Forum Moderators: martinibuster
For me November was a extremely good month. I was getting EPC in the $2.5 - $3 range, clicks were high, earnings were consistently at record breaking levels - life was good.
1st December rolls round and suddenly EPC drops down to the $1 - $1.5 range, yet traffic and clicks remain about the same (roughly).
What’s going on?!
I can take a look at the website with the preview tool, but the biggest country of visitors, isn't mine, so the tool only gives you an approximation of the ads being displayed. I can ban any known offenders (like ring tone ads etc) but would this just be filling up the filters unnecessarily?
Can you good people offer any suggestions?
Thanks
no, rbacal, i just checked the exact numbers, and my total monthly impressions were down by 25%, not 30-50%... so your unsubstantiated theories are not relevant to my sites.
How does this matter -- whether it's 25% or 30%. The principle is identical. I'm not interested in trying to win an argument or look good here, but just noting some empirical and anecdotal observations regarding the apparent inverse relationship between impressions and certain aspects of revenue. As an aside, a few years back a WW member posted that the correlation between his cpm and traffic was .60, which supports the diminishing return theory. Old data mind you.
And to point out that your particular increases can be explained most simply and directly by attributing them to less impressions, rather than the picking, choosing, channeling on a page by page basis which you attribute them to.
As I said, the nice part is that all of us have the raw numbers to check or verify the inverse relationship. Do a simple stat analysis of the relationship, and you may have some idea of what to do, and that's a lot easier than trying to track the performance of ad blocks on thousands of pages (some of us DO have lots of pages built over many years).
rbacal, you gave us specific traffic numbers of 30-50%... if you had data that said 30-50%, how could it suddenly turn into 25-50%?
the answer is that you never had any statistical data on anything... just like you have never used channels to monitor epc.
you predicted doom and gloom for every single publisher on this forum; you told everyone that their earnings would always go down as the traffic went up... but now we see that you don't have any data to back up your fud mongering.
without hard data, rbacal, there is nothing in your posts that can help publishers fix their problems.
>>>pages that are optimized for clickthroughs at the expense of conversions (e.g., by placing three blended AdSense units above the fold, as scrapers often do)<<<
efv, since google search puts 11 ads for hotels above the fold, in your travel sector, how is that any different than 3 ad blocks above the fold?
you are attacking google for doing the same thing that scrapers do... and since google does it, publishers obviously can't be penalized for putting 3 ad blocks above the fold.
>>>over-optimizing for "clueless clicks" (such as making ads appear to be content and burying the real content below the fold).<<<
efv, making ads appear to be content is quite obviously fraudulent behavior, not "adsense overoptimization".
the answer is that you never had any statistical data on anything... just like you have never used channels to monitor epc.
Wow. you sure want to win your "arguments" at all costs. Frankly, I don't understand what you are trying to accomplish with many of your posts.
BTW, as an aside, I do use channels, have used channels since they were available,, but I admit I hesitate saying this, just in case, you actually DO know more about my sites than I.
without hard data, rbacal, there is nothing in your posts that can help publishers fix their problems.
Actually, the neat part of what I posted is that everyone, even YOU, already has the data to test out the hypothesis I've suggested. Even you could calculate correlation coefficients based on your own data (well, that does require some skill and understand of what one is doing).
Now if you don't think that's helpful to people -- to realize they can use their own data to experiment or understand these relationships, that's well and good, but perhaps others WILL want to make use of their data to verify or disprove the relationships.
And, you and others can spend your time, creating and analysing info from thousands of channels (one at least for each page of content), and pull ads one by one, page by page.
you are attacking google for doing the same thing that scrapers do... and since google does it, publishers obviously can't be penalized for putting 3 ad blocks above the fold.
Why not? Why can't they be penalized?
Will a great celestial bird come down if google penalizes such folks and pluck a dollar from google's stock price, or perhaps each time google punishes such a site, a random office from googleplex will be sucked into the sixth dimension?
rbacal, mindless bickering is no substitute for your ongoing failure to supply factual data that would back up your claims.
and if you feel that publishers will get penalized for doing exactly what google does, then by all means, put up some hard data to counter your illogical viewpoint :-)
efv, since google search puts 11 ads for hotels above the fold, in your travel sector, how is that any different than 3 ad blocks above the fold?
You must have missed the part where I referred to three blended ad units above page content that's hidden below the fold. Are you suggesting that Google does that? If so, you're seeing a different Google layout than the rest of us are.
Besides, as rbacal points out, what Google does or doesn't do is irrelevant to the rules, smart pricing, and compensation formulas that affect AdSense publishers.
>>>Will a great celestial bird come down if google penalizes such folks<<<rbacal, mindless bickering is no substitute for your ongoing failure to supply factual data that would back up your claims.
It seems you are hesitant to answer my question. So, do you subscribe to the great celestial bird theory, or the googleplex office snatch to the sixth dimension? Perhaps you have a third theory that has more "mind" in it? I'm always willing to hear new approaches.
Getting past that, if you want hard data, I'd say that the numbers you've talked about for your own site, entirely and completely support the hypothesis that reducing impressions can increase CPM/CPC.
You reduced impressions. Your CPCM/CPC went up. Right?
"over-optimizing for "clueless clicks" (such as making ads appear to be content and burying the real content below the fold)
First, I frankly don't know how anyone can even dare to make such accusations without having seen the affected sites.
Second, we've had our site layout, ad positions and formats basically unchanged for almost two years. No deception, no tricks, no disguise, all ad units are clearly labeled as "Advertisements". If our visitors converted poorly, we would have been smart priced during the two years. That did not happen.
europeforvisitors asserts that Google found out after two years that our visitors do not convert well and smart priced our site. Yes, that's right -- after two years. Do I need to bother to comment on such crap?
No, I have better things to do on Friday.
europeforvisitors asserts that Google found out after two years that our visitors do not convert well and smart priced our site. Yes, that's right -- after two years. Do I need to bother to comment on such crap?
Actually, it's often the case that google changes things as they go, improves algos, alters policy, and even takes some time to do something about problems. It's the same in all aspects of its work, serps, adwords and adsense, where something can be moving along for the webowner, sometimes for years, and then BANG, it's over. Drops in search engine, changes in adwords bids, income, etc.
If you don't get that google is constantly changing things, so whatever you do now may not work tomorrow, and whatever you did for the last two years may not work today, you'll have a real real rough ride.
First, I frankly don't know how anyone can even dare to make such accusations without having seen the affected sites.
John, this thread, which is now up to 22 pages, isn't just about your site. And how could I "make accusations" about your site when I've never knowingly seen it?
Also, rbacal makes a good point about changes in Google's algorithms, policies, etc. A lot of the teeth-gnashing here (and in the AdWords and Google Search News forums) is undoubtedly the result of such evolution. I have no idea why you've experienced a big decline in earnings, but it's a reasonable guess that at least some unhappy publishers are seeing the consequences of focusing on AdSense clicks at the expense of content and value to advertisers. Others may be victims of too many [pick a topic] publishers competing for a finite pool of high-paying clicks.
I cringe a little whenever I see posts by new members who talk about quitting their jobs or dropping out of university for careers as "AdSense publishers." AdSense, as it currently exists, is like affiliate marketing was a few years ago: It's an easy way for the average joe to make money, but only until the inevitable shakeout that will occur (and may already be starting to occur) due to competition, new algorithms, and other evolutionary changes in the AdSense program and the larger advertising marketplace.
