Page Views Up 5x , and CTR Doubling.

eCPM halved from 2 to 1

[netchicken1]

Last year I had a ECPM of around 2, I was happy.
This year its been dropping to 1, that sucked, then things really went downhill.

Two days ago a thread on the board started getting hit hard, as the page views increased, over the last couple of days, and the clicks multiplied, the ECPM DECREASED to .5 leaving me with similar income to last week.

This is despite the page views going up 5x the usual, and the click numbers doubling.

All that work is not worth it. Not to mention the bandwidth issues I am left with from the huge traffic.

[netchicken1]

Oh for goodness sake, the eCPM has now dropped to .33

[Green_Grass]

yeah.. it has been a bad two months here also...

[ezitis]

The same for me.
As traffic grows ecpm goes down.

Big G plays with us

[Lagamorph]

That seems predictable, as you increase the amount of ads you display you go further and further down to the bottom of barrel to fill those ads.

If your site used to just max out the high paying advertisers in your niche a 5x increase now means more than 80% of your page views have lower priced ads than before.

Is your total earned going up even a little? I don't think Google is doing this. It's simple math.

[edited by: Lagamorph at 3:44 am (utc) on Jan. 13, 2007]

[nippon]

i dont know about mafs or nuffin but i took the ads off my front page after similar ecpm drops and traffic increases. lets see what happens now...

[eljefe3]

Any idea which advertisers are bringing your ecpm down? That's a good place to start is to filter out those low paying advertisers.

[Green_Grass]

For me it has been

Poor Targetting by AdSense Bot
Low Paying Ads/ Maybe Smart Pricing?
Repeated failure of the Competitive ad filter
many times.. PSA's

It seems adSense is broken..

I keep hoping G will get it right.

[TheTraveler]

If your traffic grows too fast the algo proportionately takes more of the pie.

I have experienced this in the past.

A very slow but steady increase is the most productive path.

[netchicken1]

Oh dear, thanks for the information, it seems to be a self defeating situation. My only thought is if the traffic is not focused on one topic area, but many then the ecpm may not drop as much.

If indeed the one page is hoovering up all the adverts and draining the barrel of high paying adverts in a single topic, then I wonder how more successful websites manage to make any money?

I have to accept this explanation as opposed to Google deliberatly stripping our income just when we get a lucky break.

[TheTraveler]

You have too much faith in Big G, they are a business!

[Mentat]

I have this problem frommthe beginning of the AS.

You need to sustain this traffic for ~ 2 weeks in order to increase the eCPM...

[Lagamorph]

That's a good place to start is to filter out those low paying advertisers.

To be replaced with what?

[cgiscripts4u]

I did just that, I obtained a list of low paying advertisers and put them in my competative filter.

The problem was that instead of the low paying advertisers appearing on my site I was getting fewer ads displayed. ie in a 300x250 ad unit, I was seeing just two or three ads instead of the four I normally see.

Apart from a few MFA sites, I have now removed some low paying advertisers from my competative filter

One thing I did notice that this excersise made very little difference to my eCPM.

[europeforvisitors]

If your traffic grows too fast the algo proportionately takes more of the pie.

Lagamorph's explanation makes a lot more sense. Think about it: If Google has 1,000 $1 ads for Widgetco widgets to serve and you've been getting 100 of those ads per day, doubling your traffic won't necessarily get you 200 of those ads, because there are still only 1,000 $1 ads for Widgetco widgets to be allocated among publishers.

Smart pricing may also be a factor. Is the doubling of CTR accompanied by a doubling in the number of conversions for advertisers? Or is it the result of optimization for clickthroughs? If it's the latter--or if Google's smart-pricing algorithm determines, based on statistical probability, that it's likely to be be the latter--then your advertisers will get "smart pricing" discounts and you'll earn less money per click.

[nippon]

not sure if its the maintainance or what but took the ads off my front page which was perhaps dragging the site cpm down and today its going up up up! had a mild traffic increase and excellent bump up in the serps so it seems all the extra traffic and clicks was affecting this.

but then again, maybe it was the maintainance.

bah...

forgot to mention that ctr has almost tripled!