Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Google starts a new financial quarter...
does a maintainence upgrade....
CTR goes to less than 33% of past 5 years...
and stays there for the week....still there too.
Reminds me of that long thread in October....
now what happened then....
oh yea...new quarter...
maintainance upgrade...
high number of publishers complaining on CTR rates low...
naw...couldn't be. Google would not be cycling publishers to achieve earning expectations. That would be considered...well...evil and we all know google wouldn't' want their shares back up over that 700 mark again.
Let's find out how many other publishers here are experiencing this massive drop in CTR, eCPM, pay-per-click, or whatever this month and see if it's similar to last October's disaster.
high number of publishers complaining on CTR rates low...
Nope. Actually it's about the same as always.
high number of publishers complaining on CTR rates low...
I agree!
[edited by: Web_speed at 6:10 am (utc) on Jan. 19, 2008]
naw...couldn't be. Google would not be cycling publishers to achieve earning expectations.
I always enjoy a good conspiracy theory. So what's the theory? Do you suppose that Google is skimming some publishers' click revenue? Perhaps it could be a rogue employee who's diverting clicks into his own AdSense account. Or maybe a hacker got in there and started stealing clicks. You never know, with all those millions of ads per day, who would notice if a few thousand clicks were funneled into someone else's account?
Ann
I do.
For me CTR and ECPM both are up and doing well..
We have been seeing this in the financial s for the past few quarters, where overall growth of revenue is increasing but percentage wise is focused on google serving themselves.
Or am I supporting new ventures for google, new premium partner relationships brokered on the back of smaller adsense publishers? This theory cannot be proven nor dismissed.
One item we know for sure is that not all publishers are affected...at least not at the same time. Last October we were sailing along reading the posts and feeling lucky. Well our luck has changed this quarter. Thought we'd note that for others and we will see how these upgrades impact on the groups.
This quarter we're gonna skim off... a million?
<insert evil laugh>
Why do they need a maintenance to cut your earnings?
Why does it have to be on a new financial quarter?
Why are all cats evil? And why did the cat laugh?
Well figure quarter timing as they know how much to skim back at that time to keep wall street guys "surprised".
Need maintainance update since all the cash they are taking cannot fit into wheelbarrows anymore and they need to shut down servers when dump trucks are brought in
I think if I were in charge of the profit knob at Google I would see how little publishers would accept.
But why are only some publishers feeling the pinch, while others are reporting increases or business as usual? And how does Google manage to hide its dastardly greed when total AdSense revenues and payouts are revealed to the public, the press, and the SEC in each quarterly earnings report?
I wouldn't dispute the possibility that Google has "changed something," but if you feel that you're a victim of an unannounced change, you might want to ask yourself the question "Why me, and not the guy down the block or across the street?" Could it be your type of content, or how you're getting your traffic, or how referrals from your AdSense ID are performing for advertisers, something else entirely, or all of the above? Venting about corporate evil may be therapeutic, but it won't bring you any closer to a solution.
There is no solution on the publishers end, only a question the publisher has to answer independantly, "Is it still worth it?"
But why are only some publishers feeling the pinch, while others are reporting increases or business as usual?
It DOES make sense to have not everyone affected at the same time to the same degree. This way there is no way to analyze what goes on. Some are reporting decreases, some (fewer IMO) are reporting increases, most are silent anyways. Google has no interest in a useful external analysis. Why would they?
And how does Google manage to hide its dastardly greed when total AdSense revenues and payouts are revealed to the public, the press, and the SEC in each quarterly earnings report?
Whoa! What exactly does Google reveal? Just total revenue from Adsense program and total payouts to publishers. There is no information to be found on, for example, number of publishers, split of publishers in terms of payout received, number and value of "special deals".
In other words: Google tells virtually nothing about their Adsense program.
Why?
What does Google try to hide from their publishers, their investors, and the public? Is the number of publishers already confidential information? If so, why?
Is the number of publishers already confidential information? If so, why?
Yes. Competition (current and future).
I neither agree with the conspiracy theorists nor of course with EFV's views
Some are reporting decreases, some (fewer IMO) are reporting increases, most are silent anyways.
That's human nature. People are far more likely to complain when something's going wrong, than they are to acknowledge that things are going well.
As for the question of "Is it still worth it?", that's for each publisher to decide, but it's interesting to see how many people keep grazing in the AdSense meadow instead of heading for greener pastures. Why is that? And why would anyone want to work with a company that's allegedly cheating them when it's so easy to say "Google, you're fired"?
Yes. Competition (current and future).
Erm, I don't think so.
What could a (potential) competitor see from the number of publishers? He might see that running an Adsense-like program could be interesting. Wow. That's really some confidential information.
I think, Google withholds that information, because something is hidden in the data. The data is saying too much. Imagine a huge boost in publisher figures. As a result, the average payout per publisher may decrease. This probably does not look good. It does look even less good when the breakdown into clusters would be known, e.g.
revenue share 80% - 100% = A (1%)
revenue share 60% - 79.9% = B (9%)
revenue share 40% - 59.9% = C (30%)
revenue share 20% - 39.9% = D (50%)
revenue share < 20% = E (10%)
THAT would create a riot among smaller publishers. It would be obvious why some publishers do not get to feel the improvements in new advertisers, or higher spendings.
Nah, that data is just dynamite, and Google really does not want to disclose thiskind of information. They do need the smaller publishers, as their profit margin is higher.
Disclaimer This is just a theory. Google has never and (probably) will never reveal such detailed information.
That's because it is still worth it- for now. :)
The number itself over time will also disclose AdSense's momentum, market share among the total number if PPC monetized sites..
There is no reason for a publicly traded company to disclose that much detail, you are justified to call for more transparency, but what your's asking for is the color of the underwear.
That guess is as good as any others as to why me this quarter. Personally I don't care about those who haven't been hit because that suggests that I have done something wrong to have had this fate applied to me. I am suggesting that other than I might have broken a couple of new year resolutions, my world (including my websites) is normal....except for gooogle's contribution to my bank account.
...since it's your CTR that fell, what you're alleging is that Google is selecting publishers at random and seizing 2/3 of their clicks and related earnings.
Hmmm... *maybe* it had something to do with the fact that a web visitor now has to click either the title or the link, rather than anywhere on the ad, thus reducing accidental clicks. Naw... it must be some evil plot by Google to grab a few extra pennies to add to the dollars they're already making.
Hopefully will not happen to you but this is two starting quarters in a row that some have seen the effect. In my simple mind this suggests that it is possible google has a business strategy that is impacting on certain publishers and implimenting it relative to quarterly reports.
<by the way...ads on my sites well within standards and the change would not have affected me>
