Forum Moderators: martinibuster
My AdSense revenue has been down significantly for several months now. But my traffic and click-thru rate are right at their average levels. It is my pay per-click that is down; it is reduced 30% from what it had been for a couple years; my total pay is thus reduced by 30% as well.
My site is actually ranking a little better than it used to in all the search engines.
Recently I got a note from Google's Optimization Team that said that my competitive ad filter is denying some ads that would "monetize well". I reviewed it, and only removed one URL; it used to be a made-for-adsense site that offered no real value to its visitors, but is now a legit, high-quality site.
All the other ads I filter are for ebay signup affiliate ads.
Is there anything I can do to increase my pay per-click?
Note that all my revenue comes from a single, high-traffic page on what is otherwise a completely unrelated website. I basically got lucky with the page; it hadn't been planned to be a revenue-generating page.
I'm working on a new site which is far more diversified, and should (hopefully) be a good revenue generator, but it will be several months at least before it earns significant revenue.
Note that all my revenue comes from a single, high-traffic page on what is otherwise a completely unrelated website. I basically got lucky with the page; it hadn't been planned to be a revenue-generating page
Traffic from non-related sources is regarded as INVALID clicks so they seem to have smart priced you into oblivion.
Forgot about the ad-filter bit, we all seem to have had the same advice, I only have 3 url's in mine, also got it
Traffic from non-related sources is regarded as INVALID clicks so they seem to have smart priced you into oblivion.
I will look into how to deal with smart-pricing, but I should add that very nearly all of the traffic to this particular page comes from search engine searches for the relevant keywords, keywords that are also relevant to the ads that typically show up.
The page is linked from just two other pages on the same site, and doesn't get a whole lot of referrals from them.
For a while now I've been considering registering a domain of which this page would be the homepage. Possibly then writing other content pages on the same site, with a closely related topic would help.
I have hesitated because it's a highly competitive area; I would almost certainly have to buy a domain to get a good one, and might have to pay quite a bit.
I'm confident that I'll keep my good search engine position if I place a redirect at the old location. I've done that with some other pages and it has always worked out well.
My AdSense revenue has been down significantly for several months now. But my traffic and click-thru rate are right at their average levels. It is my pay per-click that is down; it is reduced 30...
I rarely respond to these posts, the up / down jazz or wherever you are coming from. Numerous theories are of course advanced. The most popular is "smart pricing" causes all sort of maladies.
I disagree
In another thread a few days back one individual proffered a very sensible view point. This person had recently attended a forum for AdSense Advertisers.
If my recollection is correct, this person advanced the very radical idea that "Advertisers" were vacating the content network in droves because of "real and / or perceived" low returns from the content network.
In all discussions on this site [WebmasterWorld] about this topic, it is the only theory / belief / opinion which holds water in my belief.
Were I an advertiser, would I pour money down the drain in the content network believing in poor returns. Vacating this market I then leave it to the small time [low paying] bottom feeders.
There you go, just a small opinion and I'm as badly affected as the rest of us except my monthly reductions run into four figures.
C'est la vie
I was surprised that there were seven of them, as I had done this once before, but it's been a long time.
If this is going to help, how long will it take to see a difference? I will record my current stats so I can monitor any change.
I'm not so sure if this is going to be effective, as two of the MFA sites I removed were consistently the top two advertisers on my page. That would suggest they were consistently outbidding the other advertisers when placing their AdWords ads.
Three of the MFA advertisers were obvious affiliate ads, and weren't placed by the vendors of the products they were advertising.
However, I won't consider using pop-up or pop-under ads. The reason is that it's always been obvious to me that the Goodwill of my visitors is the reason for the success of all my websites - visitors often recommend my sites by giving them links.
I'm even considering direct ad sales, and would be interested in your advice on doing so.
If my recollection is correct, this person advanced the very radical idea that "Advertisers" were vacating the content network in droves because of "real and / or perceived" low returns from the content network.
[edited by: Scurramunga at 1:27 pm (utc) on April 18, 2007]
I will look into how to deal with smart-pricing, but I should add that very nearly all of the traffic to this particular page comes from search engine searches for the relevant keywords, keywords that are also relevant to the ads that typically show up.
The keywords may be relevant to the ads (and the page may be relevant to the keywords), but your audience may not be motivated to buy, request information, etc. from the advertisers on that page. If leads from your single page on widgets or whatsits aren't converting for advertisers, or--more likely--if Google's experience in conversion tracking suggests that a site with one relevant page for a topic is likely to deliver poorly converting traffic to advertisers, smart pricing may well kick in (since Google has made it clear that smart pricing is based on the anticipated likelihood of conversion, not on real-time conversion data).
poor conversion for your advertisers, they earn less, they dial down their spending in content network,
further more, as an advertiser for say "blue widgets" if I were surferring bad conversion and checked my stats an found that a lot of PPC visitors where coming from a site about, "how to repair Red widgets", I would be inclined to exclude that site immediately
What I don't understand is how could conversion rates suddenly change so that I now receive 1/3 of the revenue I once did. My traffic is purely organic and is extremely well targeted. Why now? when so many others on WWorld are complaining about declines?
What I don't understand is how could conversion rates suddenly change so that I now receive 1/3 of the revenue I once did.
Conversion rates don't have to change. The only things that need to change are:
1) Google's formula for determining the likelihood of conversion, and/or...
2) How many publishers are competing for impressions, clicks, and advertiser dollars for "widgets" or "whatsits" or "whatchamacallit." (If publisher demand is growing faster than advertiser expenditures, the average cost per click will drop.)
... "Advertisers" were vacating the content network in droves because of "real and / or perceived" low returns from the content network
I believe this. When I do a Goole search for a keyword I see one grouping of advertisers with the SERP's. When I look at my site's pages regarding the same keyword I see a different set of advertisers.
Google's attitude has been "take the money and run." Especially in light of the amount of money they have taken out of Adsense, they have put extremely little effort in policing it and insuring that the publishers involved provide a good value for advertisers.
Fraud flocks to money. The bar is set so low for participating in Adsense (all you have to do is get one site approved and then you can add any other sites you want) that you have to expect the worst longterm outcome.
With Adsense came the explosion of MFA sites. At first we just complained because they filled the SERP's up with garbage. Now they flood the publisher side of Adsense with too much inventory, hence we each don't get as many of the better paying ads. On the Advertiser side the MFA's (especially in the sense of MFA sites where there is nothing to click except an Adsense ad) don't provide advertisers with clicks likely to convert. We all lose, including Adsense in the long term.
I thoroughly believe that the glory days of Adsense have long passed. Adsense will always be around but it will never be the boon to legit publishers as was in its first year or two. Adsense paid off my debt, paid for my house, and put money in the bank for me. I absolutely thought Adsense would have made it so webmastering would become my full time job. Webmastering still may, but any anticipated income caluclations regarding Adsense will have to be significantly discounted when making my plans because Adsense is a waning program.
Since December 2005 when the downard trend suddenly began for me quite a few other members on this board were complaining about sudden declines also and hve consitently reported decline up until now. I think it is quite possible that something may have changed with the smartpricing algo. The continuation of the decline may well be due to lower advertiser bids due to diminished competition amongst advertisers in the content network.
... any anticipated income caluclations regarding Adsense will have to be significantly discounted when making my plans because Adsense is a waning program.
Waning for us, but not for bottom feeding MFA's that work on massive volume turnover.
[edited by: Scurramunga at 2:16 pm (utc) on April 18, 2007]
I agree with both of your points, however do think that publisher demand to advertiser demand ratio has also changed due to the dissatisfaction with the content network, as much as it has to do with increased publisher competition.
Google's quarterly earnings reports make it clear that, overall, advertisers aren't deserting the content network. Or, if they are, they're being replaced by new advertisers, since total AdSense revenues have increased every quarter.
I suspect that the network's impressions and potential clicks are simply growing faster than the network's advertiser expenditures are growing. Given the explosion of computer-generated pages, social-networking sites, blogs, etc., that shouldn't be surprising. Add in normal growth from Web sites like yours and mine (how many of us aren't creating new pages every week or month?), and it would be surprising if increases in network inventory didn't exceed the growth in demand.
When I view my own sites, I often see the same ads displayed on both sites. On one site, my epc has dropped recently about the same time others here started reporting drops.
On the other site, the epc is strong. Sometimes 10-20 times the epc for the same ads on the other site.
If smartpricing is at work here, isn't this at odds with the theory of smartpricing being "account wide."
If the low epc on one site is because the advertising pool is declining, then how to explain the strong epc on the other site?
FarmBoy
On the other site, the epc is strong. Sometimes 10-20 times the epc for the same ads on the other site.If smartpricing is at work here, isn't this at odds with the theory of smartpricing being "account wide."
If the low epc on one site is because the advertising pool is declining, then how to explain the strong epc on the other site?
Earnings per click are determined by a number of factors, not just by one thing. Smart pricing (which may or may not be account-wide) is one factor, supply and demand is another factor, how ads are allotted to any given site is another, and there may be additional factors that come into play. Looking for a simple explanation of why EPC is up or down for a given site is as fruitless as speculating that your search ranking for "widgets" is down because you added "nofollow" to your links or changed from a table-based layout to a CSS layout.
That said, this time of year is typically when my (seasonal) traffic starts to build and build, and last year when that happened, my epc nosedived. I'm starting to see it go down a bit now, and I'm wondering (since I have no idea if my traffic converts or not) if advertisers might be filtering my site out from their more expensive ads as my traffic grows - we're talking going from maybe 300 or 400 visitors per day to above 50k visitors per day at my peak (then it drops off suddenly) That's a big jump in a short period of time. Could possibly freak a few advertisers out.
Google's quarterly earnings reports make it clear that, overall, advertisers aren't deserting the content network. Or, if they are, they're being replaced by new advertisers, since total AdSense revenues have increased every quarter.
Yes. But could that revenue increase be attributed to the rise and rise of MFA's?
Yes. But could that revenue increase be attributed to the rise and rise of MFA's?
I don't know who the advertisers are or aren't, but it's obvious from the earnings reports that advertisers are spending more money. Of course, publisher impressions have probably grown by quite a bit, too: As someone asked here a while back, how many of us have stopped expanding our content?
publisher impressions have probably grown by quite a bit
With the ready availability of free blogging websites, and the popularity of blogs, and the fact that many bloggers have discovered that they can make money on their blogs - I think blog content is likely far outstripping what we would consider conventional content.
We have used Adsense for years and 6 figures with them per annum but I am really looking for an alternative.
Our positioning is dead on according to our rep and CTR is healthy. I know out site converts well for all sorts of things, feedback from our banner advertisers. In fact as we have become a bigger site the CPM from our banners has more than doubled as the reach and 'quality' of the site has increased.
During that same time our Adsense revenue has fallen and now stands at the same amount it was last May. Circa 40% down and that is on thousands of clicks per day not a few dozen.
The swing each day can be up to 100%. Not something I can factor into our business long term and so I am even thinking on offering an in-house adbrite type system so we can just sell the advertsing direct.
What has saved us from laying off journalists is that our banner advertsing is more than making up for the loss on Adsense.
The thing that annoys me the most is that despite our helpful rep there is just no transparency. With Adsnese now being less important to the site we might just very well drop it until they clean up the criteria for sites using it.
One good bit of news/rumour I did here was possible fixed contracts for publishers...but long term idea I think not happening any time soon.
[edited by: FattyB at 7:50 pm (utc) on April 19, 2007]
I asked my buddy who has been working with me for quite sometime why the heck Google allows these questionable if not outright bannable websites to operate within adsense.
Why would they allow the roi to be beaten down for so many advertisers with clicks that do not convert on arbitrage sites and sites that deceive users via navigation. It just doesnt make sense for the longterm. I believe Google is smarter then making a quick buck off of this so why the heck would they want so many people to bail on content with garbage roi compared to search?
* His response actually surprised me in that it made sense in a sick sort of way. What if Google was purposely letting the roi on the content network be driven down for mid-high end campaigns to force the high dollar ad budgets out of the content network and into the google search side. Said advertisers look at the content network converting less and less over time and decide to pull out, but do they pull out of search? No. Have searches bid prices increased? Yes.
This would accomplish several things, first you have a finite amount of inventory on google search. You would have bidding increase with the influx of hundreds of thousands of advertisers fleeing content in favor of the finite amounts of clicks that have a high roi on search.
Second, nobody to pay out a share of income. Since the adverts are on Googles own property, they get to keep 100% of the profit.
Third, they can maximize every dime going through the system by allowing us <content> to serve low paying cpm cpc ads enmasse, also monetizing the mfa arbi scraper parking junk to maximize total revenue for them.
So in effect you have the adsense network which is your low tier mass media low barrier to entry advertising. And your high priced side on Google search.
This made sense in so many ways it was scary. This could be THE reason they let everyone in and have almost no discretion on who or what serves the ads. In the end they will have all the high budgets being 100% payout to them and all of our inventory being RON low paying junk so we get the least payout.
We also bring in countless new advertisers to the adwords network who see the better roi on search and turn off content eventually, we are a funnel that gets switched off after the advertiser concludes the above.
Taking my tinfoil hat off now.
An imbalance between supply and demand (caused by faster growth of publisher impressions than advertiser expenditures) is a scenario that works just as well and doesn't require as much of what fantasy and science-fiction writers call "suspension of disbelief." :-)
