Forum Moderators: martinibuster
For this day (17 May), does it mean that they will pay for April 1-30 earnings, or for May (1-18) also?
Anyone think this will add more money to regular publishers?
When Google started to implement their AdWords quality score in the middle of last year, I saw a decline in my bottom line due to the number of MFAs disappearing from my ad blocks. Average click price fell due to less advertisers competing to be placed in my adblocks.
When the MFAs totally disappear from the playing field on June 1st, this may give another decline in my bottom line. But as already mentioned less publishers to show the ads of the remaining advertisers may increase the earnings per click.
Time will learn.
The money on my account is xx,#*$! dollar. That's all the money I have earned but has nog been paid yet.
Once the purge is over (and Google lets advertisers know it has been done) I predict that we will see a tremendous influx of new advertisers on the cleaned up content network.
I'm predicting that by this time next year many of us will see a doubling of income (then I'll be back to 1/4 of the good ol' days).
Yahoo and MSN continue to fumble their advertising balls - while Google kicks them there.
I've been searching the news feeds but haven't seen word of this yet.
Yet, I honestly think the sudden total ban forever is unjust.
It may or may not be just; more likely it's simply a matter of pragmatism. Since they've decided that your operation does not fit their business model, in order to let you back in, they would necessarily have to spend more time and effort on you (and the rest of those who got the notice) to make sure that your sites are what they want in the program. Some percentage of those people (not necessarily you personally) would probably be attempting to game the system - that requires monitoring and reaction as well.
The whole thing comes down to efficiency and ROI. It would probably make more sense, require fewer personnel, and add more to the bottom line to keep a gazillion low maintenance publishers than it would a few thousand high maintenance publishers. If resources were unlimited, you might get your second chance. But resources are never unlimited.
Yet, I honestly think the sudden total ban forever is unjust.
[edited by: callivert at 5:43 pm (utc) on May 19, 2007]
Put another way, can we find a significant # of folks who get nearly all their traffic from AdWords and nearly all their revenue from AdSense, but aren't being banned?
Or, slightly more precisely (but probably nearly the same group): people for whom almost all AdSense ad clicks have the same IP address as a very recent AdWords ad click, but aren't being banned.
I wonder if Google thought long and hard about simply banning this group from AdWords, not AdSense (sending the message: drive other SE visitors into an AdSense pit if you want, but not people clicking on AdWords ads).
G stands for Greed.
This is a cause for celebration, and I feel no sympathy. Google provided the funds for them to exist, it is time G cleaned up it's business model to stop supporting them.
This can not do anything but benefit quality websites.
I feel this is the smartest thing G has done in years.
Back to Watching,
WW_Watcher
[edited by: martinibuster at 7:12 pm (utc) on May 19, 2007]
[edit reason] TOS #4 & 19. [/edit]
Not sure if it's related, but Thrs May 17 & Friday May 18th were exceptional in terms of performance.
Ditto, the only difference is, it is according to my calander date.
banning ina friendly manner
If Google thinks some of the clicks generated via MFA converted for their advertisers, but they do not want MFA any more, it is logical that they closed them down this way.
So do you people realize what this mean? It means that Google has only taken action against MFA sites now. ONLY NOW!
p.s. FOREST is a navigational menu that consists of 150-200 links to word related by topic pages on left or right side of page with in a site and a couple of other UNIQUE QUALITY WIDGET sites.
:)
I say honest webmasters deserve a second chance.
Maybe Google thinks on average that the type of people doing MFA sites and arbitrage are the type of people always trying to game the system, so it's a judgment of character as undesirable business partners. It was written black on white in the TOS that pages shouldn't be made just for displaying ads (or barely, which in spirit is the same thing).
MFA aren't harmless. For one, think of the untold hours that real publishers have wasted trying to hunt down MFA to put in their competitive filters instead of creating real new content that could have increased their bottom line. They have been hurt by this.
Second, MFA sites seriously discredit the Google ad system and many will not click on those ads anymore. Another financial loss for real content providers.
It's like spam. One spammer may not be that bad (although personally, I disagree) but the spamming phenomenon has seriously hurt businesses and the email system in general. So if it was possible, I would ban all spammers from using email forever.
If I am not buying any traffic from Adwords, then am I safe from this banning thingy?
FYI I have 0 clicks last month, and about 3 clicks this month. Will Goog overlook my account because of the low volume?
This all sounds so scary.
[edited by: PowerUp at 7:00 pm (utc) on May 19, 2007]
Yes, you are safe from being banned for running 'arbitrage' sites.... and no, you are not safe if you are running sites that break Googles TOS for AdSense.
I seriously doubt Google would be doing this if they didn't see profits going up long term. Restoring trust in Adsense ads can only be a good thing.
Sailor, I don't see that at all.
I think the end result will be flat to slightly lower. Let's boil it down. MFAs are able to work arbitrage because -- for the most part (hate to generalize) -- they have thin content and highly (overly) optimized ad placements. So they can spend $0.03 a click on ads that are clicked on four times as much as the $0.10 ad (because they are better written, more effective, etc.) with a 40% CTR on the landing page.
Why is it that an arb's $0.03 ad got featured above the dime ad? By wiping out the arbs, clickthrough rates will fall, $ per click will rise, yet overall CPM should be slightly lower (or else the arbs would have never been doing this to begin with).
We can applaud that the Internet will get less noisy and softer on the eyes as a consumer, but I can't see it getting any more lucrative to us as publishers? The numbers don't bear that out.
It's naive to think that advertisers are going to jump in with more high-paying ads as a show of confidence. For a sponsor, a lead is a lead. Whether they come from your content site or an MFA's wall of noise, the clicker steps into a new site the same way. If anything the MFA may help the advertiser with a "phew, what a relief -- a REAL website" moment to disarm.
I would be shocked if I'm wrong and this becomes a more lucrative event to us as publishers, though I'd certainly welcome it as I too have seen AdSense CPM drop every single year since 2003.
Are any of you running pure MFA sites and doing no arbi at all? In other words 100% organic, bookmark etc traffic with no PPC traffic coming to your site?
Trying to figure out if this is a pure arbi ban with organic MFA sites getting caught in the middle or if pure organic MFA sites are on the outs too.
I get 2/3 of my traffic from Adwords and 1/3 from a dozen page one organic listings, so I think I am pretty safe (software download site).
clarification: is Arbitrage when one has a mfa site with Google ads and the traffic is from google ads as well?{
Or from Yahoo ads, MSN ads, etc. Arbitrage is profiting from the spread between what you pay for an inbound click and what you earn for an outbound click (regardless of where the clicks are coming from or going).
Anyone think this will add more money to regular publishers?
Maybe, but not necessarily right away. In fact, publishers who have been getting a lot of MFA ads may see a decline in earnings because of falling ad demand in the short run.
If there are less networks pulling a hundred grand a month's worth of advertiser money through arbitrage, does that mean there will be more money for regular publishers?
Possibly.
Will this help improve advertiser confidence in the content network?
It should help somewhat, but I think site-targeted contextual ads will help even more.
Can I clean my filter yet of all this flotsam?
I'd wait till June 1st. ;)
Though I did hear (and not fully understand) something about eBay changing its affiliate model in a way that might discourage the dictionary-dumping from their end too. I hope so.
Oh, and staying in my filter will also be those fine upstanding individuals at WW and elsweher who announce in public that 'ethics is optional in business' while accepting G's pieces of AS silver!
Rgds
Damon
