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?
Today is Halloween, so hopefully that coupled with it being early in the reporting day explains the results I am seeing so far.
I guess it is time to see what yahoo is offering or am I wasting my time on that one.
There has been some change, without a doubt according to all my statistical analyses inclusive of channels and year over year comparisons.
I fast-tracked a redesign of one of my sites. That increased the CTR (between 2x to 3x) & CPM (slightly) of that site. Unfortunately it's one of my smaller sites so although it's making more, it doesn't change my bottom line much. Now I'm thinking of fast-tracking a redesign of my main money-maker in an attempt to bring revenue levels... I mean CPM levels back to where they've been...
I've decided no one really knows what's going on :) Whether it's California fires, a problem at Google, the US economy, a market correction, etc. I don't think we really know. Whatever the problem, let's hope for a better November. I know I'm going to keep looking into AdSense alternatives. So far Kontera is working out very well for me.
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.
Lol! You might not want to return to Adsense! Seriously, if you can do it, direct advertising is a solid way to diversify your income. As mighty as Google is, and as many top engineers as she's got, she's not infallible.
p/g
You might not want to return to Adsense!
However I do not want to do that:-(
AdSense for me and my advertisers is so simple to manage. I don't need an advertising department and I don't have to create all the back end stuff that Google supplies. Every cent I get from AdSense is my beer money, I have no one else to account to:-))
It would be easy enough to set-up rotating contextual banner ads and charge a flat fee per month but to provide all the info that G does? Not even considering going down that route...yet!
I'd rather remove the ads completely as I have done except for the one control site and wait and see what happens.
Interestingly, and I have absolutely NO IDEA if this is connected but it is highly co-incidental, since removing all the ads and bearing in mind our strength in the SERPs, real B&M enquiries and orders have gone through the roof!
EPC has recovered somewhat this afternoon to 66% of average but obviously still disappointingly low in comparison to the rest of the year. All my log metrics are completely, guess what, normal.
Interestingly, and I have absolutely NO IDEA if this is connected but it is highly co-incidental, since removing all the ads and bearing in mind our strength in the SERPs, real B&M enquiries and orders have gone through the roof!
We may be seeing something similar, it's just hard to quantify in a short period of time. One of the reasons we stuck with Adsense at the beginning was that it seemed to improve our sell-through, possibly because our own "advertising" is so laid-back people thought we were just an information resource - the ads woke them up to the fact that something commercial is going on. But I dropped an entire Adsense channel last week due to pathetic eCPM and orders popped. That channel accounted for maybe 20% of our Adsense page views.
I'm pretty much settled into the paranoid explanation at this point, that G is A/B testing lowering payout and it's just our turn in the log. I assume it's irreversible, very little reason for them to increase payments unless they start running out of publishers.
How long does it take to get into YPN for a trial?
How long does it take to get into YPN for a trial?
No option for us since we're outside USA and Jerry Yang's in the UK at the moment promoting how good the Yahoo! brand supposedly is!
Hahahaha...
Ad units per page: 1-3. Mostly 3.
Ad formats: Varies. Mostly the largest rectangle.
Text versus image: We have some blocks set to text only, and some text/image, on the same page.
there might be some kind of bug or trigger that those of us suffering from the CPM decrease are activating
I have a feeling it has to do with the insertion of Google Referrals. Do you use those?
Ok, I'll bite :)
Just for reference, I'm doing fine, or better, and have the following on about 1,300 or so of my roughly 1,600 pages.
1 - 160x90 AdLinks unit (4 links)
1 - 300x250 adblock (set to show both text and images)
non-standard about your ad settings and see if there is a pattern.
Nothing changed in at least 2-3 years.
Interestingly I've just been checking my AdSense page impression stats, clicks etc and I could cover them all with a postage stamp so small a variation have the numbers been over the past few months!
This is a bad data push of the very worst kind for some of us which is what makes it so strange when others are reporting stable or even good months.
Just what is wrong with our sites to have been spanked so hard?
- 1 336 x 280 block
- Set to text only (no images)
- No Referrals
- No AdLinks
- 2 custom channels used
- Allowed Sites feature not used
- 'AdSense for Content' only (no 'AdSense for Search')
- No changes made for a year
Also I should add that my brother runs a similar site also in the exact same subject area and he is not affected. So it is not a seasonal cause.
What kinds of ads are you using, what text settings, and are you using Referrals?
1 x leaderboard and 1 x horizontal AdLink
Don't use referrals.
- Multiple ads per page, 336 x 280 block or horizontal banner.
- Set to either text or text/images
- Did use referrals when the problem started
- No AdLinks
- Lots of custom channels
- Allowed Sites feature not used when problem started
- 'AdSense for Content' only (no 'AdSense for Search')
Here is what I am drawing from this so far:
1) It wasn't a change we made. More than one person says they changed nothing for a long time and this happened to them.
2) It is not ad-format or ad number dependent.
3) It is not referral dependent.
4) It does not have to do with Allowed Sites, probably, because if it is not postiviely correlated with Allowed Sites, being negatively correlated with it (i.e., no allowed sites = problem) would make the problem too common (most people would be seing it, assuming most don't use allowed sites).
5) Not AdLinks related.
6) Could require the use of custom channels, given the recent channel bug, although I find that unlikely since I would assume that almost everyone uses custom channels (do you?).
Be nice to have more data, but the few replies so far seem to rule out most theories: Either we are all doing different things and still have the problem, or we are doing the same thing, but it is very mainstream and would therefore be expected to affect a huge number of publishers if that were the cause.
We do not know that it doesn't affect a huge number of publishers, but my guess at this point is that it affects << 50% or there would REALLY be some complaining going on.
Also I should add that my brother runs a similar site also in the exact same subject area and he is not affected. So it is not a seasonal cause.
A/B testing strikes again.
[webmasterworld.com...]
saying we were quitting until Google made an official statement saying that referals wouldn't be counted in site eCPM. ASA posted the following reply
Our referrals product managers confirmed that referrals 2.0 won't hurt your AFC performance or stats, and has no affect on smart pricing. So please feel free to experiment with referral ads on your sites and find out what works for you.
Now it's entirely possible that their referrals product managers were simply wrong, or the policy was changed and the data was later rolled into site eCPM. But several publishers in this thread who are getting killed now report they never fooled around with referrals.
Oh, and we never have more than one ad unit per page, text only. Compared to October 2006,
eCPM is down almost 20%
CTR is unchanged
Page views are down 17% (we've dropping low eCPM channels)
Bottom line is down 30%
The low eCPM channels we've been dropping weren't traditionally low, they just tailed off in the summer and never came back.
We do not know that it doesn't affect a huge number of publishers, but my guess at this point is that it affects < 50% or there would REALLY be some complaining going on.
It could be a test to see how the test sample reacts before full application. We do know Google staff read these forum messages even if they don't read your email complaints.
We really have no idea what percentage of publishers visit this site to guess how many have seen a significant loss in revenue. But I don't recall as much outrage and discussion over problems with Adsense as we see here and now.
I was wondering if big/medium/small accounts were hit/targeted. I just don't know how to ask that without asking publishers to reveal their income.
If Google is trying to swipe a pile of cash, you'd think it might strip big accounts to make it worth its time. Not the biggest publishers, of course, because they're presumably negotiated deals, and Google doesn't want to risk losing the account.
We do know that when one big account moved to YPN, the publisher was called by Google and asked to return "home" to Adsense.
It must be nice to have that type of success where Google actually cares. :/
p/g
This should be a wakeup call to those considering giving up their day job and depending on Adsense for income. Google could cut 50% of us off tomorrow or cut everyone's payout by 50% and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it except complain and try to find a better advertiser
If there was a better contextual advertising service, people would be using it already. I ran Yahoo for a few months on a subset of pages and it sucked. If was even worse then AdSense is now. Of course if enough people (both advertisers and publishers) moved to Yahoo, it might get better, though given their track record to date, I doubt it.
Google are big enough and rich enough to do pretty much whatever they want and they don't have to tell you what it is or why they did it.
edit: also: i had a total of 2 (two!) pageviews one day, I run adsense on about 10 different websites, this seems a little bit too off, no?
*Reporting went wierd on 23rd Oct
*Average revenue from 1-22 Oct: $82.75 (eCPM $5.42, impressions 15,271)
*Average revenue from 23-31 Oct: $43.34 (eCPM $3.29, impressions 13,548)
Now that is a mighty strange coincidence.
This is across about 10 sites and looking at last year there was no drop off in revenue at this time of year
Have they got some untrained trainees attempting to do this work now? Doh!
Makes perfect sense to me.
In other words: they are probably trying to see whether they can get away with this.
by cutting the eCPM by 50%, Google can beef up their bottom line by 100%
The WSJ reported this morning that Google shares are up 20% this month on expectations for their mobile phone products. Maybe the real reason is WebmasterWorld speculations:-)
This should be a wakeup call to those considering giving up their day job and depending on Adsense for income. Google could cut 50% of us off tomorrow or cut everyone's payout by 50% and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it except complain and try to find a better advertiser
For most people, the same is true of the day job. It can be eliminated, the compensation reduced, etc. Just ask anyone who has experienced a downsizing, buyout, etc.
FarmBoy
