Smart Pricing is Per Site, Not by Account

Figuring Out the Truth of the Matter

[mickmel]

As far as I understand, SmartPricing is put on an AdSense account, rather than on a specific URL. Why is this?

I'm often afraid to put ads on sites of my that I don't think will convert well, as I fear that it will lower my overall revenue. If SmartPricing was per URL, I'd put their ads everywhere and just take lower amounts from the lower performing sites.

Any idea why it works that way? Or am I mis-informed about how it works?

mickey

[Biggus_D]

I already have. You wouldn't believe me if I told you about it. :)

Don't tell me. SmartPricing was designed for MFA sites and we are suffering the collateral damage.

[stakaman]

SmartPricing to me means that you get less money for more Pageviews. With no transparency that is.

[farmboy]

ASSUMING smartpricing somehow follows channels, which way does it work?

Suppose I have three pages with really good epc all on the same channel.

I have a fourth page with poor epc on a different channel.

If I combine all into one channel, do the three good epc pages pull up the fourth or vice versa?

FarmBoy

[europeforvisitors]

Don't tell me. SmartPricing was designed for MFA sites and we are suffering the collateral damage.

Smart pricing was introduced back in April of 2004, so I think it predates the explosion of MFA sites by quite a while.

When AdSense was introduced, advertisers had their ads displayed on the "content network" by default. Over time, advertisers learned to opt out if (as was often the case) clicks from AdSense publishers converted more poorly than clicks from Google Search. Smart pricing was--and is--a way to make the "content network" more attractive to advertisers by bringing price into line with value.

Even if MFAs didn't exist, there would be a need for smart pricing or something like it. With Google Search, advertisers have a pretty good idea of what they're getting. With AdSense, they don't know where their money is going ahead of time, and smart pricing is a way to make that grab-bag meal more palatable.

Side note: It will be interesting to see what effect site-targeted contextual ads have. Will we see fewer or more complaints about smart pricing when advertisers have more control over where their ads run?

[Hobbs]

In order to isolate any one effect and attribute it to smartpricing, one needs to accumulate many months worth of site traffic and AdSense metrics per channel (ad impressions, ctr, epc) as well as quantifying the perceived conversion your web site produces which is not available (even Google gets this one as the nearest guess), neutralize any external factors out of the equation like seasonal changes, advertisers density, visitors demographics changes, site niche competition, on site effects like design & blending changes, new content performance and competing with old content, quantify all that to truly measure and isolate the smartpricing effect. Needless to say this is an impossible task, even is someone is ready to waste months trying simply because you do not have access to all needed data, and some vital factors cannot be easily quantified without great cost and without calling attention to your ads.

As I said smartpricing could very well be by channel, but that's only because it would make sense to be that way, to base anything on that and build on top if it would be like letting one's imagination run wild, then following it :-)

[btas2]

Since I can't figure out how smartpricing works - and since it looks like nobody else can either - I just don't worry about it anymore.

You could drive yourself crazy trying to fight it and still lose because you really don't know what you're fighting and there are so many factors involved you're never going to know if what you did caused a change or if there was just a change based on some unrelated thing that Google did.

[JohnDoealias]

In my case, smartpricing is per URL(or maybe domain).

For example, yesterday, site A has 33 clicks and earned $7.86, with average EPC $0.2381 while site B has 25 clicks and earned $0.91, with average EPC $0.0364. Site B has always low EPC with high CTR. There were no special channels. I just use simple URL channel.

My best guess is site B has low-priced keywords and/or with smartpricing, huh?

[jason207]

what if past user behavior is also factored in, say if a user is click happy on all sites they visit wouldn't it make sense to "smart price" that user's clicks vs someone whose history involves less clicks and more conversions? using cookies,toolbar,checkout,adsense/adwords tracking, analytics etc. im sure they can get a pretty good idea of what users historically convert and which don't. Even if its not even near perfect, it's better to just make a few cents off an advertiser than risk losing their revenue forever

[Dave_B]

It is my belief that smartpricing is by channel. Recently I have set a regular schedule to change my channels names once a month. This of course means that you will have to change the adsense code on the pages but the use of includes make that very simple. My EPC has tripled for most channels, YMMV

[europeforvisitors]

Jason207, that's a really interesting thought. I don't know how practical it would be for Google to do that, but it certainly fits in with the "behavioral advertising" concept that's getting a lot of buzz these days.

[jason207]

Yeah I can see where it would really be a task to maintain and update that sort of profile and depends a lot on how long they keep that data user identifiable. I guess search data is only kept 18-24 months according to MC, so if they keep the adwords/adsense tracking stuff that long they could probably spot the extremes pretty easy and in this case erring on the side of caution isn’t a bad thing, google gets a little bit, the publisher gets a little bit, the advertiser gets cheap advertising everyone is "happy" over the long haul or at least happier than if the advertiser quits advertising all together.