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?
I guess the hard lesson for me here is that if I had kept this channel deleting thing to myself it might have worked for me. <sigh>
Oh well... it was a nice thought that we could fix it that way :)
...the AdSense honeymoon looks like it's over.
Now I am seriously testing the waters with various affiliates and my history with affiliates is filled with trials that involved thousands of impressions and no money. I guess it was only a matter of time before this day arrived. <shudder>
While the minimum CPC price is down at 1 cents, I believe things will even get worse..
I, as an AdSense publisher, am able to advertise on AdSense with a 1 cent CPC price, and the surprising thing is that I see myself at the 1st position or 2nd on many websites. This means 0.5 cents to the publisher!
Does it have to be that easy? I must not have the chance of appearing even in the first 5 with that click price, but I can! Of course, this has lot to do with the site/ad theme, there will be some themes that you can never get into even first 5, but I believe that's a low probabilty.
Google's AdSense system must rank advertisers with different metrics, and it must drop those 1-2 CPC advertisers down in the ranking, even their CTR's are higher. An ad unit's CTR will not drop from 5% to 1% if that 'high-CPC-but-1-cent-paying' ads are disappeared. The unit's CTR will drop to 4% maybe but it will still earn to the publisher.
1-cent ads? Advertising on the net must not be that easy. I think that's the main long-term problem..
(Apart from recent down of eCPM's)
Regards
"I agree. You would really have to be on this side of the fence on this one jhood, it's not the usual bickering that comes with a slump near the end of the month. I've never seen anything like it in all my time as a publisher."
I didn't mean to say, imply or even hint that many publishers aren't seeing a real decrease. My numbers are down too, though not as drastically as others. Personally, I think Google is finally reaching the point where it has more inventory than it can sell, just like everyone else.
(Someday I will learn how to insert quotes in boxes like everyone else).
Compared to the same 7 day period as last year, my CTR dropped by half and my ecpm is 1/3 of what it was last year. If this continiues, I'd do better looking for quarters under the boardwalk..
I've put a decent amount of work into my sites over the last couple of years and the net result is I'm working for about 2 bucks an hour...
Anyway, whining won't help. The question for me is what do I do at this point?
1. Continue to work on the sites hoping things will turn around and get back to normal with Google or that some real competition will come into play
2. Focus my efforts elsewhere so as to not throw good time after bad.
3. Focus on some alternative ads.. either direct, ypn or affiliate.
4. Join the dark side of the get rich quick MFAers.. (can't do that... I have to look at myself in the mirror each day)
So, with choices 1 2 and 3 as the only real alternatives I see, I'm going to go with 2 for a while. I have a website for my consulting business that is stale and needs a heck of a workover. If a rework brings in more than 3 hours of extra consulting a month, I'm ahead of what I'm doing in adsense right now.
Once I get that site where I want it, I'm going with option 3. A lot of my sites are in a travel niche and the affiliate programs there pay fairly well.. I'll probably revise the sites to emphasise the travel affiliate ads and move adsense to a secondary position.
If adsense starts going back to normal, then I'll go back to concentrating on adsense...
cg
removing ads wouldn't help ...
this can be glitch, something with channels or smart pricing in my case
Has been glitching strongly downwards for publishers since around the beginning of 2006. The recent downturn is no glitch either...
I'm thinking that there might have been some corrupt data that couldn't be properly credited. I'm hoping for more if that is the case.
2. Focus my efforts elsewhere so as to not throw good time after bad.
I spent the entire summer improving my site and I'm proud of my accomplishment. It is getting good traffic so people are benefitting from my work and one day something else may develop from it. But for now, I have a new found freedom.
(Adsense) has been glitching strongly downwards for publishers since around the beginning of 2006.
I agree. Now almost one year later performance suddenly drops a few increments further and some of the publishers who were once considered immune begin to feel the pinch.
Is there any commonality among the sites bemoaning the loss of revenue due to lower CPC rates? It's one thing to read a long list of complaints (of which there will be typical dominance in a venue such as this), it's another to attempt to actually research what might be the cause... because certainly there are publishers not having the same problem.
For example, while we saw a slump early last month (typical for the beginning of a new quarter) and during the channels issue, after that we're back to normal. On top of that, we're up slightly over this time last year (accounting for also traffic that is nearly twice the levels of this time last year).
We're a content site... lots of it... and lots of new content every day... most of it contemporarily relevant.
What type of sites are experiencing dramatic CPC/revenue reductions?
Just realised my eCPM is EXACTLY half what it was last month.
Me too within a very small percentage margin.
After my initial excitement that the problem had been resolved yesterday my metrics were back in the pan again.
My question is "Where to next?".
Even though I have more valid traffic, clicks etc, compared to the "heady" days of 2006, plus taking into account the depreciation of the US Dollar and if I were to assume my daily average earnings were to continue the same at this new lower rate, then my ACTUAL earnings will have been reduced by 66%...YES, 66%!
Like many others I don't have the YPN fallback and even if I had, certainly within Europe, very, very few advertisers are using YPN within my widget trade. In fact, my widget trade's only other advertising is through traditional trade magazines.
For me this now has to be crunch time with AdSense, their appalling lack of customer service and zero response leads me to feel that they really could not give a damned about the publishers who are suffering from THEIR implementation and its consequences.
Do they have any idea what they are now doing to their already tarnished reputation amongst many small publishers?
After my initial excitement that the problem had been resolved yesterday my metrics were back in the pan again.
For the past couple of days, I have seen a very strange pattern: one day eCPM is 50% above average, the next day it is 50% below average, then again 50% above average, and so on. It is very very frustrating, and I am seriously considering to pull all Adsense ads.
In any case, this is NOT cool.
It is very very frustrating,
The real annoying thing is that for a few hours yesterday my EPC went back to normal, then, WHAM, "Sorry" said AdSense, "we don't want you to feel that your site has any value to us any more".
I'm at the point of creating a newsletter and e-mailing my 25,000 opt-in widget trade subscriber base and throw it up on our forum board to see what, if any, reaction I get.
At this point I don't give a jot about G's T&C's, they don't even have the courtesy to respond to me, why should I bother what they do and say now?
It's not even beer money any longer it's that pathetic.
At this point I don't give a jot about G's T&C's, they don't even have the courtesy to respond to me, why should I bother what they do and say now?
I understand your sentiment. But what do you want to achieve? Do you WANT to be banned? Then you would have to ultimately submit to Google, in my view. It's completely different if YOU pull the ads for a longer period. Then (possibly) they understand what you are trying to say.
In short: I would not do it.
Do you WANT to be banned?
Perhaps that's not such a bad idea!
It would certainly make me decide what I truly want to do with the future development of my sites however the way things are going right now their T&C's are meaningless when earnings for sites that until a couple of weeks ago were earnings hudreds of Dollars a day and are now struggling to earn ten's of Dollars.
I have very valuable real estate and G's renting it for nothing right now, very clear, very simple, and it ain't going to last much longer.
when earnings for sites that until a couple of weeks ago were earnings hudreds of Dollars a day and are now struggling to earn ten's of Dollars
What KIND of site are you talking about here? Is there a specific content model that has fallen out of favor?
What KIND of site are you talking about here?
High value, niche construction products, trade widget directory, international, national and retail supply sites.
The widget trade's doing fine, all my metrics are normal, only G totally outta whack...thanks to them I am spending all day Saturday analysing metrics.
I can tell you this, my wife would like to meet the people who've mucked-up our weekend plans!
I've now added them back in on a couple of pages and they are no longer underperforming AdSense. This is probably more because AdSense is starting to suck then it is that Yahoo have improved, but still, if you have a dormant YPN account, now might be the time to give it another test run.
I'm still waiting to hear from publishers who have seen earnings increase by the same amount that most of us have seen it decrease. This should be more or less a zero sum game unless Google are taking more as profit or costs to advertisers have suddenly dropped.
BTW Google have a booth at the Ad-Tech conference/exhibition in NYC next week. If you're attending, please stop by their booth and let them know what's going on and ask them for an explanation!
I have very valuable real estate and G's renting it for nothing right now,
After analysing for hours and hours I have come to the conclusion that Google is haemorrhaging data from one of my core sites.
The metrics are, quite simply, appalling, yesterday saw a 50% reduction in CTR compared to the last couple of weeks to a zone it has never been to and the actual clicks were far, far less than average weekend clicks.
My logs show normal!
I immediately removed AdSense completely from that site therefore it will be interesting to see the next 24 hours' data.
Considering they've been having data problems, is it at all entirely possible that they could be losing your data too?
Is all this happening to people all on one specific Google server? I have no idea, just throwing up possibilities.
Whenever a negative time like this comes around I like to look at the positives. There are always positives. I starting to imagine a working life without AdSense (how sweet that would be!) and I have started to work more fervently on my latest project. It's amazing how much AdSense has dictated how I work and how I design my sites.
What KIND of site are you talking about here?
Art here. Art content, product reviews, niche directory, and sell my own products.
I have about a 60% reduction in eCPM now. (It's getting worse.)
