seen a reasonable amount of site targeting happening and as reported earlier there was only a very small percentageof them.
Is it due to other causes? Well, there are variances going on all the time, and they don't usually cause a dramatic increase.
What about the major changes = smartprice re-evaluation effect first noted by Ann (whose wisdom and integrity here should mean instant promotion to sainthood)? Well, as dumping a whole load of ads IS a major change (or would be if there were lots of them showing), then I'd agree tnat this is a possible plausible explanation.
The long, short and tall of it is that whatever the reason, cpm ads are staying banned. I'd like to know the reason but suspect we'll never know. It's something I'll just have to live with :)
1) When I look at my "Advanced Reports" by "Individual Ad" ("show targeting type" option checked), if I see a higher eCPM for the "Site" ads vs the "Contextual" ads, then this is a positive thing and I should want Site ads shown.
2) Even the ads that I suspect are "Site" ads seem to be off target/off topic for my site, since they are CPM I shouldn't care because it doesn't take a click through to generate income (they are CPM).
3) The only potential downside to Site ads (if their eCPM is higher than the site's Contextual ads) is that there is a theory that Adsense includes the views & clicks of Site ads in with Contextual ads to create a website CTR total, and therefore if the Site ads aren't clicked (because they are off target) then the CTR for your site as a whole will be lower, thus triggering a Smart Pricing penalty?
Right? Wrong?
(In my opinion, anyway.)
Daily earnings +28%
EPC + 23%
eCPM +23%
It's about the same for me. But I didn't have Google turn anything off. Nor did I make changes to the site. Actually yesterday was my best AdSense day ever.
And I don't think I'll have much time to do much with my site over the next month. So if earnings are up by, let's say, 20%, I will call the experiment a success.
Of course, Thanksgiving does complicate November, but in my 2005 stats Nov. was only slightly down from October.
I'll report back on Dec. 1.
I officially turned off site-targeted ads
Did you email Adsense support and ask them to turn off CPM/site targeted ads for your site?
Or did you simply opt out of the "Onsite Advertizer Sign-up" (Advertise on this site) feature on your Adsense conntrol panel?
Or did you simply opt out of the "Onsite Advertizer Sign-up" (Advertise on this site) feature on your Adsense conntrol panel?
opting out of the "sign-up" won't stop CPM, so you need to contact google adsense.
[edited by: Mohamed at 9:29 pm (utc) on Nov. 2, 2006]
no! absolutely not... site-targeted cpm ads are the dregs of adsense, if you are seeing 'em in any significant quantity, it means that the value of your pages is low.
i use the presence of site-targeted cpm ads as an indicator that something is wrong... what has worked for me is removing adsense entirely from pages that don't perform well with it.
no! absolutely not... site-targeted cpm ads are the dregs of adsense, if you are seeing 'em in any significant quantity, it means that the value of your pages is low
Maybe we should test the quality of ads by seeing if they float in water?
maybe the question should be, how does that $9 ecpm for site-targeted ads only compare to the ecpm for your contextual ads only?
We may have to consider that my sites are unique and very narrow and not simply a recompilation MFA so I'm assuming my content is more appealing to advertisers than the average site.
Another plus for site targeted for me is the protection from bad traffic. Every now and then I get huge spikes from some watch cartoons instead of doing your work type site and my click rate takes a dive while site targeted ads become a windfall.
for you to be averaging a $9 cpm for site-targeted ads, the advertiser is probably paying google ~$18 per thou(?), which is a rate that only the most premium cpm publishers are getting these days... so you should put a bunch of "advertise here" icons all over your site.
there is a lot you haven't told us, but at some point we are stepping on the adsense tos boundries, so it may be better off left unsaid.
If I only selected "Text Ads Only" in the adsense code setup section, such that no image ads are shown, do I still end up with site targeted CPM ads?
thanks.
If I only selected "Text Ads Only" in the adsense code setup section, such that no image ads are shown, do I still end up with site targeted CPM ads?
Yes, if advertisers select your site for site-targeted text ads, which are the most common type.
This got me thinking regarding the Firefox referrals and just how poorly they seem to be clicked on. As a group, the buttons have never struck me as particularly compelling and for that matter, look like no other buttons I've ever seen nor is the text particularly interesting. Could this be intentional? Are the referral buttons deliberately more designed for branding than clicking?
Are the referral buttons deliberately more designed for branding than clicking?
You bet!
