Forum Moderators: martinibuster
As a quality publisher it would feel better to reject such ads and why doesn`t adsense offer the option for a sitewide minimum price.
Recently I had a bunch of days where CPM targeted ads resulted in an eCPM of $0.00 - yes, zero, nothing, nada, zip, nichts, de rien. Apparently there are folks out there who manage to get a CPM of less than $0.005!
But I agree that $0.01 on the PPC side are pretty weak too. I assume that the folks are the same, and I would proceed as follows to weed them out:
1) Find out the highest traffic page(s)
2) Find out the top-3 visiting countries for those pages
3) Use the official preview tool to look at the ads shown for these markets on these pages
4) Check whether the ads shown by the Preview Tool are genuine offers, or whether these ads come from dubious advertisers (MFAs and parked pages)
5) If dubious, put site to competitive filter (do not bother with trying to filter anything else than domain.tld)
6) Repeat steps 4 and 5 until filter is full.
Some may argue that this weeds out high paying advertisers as well, but in the long run quality will pay off... Just my two cents.
6 steps were offered above (there is also a step 7) and I agree that implementing those steps would help you towards getting rid of some of the 1 cent clicks.
However, you should consider the possibility that you could earn more money in the long run if instead of spending time practicing those steps you spent time adding content and otherwise making your site better to visitors.
And one other point - If you have some other means of earning income from your site, it makes sense to want to get rid of ads paying 1 cent per click and use the space for something that pays more. But don't think that just because you manage to get rid of a 1 cent AdSense ad that means you're suddenly going to earn 5 cents or 10 cents per click or whatever. Your visitors might not click on the ad that would pay you 5 cents or 10 cents.
FarmBoy
Hypothetically speaking, if you were earning $10,000/day with AdSense and it was all from 1 cent clicks, would you complain?
If I was making 100,000 every day for years, then probably.
The reason that AdSense doesn't offer a minimum EPC to publishers is that it would cause an imbalance in the system that would favor the publishers that set minimums, or it wouldn't pay anyone as much money.
Suppose you and I both have websites on the same sector.
There is a limited inventory of on-topic ads. These ads pay from 1 cent to 20 cents.
You set a minimum of 10 cents.
What does Google do?
If they fill all your ad slots with the ads above 10 cents till the budget runs out, while giving me a mix, your EPC is higher till sometime in the early afternoon, then you go to PSA or alternative ads. I on the other hand get fewer high paying ads in the morning than I normally would, and no high paying ads later in the day. Google gets less money, I get less money, and you only get a slight increase.
If Google decides that they will only continue to give you your current share of higher paying ads, and mix in PSAs throughout the day, while continuing to give me my full share, then you lose out because of all the PSAs, I get the same income, and google loses some income.
Google's last option is to give you a bunch of off-topic higher paying ads, to replace their stock of lower paying on-topic ads. This option really isn't any good for anyone and makes your site look worse.
Instead of only looking at things from your perspective as a publisher, you need to look at them from Google's perspective, the advertiser's perspective and from other publisher's perspective.
Probably it might be the time to review adsense in general.
Over the past months revenues have been utterly discouraging because of to many 1 cent clicks in conjunction with webspam and MFA sites taking over most keywords.
Of course, many are very happy with adsense, but rich quality content does not seem to be much liked by Google and adsense in these days.
If there would be an option, i would not accept any ad below 5 cent per click.
But if Google can`t offer that feature, it might make sense to use other ad networks or to sell paid links instead and focus on black hat strategies.
Probably it is the right moment to examine other strategies.
it seems, that there are operators who buy clicks as cheap as possible to convert them into better paid clicks on their own sites.
Publishers should have the right to define minimum prices for clicks.
... problem could maybe possibly be with the publisher's site.
Martinibuster, could you perhaps be more specific.
the same pages that suffer from the 1 cent clicks also generate clicks worth up to $7 at times.
it seems, that there are operators who buy clicks as cheap as possible to convert them into better paid clicks on their own sites.
I agree. Those 1 cent clicks are diverting your traffic to another site that has better paying ads on it and in all probability, that site is likely to be of an inferior quality.
Weed out the scum and reduce the number of ad units on your pages/site.
i only use 1 ad unit per page and how to find out, which advertiser is the scumbag for 1 cent.
Low traffic pages?
Review your traffic logs and run your top ten phrases through Google Search. On average, how many ads are shown for each of the top ten keyword phrases?
some pages have low traffic, some not.
But this 1 cent per click happens at all sites and nearly always the units contain the full amount of ads.
Why would anyone set a minimum if that could only lower the revenue? For the same reason that we abhor junk ads: We'd rather keep a visitor on our site, where he can discover something which will make him return later, instead of losing him to a MFA for (less than) a cent. The question isn't whether I would rather have 10000 cents or not. The question is what I have to give to get 10000 cents.
...reduce the number of ad units on your pages/site.
I've probably written this several times before as this topic comes up often, but until the end of last year I had traditionally been conservative with AdSense, usually only having one ad unit per page.
I changed a couple of my sites to a heavier load of ad units and I haven't noticed any change in average EPC.
The question isn't whether I would rather have 10000 cents or not. The question is what I have to give to get 10000 cents.
If you have something other than AdSense you could plug into that space and earn more than 1 cent per click, you're giving up income.
If you don't have something other than AdSense to plug into that space, you may not be giving up anything. If AdSense allowed publishers to set a minimum, that doesn't automatically mean higher paying ads are always going to appear in that space and/or that visitors are going to click on the ads that appear in that space.
FarmBoy
if you don`t have to sell adspace at 1 cent it simply feels better not to spoil good content with worthless ads. So i would go for a minimum of at least 5 cents.
These 1 cent ads probably only attract MFA tricksters whom Google ddoesn`t even want. Remember this unwanted business model adwords/ adsense.
How does that harm anyone?
I'm not sure who the question above is for, but I'm not in opposition to a minimum click amount feature being implemented. I'm strongly in favor of it and the sooner the better.
FarmBoy
for some kw phrases there are 8 ads at Google search, for some are zero.
Google searches will indicate the level of competition in your niche. The level of competition for your keyword phrases is low, which explains the low clicks. My best performing websites show scores of advertisers. My worst performing sites show just a few ads within a Google search for my keywords.
Your problem appears to not to be the advertiser, it is your niche. Very likely your niche does not have sufficient advertisers to support enough competition to support higher earnings per click.
thanks a lot for your comment.
Of course, if there would be more competition, the rates would go up.
On the other hand it sometimes looks like adsense sets an earning cap on publisher sites. Over few months periods i observe earning at a steady level until they go up or down for another level.
With the very same sites and pages i see drastic differences in what clicks may earn.
As Farmboy says, a minimum click feature would truly help to regulate the market. These 1 cent clicks are only helping them tricksters.
And for what it's worth, a 1 cent click isn't necessarily MFA. I use AdWords to drive traffic to my events site (which also has AdSense on it, I would add) and I've been able to maintain a great quality score for two years, and I bid no higher than 5 cents per click on 1000 keywords (city names). Some of them have minimum bids of .01 and .02. I don't consider that site to be MFA by a long shot, and why should I pay more than the minimum bid set if my ads run fine at that rate?
Martinibuster is right; it's probably your niche. I get ads on my site paying anywhere from .01 to 7.00 - I'm perfectly happy to rake 'em all in, low to high.
BTW, your niche isn't just the topic of your site, it's also your demographic. The more you can understand WHO is visiting your site and why, the better you can work on getting the best ads for them. I actually don't want ads that deal with my topic (and will sometimes block them if they are overwhelming the space) I want ads that will appeal to the people who use my site.
[edited by: netmeg at 2:45 pm (utc) on May 28, 2008]
night707, from my experience, strong competition will support a rewarding return. However even for a strong niche it's not unusual to see the daily eCPM and earnings to temporarily collapse by as much as half. It's largely about competition.
I only see 1 cent clicks on pages where the keyword phrases associated with the page have low competition, even on sites where the overall general phrases are strong. On a page by page basis, broken down by channel, I can see this effect in action. Based on the information you provided, it's fairly clear that your issue is likely lack of competition in your niche.
This is good information that will help you make a better evaluation of what topics or sections of your site are worth expanding.
Good luck.
As Farmboy says, a minimum click feature would truly help to regulate the market.
FarmBoy didn't say that and doesn't believe that.
I don't plan to set a minimum click price if offered the option. I just hope they do offer it and lots of other publishers set minimums.
FarmBoy
Google searches will indicate the level of competition in your niche.
It will give you a rough idea, but don't forget that all those ads that show up in search results aren't necessarily available for the content network.
FarmBoy
I just hope they do offer it and lots of other publishers set minimums.
I would agree, as long as Google implements it the way that I would expect, instead of the way that many webmasters would like it implemented.
