Dumping site targeted cpm

9 days in

[david_uk]

I've been meaning to update this experiment, but forgot!

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.

[trinorthlighting]

We cleared out our filter, and our revenue has went up.

[MThiessen]

>>>Why not wait the full month to do your experiment?<<<

The several day drop was too obvious that it was due to shutting it off. I didn't want to sacrifice a whole months worth of revenue for this like I had originally intended. I talked to my adsense rep about it too, and, though I cannot go into details, as what they say is confidentual, the numbers are misleading. (The whole cpc cpm thing). The bottom line was dramatically effected, both at shut off, and shut on.

My hypothetical numbers are also dramtically different in my post as I do not reveal publically my true numbers, in fact not even close. But the percentages and variances were ballpark true.

[rbacal]

Even if this formula is wrong, the simple eCPM from each tells the story. Contextual is higher. Period. When eCPM for site targeting can prove to exceed contextual, I'll turn it back on

Comparisons like this will only work if you compare cpm for each adblock on your page separately, because of the way google decides to display site targeted ads. If you have only one adblock, it works. If you have multiples, it's really really faulty.

[rbacal]

I felt I had to comment on this, because it points out how poorly people actually read, and how there's a real lack of critical attention paid to what people read on the web. Danimal has cited the following here about half a dozen times.

don't confuse your lack of knowledge with what a google vip has publicly stated:
"As a rule, Google pays out 50 cents of every dollar to partners—and can range up to the full dollar, depending on the size of the relationship"
Marc Leibowitz, director of strategic partnerships at Google, [foliomag.com...]

1) The article is dated almost a full year ago, essentially it's from a previous age in Internet terms.

2) The "cases" cited go back to early 2005.

3) Read the article and note what is designated as a direct quote, and what is NOT a direct quote. For example, the part about 50 cents on the dollar is attributed, and NOT a direct quote. The meaning of this is obvious, but if you don't understand the difference, then there's a real need to learn the difference between a qutoe and information attributed.

4) Assess the credibility and accuracy of the article as a whole (Ok, I realize that means you have to READ all the words). In that same article it says:

Publishers with Site Targeting can set minimum CPMs for their site, “making sure advertisers will pay at least as much through Google as they would though their own direct sales force,” says Leibowitz

First, it's 12 months later, and this statement is and has always been patently WRONG. Also, the article is so poor, journalistically, that you can't tell if this is a quote or an attributed statement (they used ONE quotation mark -- what's THAT about?)

Credible article? No way.

Finally, can anyone actually find where Leibowitz is working now? A list of employees at Google at Leibowitz's "supposed level" leave Leibowitz NOWHERE to be found (at least I can't).

Is this person even a current employee?

This is a journalistically horrible article, with at least one obvious major completely obvious inaccuracy, is dated and deserves absolutely NO CREDIBILITY at all.

If people want to base their choices on this stuff, or use it to justify something, I'd suggest you start reading more carefully.

Year old material where the writer can't even distinguish between quotations and attributions, and where no fact checking obviously was done to catch really obvious false information is useless.