Discrepency in revenues with a partner

Smart pricing mystery or site targetting effect?

[koan]

I share a few web sites with a partner who has a different google adsense account. We display ads on a 50/50 basis using php on these selected sites, never showing them at the same time, as per the TOS. The overal impressions results is very close to being the same, on average.

However, since a few months, I have been making more than my partner consistently. When I look at the total of the past 3 months, my CTR is a actually a bit lower but my eCPM is higher! My partner has another site that we don't share, and I have numerous others that are just my own. How can that be? The total revenue for these shared sites used to be roughly the same in the past year but the difference started to get more pronounced in the past 3 months.

I sync our competitive filters so they are the same most of the time, recently (a few days ago) I have even emptied them because we reached our 200 max, so I can start over again.

1- Could it be site targeting advertisers who target my account only instead of the web sites? I'm not sure how that works out, but if my account had a few more bidders that my partner didn't, that might explain it.

2- is it possible that some smart pricing formula is actually on an account basis instead of just sites, and my other, not shared, sites affect positively the eCPM of those shared sites, or the opposite, my partner's other, not shared, site affect negatively those shared sites? I heard smart pricing was on a site basis, not account basis, which would make sense.

3- maybe ads are just more chaotic during the summer and even over hundreds of thousands of impressions and tens of thousands of clicks, the random factor is more acute and favored me statistically.

Any theories?

[kaz]

smartpricing is account based versus based on the individual site

[mobilemaverick]

This is a joke. Further goes to prove what a load of BS adsene is.

so I guess I should use my partners account that earns about 10x more eCPM and CPC than my account, regardless of the fact both sites are almost freaking identical.

The answer to your question is, you'll never know, because google prefers to remain mysterious and tell us as little as humanly possible.

Grrrr

[europeforvisitors]

If AdSense is a "load of BS," why do you bother with it? Surely it isn't the only source of revenue that you can find?

Life is too short to work with partners you don't trust.

[vincevincevince]

It's difficult to swallow, but this happens. I am in a similar situation with a partner. Things don't match up.

I suggest you have your partner run all the ads and do the entire split.