Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I had a high CTR ad (very well written ad text) giving me very nice revenue. The ad was placed no. 1 by google in all ad units. Gradually, the advertiser had been decreasing the CPC (kind of a smart move, ah?) until the CPC became $0.03 per click. The CTR was still high, the eCPM was horrible, but nevertheless Google continued to rank the ad as no. 1, not leaving any chance for new advertizers to step in.
After I intervened and booted the low paying ad out of there by filtering, the eCPM increased dramatically. The low paying ad distracted visitors from other ads they are clicking on now + one more ad space became available for new ads to be shown. Now, the CTR is not that high, but still ok. The total eCPM is much higher.
1. How can you tell out of all the other ads which one it was.
2. How can you accurately work out the earnigns per click for that ad (unless you know them personaly or you've got secret info we dont know here as basic publishers)
as the publisher, you have no way of knowing what the cpc is, because cost per click is what the advertiser pays... the cpc could have gone up for the advertiser, but google took a bigger share, so the epc that you thought you saw was down.
a change in the ctr could have also affected the ranking position of the ad in the ad block.
as the publisher, you have no way of knowing what the cpc is, because cost per click is what the advertiser pays... the cpc could have gone up for the advertiser, but google took a bigger share, so the epc that you thought you saw was down.
If we assume, for the sake of discussion, that the OP is able to track earnings per click with Adlogger, then smart pricing, an adjustment in the OP's payout percentage, or some other compensation factor presumably would be across the board and not just for the specific ad that the OP has described.
adlogger logs the ad URL (at least for IE). If for a paricular adsense channel all (or even if just "almost all") clicks are going to the www.example.com URL, then by combining adsense stats and adlogger information, you know how much you are paid per click, and you can track how that evolves with time.
as the publisher, you have no way of knowing what the cpc is, because cost per click is what the advertiser pays... the cpc could have gone up for the advertiser, but google took a bigger share, so the epc that you thought you saw was down.
So you are saying that as the CTR (=earnings) of a particular ad goes higher, Google takes a bigger share? Seems very unlikely to me. What sense does it make?
a change in the ctr could have also affected the ranking position of the ad in the ad block.
As I said the ad remained no. 1 all the time.
europeforvisitors,
As you said, if it was a smart pricing , other ads would have been also affected. In addition, after I removed the low paying ad, the eCPM went up.
So you are saying that as the CTR (=earnings) of a particular ad goes higher, Google takes a bigger share? Seems very unlikely to me. What sense does it make?
Smartpricing... get use to it.
Smart pricing is about pricing, not payout percentage.
[adsense.blogspot.com...]
i'm saying that we don't know whether it does or it doesn't.
ctr does not always equal earnings, and in fact, if you drive up the ctr with a better page design, and it's not converting for the advertiser, your epc will drop accordingly... or is it just that google is taking a bigger share of your overall increased ctr earnings?
>>>or some other compensation factor presumably would be across the board and not just for the specific ad<<<
again, that is nothing more than idle speculation... you don't have a clue one way or the other, none of us know.
there is no such thing as "smart pricing"... it's typical for ad agencies to have proprietary algos that tweak the epc, google just gave it a fancy name so it could be used as an excuse for cutting your epc.
if you use ypn, you know that the average epc is waaay down from when the program first started up... whatever problems you are having with the google epc are a cakewalk compared to that.
there is no such thing as "smart pricing"... it's typical for ad agencies to have proprietary algos that tweak the epc, google just gave it a fancy name so it could be used as an excuse for cutting your epc.
Again, smart pricing isn't about payout, it's a sliding scale of discounts for advertisers based on Google's estimate of whether clicks from a page will convert into a sale or other "business action." Of course, if an advertiser is paying less, you're going to earn less, but that isn't related to payout percentage; it's related to pricing.
That doesn't mean that Google may not have a sliding scale of payout percentages based on revenue, quality scores, or other factors. But such variations in payout percentage wouldn't fall under the heading of "smart pricing," so let's not confuse new members by suggesting that apples are oranges (or vice versa).
again, there is no such thing as "smart pricing", and you don't have a clue if, when, or why google is taking a bigger cut.
stop trying to mislead people into thinking that google is doing something different than any other ad agency.
adwords is not the only ad agency that does that.
2) Re the existence of smart pricing: Jomaxx has already given a succinct (and accurate) reply.
3) Re drops in EPC that may not be attributable to smart pricing: It's certainly possible that Google values some types of content or sites more than others, and that some publishers are being hurt by something akin to a "quality score." If a publisher suspects this is happening, then the fault may lie with the publisher, not with Google. Fact is, a lot of Web sites just don't deliver the kind of traffic that advertisers want, and a lot of so-called "publishers" don't know much about publishing. (Being a successful publisher means knowing more than just how to optimize AdSense clickthrough rates.)
4) Average EPC can go up or down for reasons that have nothing to do with smart pricing, payout percentages, or even advertiser bids. A site's traffic mix at any given point in time can influence average EPC. Let's say you've got a travel site about California. At some times of the year, you may get a lot of traffic on your pages about hiking in the Sierras; at other times of the year, you may get more traffic on your pages about skiing at Squaw Valley. If ski ads for Squaw Valley have a higher average EPC than ads related to hiking in the Sierras, then you may see a higher overall average EPC during the ski season than during the hiking season, simply because your traffic at that time of the year is on higher-earning pages.
being a successful publisher means understanding how google functions in the real world:
"Google as Ad Agency"
[blog.tmcnet.com...]
"Seeking Growth, Google Acts Like an Ad Agency" wall street journal
"Google Wants to Dominate Madison Avenue, Too"
[nytimes.com...]
>>>2) Re the existence of smart pricing: Jomaxx has already given a succinct (and accurate) reply.<<<
wrong, both you and joemaxx have failed to provide any proof that ad pricing fluctuations are unique to adwords.
>>>Smart pricing is about pricing, not payout percentage.<<<
and you have not shown where google clearly states that the so-called "smart pricing" concept does NOT affect publisher earnings... so noodlebox was correct: "Smartpricing... get use to it."
I'd also suggest that publishers who are earning only a penny or two per click (and who aren't making up for low EPC with a high volume of click traffic) might want to consider alternatives to AdSense if they can't figure out why AdSense isn't working well with their sites--or why their sites aren't working well with AdSense. Why torture oneself with endless (and avoidable) suffering?
If a visitor is on a given page
- he might just leave
- he might click back to a previous page on your site
- he might click on a link to another of your pages
- he might click on some link to another site
- he might click on something that earns you money outside adsense
- he might click on a Google ad
Since clicking Google Ads is just one of the ways, the trick is to known how much chance there is they click to another page that might earn money just as well as the chance they would just leave
Personally for my site:
- I'm in it for the long run, so I value the experinece of my vistors, the chance of gettign them to return very high.
- I have high lengths of visits and long click chains in my visits: I'd rather have a low CTR, and high value ads. unfortunately the knowledge of how deep your visitors click without being offered distracting ads is beyond the algo and hence would need to be given otherwise. I'd strongly prefer to be able to set it with a minimum CPC, but so far no luck.
