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?
[blogs.zdnet.com...]
Maybe the explanation of all this is really simple. Google are taking more of the pie.
Bring on Yahoo in Europe as we need a viable alternative to Google.
re the article on Google taking more of the cake on zdnet, the small difference of 24 million does not appear to represent the changes people are reporting on the forum.
One thing is for sure if large accounts are seeing the same drop of 50% then Google will lose them quickly as publishers and Microsoft may just be in a position to pick up the business.
Google are taking more of the pie.
Yay, yay, yay...the media are now picking up on this, G has to start giving us explanations, ok it doesn't have to just like I don't have to forewarn them the removal of code from my sites, however this is starting to brew-up in several forums now and is becoming to look uncomfortable.
Interestingly I noted the following from the link:
Google has to split revenues with its AdSense partners but keeps all revenues from AdWords. When it went public Google's revenues were about evenly split between its own sites and partner sites. Now 65% of revenues come from its own sites and only 34% from partner sites.
Right, we can see which way this is going can't we?
Hehehe, I've even coined a snappy advertising program name this afternoon for my direct sales:-)
the small difference of 24 million does not appear to represent the changes people are reporting on the forum
Yes, but I think that figure was for the 3rd quarter of 07. We're now in the 4th quarter. Maybe Google got greedier? If they want to buy the entire world, they have to get the money from somewhere!
This could be excellent news for Yahoo of course. YPN needs more users (and advertisers) if it's ever going to grow.
Myspace and other such sites are great for a certain range of people (what is the age group on these networks probably 14-36 as a guess) - yet the market is far wider than people who use social networking sites and youtube.
That's a nice link to the znet article thanks, After google went corporate they became just like any other big business, profits at any cost, unfortunately we the ones paying for it.
I'm not sure if Google are testing the water to see what they can get away with. It would seem that the fact not everyone has experienced a drop in eCPM and it hasn't been consistent would support this.
Maybe they are trying to shake out what some algo has identified as MFA sites? Mine certainly aren't and I think they would be a whole lot prettier without G ads.
Without me Google will be around $40,000 p/a worse off (assuming they currently take 50%) 20 publishers like myself is near enough $ million. Sooner or later it's going to hurt them and sooner or later an alternative will fill the vacancy.
If they were going to take a larger cut, why not phase it in very slowly instead of just slashing the publisher's share by 30-50% in a matter of a few days. Why draw attention to what they were doing? If they phased it in slowly it would be indistinguishable from the usual long terms drifts and day to day fluctuations. Doing it all in one cut makes it pretty obvious.
The only thing that makes we wonder of Google did simply take an extra 50% is that it would be a stupid thing to do and they aren't stupid.If they were going to take a larger cut, why not phase it in very slowly instead of just slashing the publisher's share by 30-50% in a matter of a few days. Why draw attention to what they were doing? If they phased it in slowly it would be indistinguishable from the usual long terms drifts and day to day fluctuations. Doing it all in one cut makes it pretty obvious.
Kind of what I thought. However, it is possible they are just testing a few publishers and working out how little they can get away with.
In economics ther is a point at which there are optimal profits for the amount of units sold - maybe Google figure if they loose 30% of publishers but make 50% more profit this works great.
I'm not sure this fits in with their way of doing business though. This would certainly loosen their monopoly on PPC
Another question is why it is only affecting certain publishers. Do you think they might have an algo that detects possible MFA sites (correctly or incorrectly) and they are trying to shake them out or more to the point they know they can really exploit such publishers as they have them over a barrel.
they know they can really exploit such publishers as they have them over a barrel.
Interesting point, just how many of those affected here only have 1 site as opposed to multiple sites?
I'm definitely multiple.
Page views: +20%
Clicks: -10%
CTR: -25%
eCPM: -21%
If I were the only one affected I'd agree with EFV that I'm burning up inventory. Since multiple people were affected I'm guessing one of a few things has happened.
1. Overall inventory of ads have been reduced
2. G changed their targeting algorithm and reduced the quality of the ads
We have written off Adsense as a reliable revenue source- even if bounces back to it's one year average, planning a business with same or growing monthly costs and revenue that can fluctuate by 70% within 2 weeks (without any change in traffic) is impossible.
In the second quarter Google paid out 78.62% of AdSense revenues to publishing partners or $1.063 billion.In the third quarter Google paid out 76.70% of AdSense revenues to publishing partners or $1.116 billion.
The difference is about $24m which helped Google beat its earnings estimates.
Didn't Google supposedly close the accounts of a lot of arbitrage publishers and didn't that occur near the beginning of the third quarter? Wouldn't that have impacted the amount paid to publishers in the third quarter?
FarmBoy
Wouldn't that have impacted the amount paid to publishers in the third quarter?
Third quarter revenues are naturally higher than the second quarter even without the MFA's. Well guess who's making up the difference for G's loss of MFA revenue!
[edited by: OnlyToday at 12:53 am (utc) on Nov. 4, 2007]
Based on my (14 day) average values since early May, the decreasing trend in eCPM started from late September.
Overall CTR, for some reason, has been on decrease since late August.
Average value per click has been decreasing since late September.
Also, what I've just noticed, the discrepancy between Adsense pageviews and what my stat program says visitors have viewed pages, has been increasing, with stats showing increasingly more pageviews than what Adsense reports.
Are others seeing similar things based on their analysis?
As A GOOG stockholder I am outraged, as an AdSense publisher I am swindled. It's a good story, "The darling of Wall Street goes evil to beat second quarter earnings." WSJ or MarketWatch should pick it up if Foremski isn't interested. $700 a share indeed.
my stat program says visitors have viewed pages, has been increasing
If your stats package is server side rather than script and you see a lot of "direct" traffic, just ignore it. Many sites accumulate large amounts of false traffic over time.
I will give it another few days before taking action one way or another.
I don't buy the whole "Google gave itself a raise" theory. Just doesn't make business sense.
The cruel truth is - it makes a lot of business sense to me.
First - who, except Google, can safely confirm what has been happening and why? As Google does not give out any meaningful data to publishers, it can all be downplayed as speculation/conspiracy theory of "a few whiners".
Second - we as publishers may be a major contribution to Google revenue, but we are (due to the high payout percentage) not a major contributor to Google's profit. Thus I think that Adsense has a strategic value to Google (e.g. to have a somewhat believable "growth story" for investors). But it is by far not a money-printing machine like Google Search.
Third - I agree that such behaviour may not make business sense in the long run, but they might use such tactics in order to fulfil expectations.
Just doesn't make business sense.
The law of large numbers as applied to the growth of companies is what we are dealing with here; that combined with the need to produce ever increasing earnings figures to satisfy Wall Street.
It may be too soon to sell GOOG short but that day is arriving and we have the evidence right here. However it's always easy to formulate a contrarian view, if economists never disagreed life would be so dull.
And his remark
"If this indeed is what Google has done, to change the ratio of payouts to AdSense publishers, does this become an ethical issue?"
is totally headlining seeking. 2% is an ethical issue? I think not!
Some sites are up, some sites are down and the minor 2% difference between payouts in the last 2 quarters is evidence of this. Tell me I am missing something, please. But the Foremski article only nails, for me, the fact that he is an attention grabbing journalist.
is totally headlining seeking. 2% is an ethical issue?
Even if Google was taking a 90% share, that would be their business decision, has nothing to do with ethics anymore than if a kid charges a dime for sidewalk lemonade or a dollar. The 2% has nothing to do with the quarter we're in now, but it could still be significant to the many of us on this forum in this way.
Google has gone after BIG content partners in a big way. They negotiate direct with Google for the best deal they can get. Google can easily shift revenue from 1,000 little publishers to please one big publisher, so the small publisher could be losing out even if that payout percentage was rising. As it's dropping, with more publishers coming on all the time, it really does mean that Google must be paying the average publisher less. Depending on how the money is divided up and how many new publishers are coming onboard, it could be a lot less, like many of us are seeing.
I have my doubts about our future with Google Adsense, but I don't think they are being stupid, or even shortsighted.
Is Foremski an attention grabbing journalist? Yeah that's his job.
[edited by: OnlyToday at 9:23 pm (utc) on Nov. 4, 2007]
Google's smart - what can I do about it with less than 4k page impressions a day? They can do whatever they want with small publishers like myself. I used to have an ecpm of around $10 half a year ago. Before the 20th of October it was acceptable - at some $5. Now it's around $3.
I can only hope it will return to its pre-October level.
