Forum Moderators: martinibuster
ASA seems to be implying that no glitch exists. But, given that multiple people are are reporting a similar, and substantial, CPM decrease, SOMETHING is going on. How is your CPM this week as compared to last month? If down, does it vary across channels, or it is evenly down?
The only real way to find out if smart pricing has indeed occurred is to see if advertisers have in fact paid less. So I just asked the folks over in the AdWords forum if any of them have seen big ad price drops recently.
[webmasterworld.com...]
If none of the advertisers have paid less (e.g., by the % amount you say you've lost), obviously it's not smartpricing. Google just gave itself a HUGE RAISE.
p/g
1) Dropping eCPM is not a new topic. The fact that the eCPM varies like a roller coaster has been reported since the beginning of Adsense. The nature of the topic (it's all about the money) is a guarantee for getting attention of webmasters running Adsense.
2) The best way to compare values is indeed "same period to same period", EVEN IF there are other variables influencing these values. Otherwise we would be completely in the dark, unable to compare/discuss anything. I guess this is the ultimate desire of Google, a wish come true. No more nagging questions on eCPM, revenue share, or revenues. Silence is golden, at least for Google.
3) Advertisers are given more and better tools which may certainly influence publishers metrics. I just wonder again and again why we as publishers do not get better tools, too?
4) We don't know what we don't know. Some of the statements collected in this thread (and others) indicate that "Google has cut the payout", and I am happy to cite my own lower earnings as proof. I can not comment on whether all publishers are seeing lower earnings. Only Google can. Google's quarterly earnings reports is no help, as we do not know the split between large publishers with sweetheart deals (e.g. a 100% revenue share) and smaller publishers who probably get significantly less. PLEASE, LET'S JUST TOSS THE REVENUE SHARE MENTIONED IN THE QUARTERLY EARNINGS REPORT INTO THE BIN. Where it belongs.
5) AdSense may be an auction-based marketplace, so volatility shouldn't come as a surprise. However, if this were a real market, we would have better tools to control our end of the stick, e.g. powerful filters like "by topic", "by advertiser", or "by keyword". As we are kept 98% in the dark about what goes on behind the scenes, I think it is fair to accuse the Google of maniplating the numbers.
6) By 2006 every serious webpublisher had heard of Adsense. Those who thought it is worth a trial did that trial and decided whether to implement the service. Where, I wonder, are coming the all those quality publisher from? Is there an unknown source somewhere? I also wonder why Google is not enforcing their own quality guidelines for publishers, and advertisers?
The answers to those questions, well, only Google knows them.
Yes, I admit that I am responsible for a good portion of this major drop but I can't say that I caused all of it.
Yes, we are the mushrooms.
...one should not view this a "punishing" Google- they most likely do not care and will not notice this...
i suspect that you are right, as publishers are an unlimited resource for Google.
Fwiw, I'm doing better this month over October 2006, although I also have a dramatically lower eCPM this month over last month.
good to know I'm not alone.
as publishers are an unlimited resource for Google.
which is why I'm trying my best to diversify and reduce dependence on Goog. In fact, I try to invest as much of my online earnings offline...
I don't know when the next bubble is gonna burst... and it may be Google...
I don't know when the next bubble is gonna burst... and it may be Google...
I think Google as a business is overvalued, but it's certainly *very* valuable overall. The advertising prices will go down for sure (there are several reasons for them to go down, and no reasons to increase), but Google will offset that by volume. It's the individual publishers that will take a hit.
Google will offset that by volume. It's the individual publishers that will take a hit.
This is probably why Google regards the MFA as a valuable resource rather than anything else. Ad prices can remain relatively low whilst Google's overall income is maintained by an ever increasing volume of publishers.
[edited by: JamesR3 at 4:11 am (utc) on Oct. 30, 2007]
Something has happened, but as usual with Google, we have no idea what or why.
I'll give them another month, but if I don't see some return to "normal" levels, I'm going to start switching out some Google ads to see if I can't do better with someone else. I did run tests with Yahoo, but I did not get good results, so I need to spend a little time researching what else is out there.
Luckily my affiliate earnings have been growing faster then Adsense revenue has been dropping, so I may just run more affilate ads for a while.
I have spoken directly with many of my advertisers since they are friends too and they have NOT changed their CPC
I hope this is within our TOS.
A fellow on another list not related directly to AdSense had this to say from an advertisers perspective:
The fact that almost no one uses the content network correctly is exactly the key to making it work phenomenally well. It my own testing I can buy clicks on the content/site-targeted network 81% cheaper than PPC (which is highly competitive and often overbid).Since the content network is generally inefficient (relatively irrelevant ads, in your own words) it is also priced accordingly. Very cheap. If you do site-targeting right (requires automation like Site Sniper Pro or CPM Scanner) you can serve laser-targeted ads at extremely an low price point because so few marketers do it right (they just let Google decide which ads go where and it leads to poor results).
So, yes, most advertisers don't use/like content ads (especially if they pay the same bid/click prices). But, then again, most advertisers suck. Rarely will following what "most" people do lead to extraordinary results (this forum is a great example of that... no offense intended).
FWIW - And I offer no personal opinion
Page impressions up by 80%
CTR up by 590%
eCPM up by 351%
Earnings up by 613%
Non-Google earnings have increased by even more.
I am a bit reluctant to publish the figures here for many reasons; one is that maybe others will see them as either untrue or boasting. If that's how I feel (right or wrong), you can bet that others who have increasing earnings may well feel the same.
Maybe that lends some weight to the argument that the Google payout is reasonably steady year on year, it's just that some publishers are on the up cycle and others are on the down cycle. The "downers" (I've been there and will be again) are more vocal and with very good reason.
For info, the sites are not in the premium publisher bracket, I get no special attention from Google. But the volumes on the sites are large enough for the above stats to be statistically relevant.
I don't think it's unusual to find people linking the glitch to their slump in earnings. What I saw yesterday was not normal behaviour for my account.
just out of curiosity - what pageviews and unique visitors (roughly) did you have last year? And now?
I have spoken directly with many of my advertisers since they are friends too and they have NOT changed their CPCI hope this is within our TOS.
ROFL...it may come as a surprise to some AdSensers however some of us do have real bricks and mortar businesses selling actual physical products. We speak/write with many of our widget trade friends on a regular basis to discuss how searchers found our sites that just happen to be the largest trade widget network of sites on the Internet.
This is our data, not God Google's data.
As many know we removed AdSense from all of our sites after just over a thousand clicks with our eCPM over the past few days having dropped from around 10% to around 4%. That's within G's T&C's in case you were wondering.
To put this into context, apart from May's period with a bad data push, our eCPM never went below 8% and when that happened it would only be possibly one day a month and that is after 4 years of AdSense publishing.
This morning we have reinstated it on one site and after the first 100 clicks it has already jumped by 55% and we shall continue to monitor it through the day.
Try and bury your heads in the sand, the fact is that this has been an extremely bad data push/algo implementation for SOME of us. I do not doubt that many are not seeing any problems however there are far too many posts here from long-time AdSense publishers experiencing IDENTICAL metrics.
If many were reporting varying data then it would be puzzling but they are not, check the posts again and it is consistently reported as -30 to 33% with Monday being at up to -50%.
Needless to say, the AdSense team have not responded to any e-mails, not even canned responses!
Great business communication eh?
Has anyone here already contacted the media? A tech news reporter? Which news organization would be interested? I think it would quote you without giving your name as they've done in the past.
A glitch for a few days I'd let go, but this 10-day-old screw-up by a major corporation with huge losses for some people every day is getting absolutely ridiculous!
How much longer are we going to put up with it?!
p/g
Has anyone here already contacted the media? A tech news reporter? Which news organization would be interested? I think it would quote you without giving your name as they've done in the past
I've seen some news reports but nothing that would reach a wide audience.
I'm surprised that this story has not made it to the front page of digg. Why dont we all log into our digg accounts and make this public?
Where I quoted about 10%, 8% and 4%, it should have been about USD 10, USD 8 and USD 4.
Sorry for any confusion.
I have spoken directly with many of my advertisers since they are friends too and they have NOT changed their CPC
I guess a temporary glitch is one thing but an going one is another.
Heres hoping you get a click dump or an adjustment, otherwise it'll sure seem like they are taking more.
I wonder if the timing of this report is coincidental, or this is actually why channels stopped working and then ecpm dropped.
However I have now taken the step of removing AdSense from my home page (which gets a good fraction of my web traffic) and replaced it with ads from my best performing affiliate accounts.
If I see the eCPM go up on some of my other pages I may switch back, but if AdSense is going to pay me a couple of cents per click, I think I can do better with carefully selected alternate advertising.
AdSense has some 'splanin to do on this one.
BTW has anyone seen eCPM go UP? I mean if advertisers are paying the same and a bunch of us have seen eCPM go down, if Google aren't paying themselves more, some sites should be seeing eCPM go up as much as others are seeing it go down, right?
BTW has anyone seen eCPM go UP?
All day we have been monitoring the site we have replaced the AdSense code. The CTR is now back at absolutely normal levels however the average EPC, therefore eCPM, has been consistently running at 66% of average.
I wonder/hope if they're getting on top of their bad data push and we'll see things return to normal levels soon?
Let's hope so since I've taken a lot of calls today from site advertisers asking why we had removed AdSense!
Needless to say they were quite perturbed when we told them what had been happening which then leads them to question the AdWords program.
G must have cornered the market in bad CRM!
if your ecpm is under a dollar
Without re-reading all the threads I don't believe anyone has written about an eCPM of less than a Dollar less 30%.
Personally, during this debacle, I have gone from a yearly average of more than USD 10 down to USD 4 and now back up again to just over USD 6.
All year 90% of my eCPM has averaged within 10% either side of that average and with the volume of clicks/pages I have when something goes wrong it JUMPS off the screen and grabs me by the throat immediately!
It ain't rocket science for me:-)
Some further analysis based on my stats:
- This October has seen both the highest peak and lowest peak of EPC since the start of March. EPC had been at respectable levels until it tanked unexpectedly yesterday.
- Compared with my URL channel, 10% of custom channel data for October is still nowhere to be seen.
- Despite the fact that my site has over twice as much content and traffic has increased by 40% I am now earning less from AdSense then this period last year.
Let me just reiterate, the communication from Google surrounding the channel bug has been and still is APPALLING. What's worse is that what little communication there has been (totalling 2 forum posts at WebMasterWorld, despite the fact they have an official blog at their disposal) it is also erroneous. In the last forum post by ASA we were told the bug was fixed. IT IS NOT FIXED. With all due respect ASA if you don't even know whether a bug is fixed or not how can you be sure that it hasn't affected earnings.
we don't know how to build a rocket
Maybe you do not however I know when something is drastically wrong since it is plainly obvious since my degrees in both pure and applied mathematics, and yes I could have gone on to rocket scientry, shout at me and jump off the screen when something is wrong.
Maybe that is why I am one of the AdSensers who first notices these glitches, they indicate serious flaws in bad data pushes and erroneous algo applications. G is not the only company who employs intelligent people which, I assume, may surprise some people, especially Google itself!
They do not have the monopoly on brains and talent, a fact that would be good for them to remember.
I actually had VERY severe issues with my account this month. I had no info whatsoever for 2 days, no pageviews, no clicks, no income. I contacted google for this, they admitted there was a problem (though only after a second mail, the first one was a standard mail, they clearly didn't look at the account).
Apparently they sorted it but without an explanation whatsoever. It happened again a couple of days later, I emailed again, and they admitted that again there was a problem which - again - they sorted without explanation.
Today I noticed they actually adapted all of my earnings for this period downwards! In total I lost about 15% of this month's income, no explanation whatsoever! Can they just do this? This seems to me to be illegal.
I sent another email, still waiting for a reply.
I sent another email, still waiting for a reply.
This is becoming extremely disconcerting from such a supposedly people-friendly company.
Four days now with no response insofar as we are concerned which usually means, in my 40 years business experience, that something for some of us is completely FUBAR and they have no idea how to repair it!
Tuesday ended with total expected earnings for the monitored site at 60% with an EPC of 60% of average however this morning, Wednesday, has seen an even more catastrophic drop in EPC by ANOTHER 50% from yesterday.
Another couple of days like this and my eCPM will be looking like those multi million hit forum boards in the less than USD 1 range. Not bad in a couple of weeks from over USD 10 to this!
On a brighter note we are now receiving a great many e-mails from advertisers who wish to advertise direct with us since their ads are now only appearing on the one control site.
It reminds me of Apollo 13, Plex we have a problem!
