CPM Ads Lowering Earnings?

Many Advertisers are tageting my site.

[Edge]

I have well over 800 advertisers targeting my site with thousands of different ad blocks and the numbers are growing. I have just started using the "Ad Review Center" function and am blocking illrelevant ads. I am a little overwhelmed and am not particularly interested in spending an hour daily blocking liposuction, real estate and MFA ads.

Are the proliferating CPM ads lowering my eCPM? Has anybody done the deep dive and reached a conclusion of the cost effectiveness of CPM ads from AdSense?

I am putting together a plan to measure the earning effectiveness of these targeted ads any suggestions are welcome...

[zett]

Edge,

I had accepted CPM ads since their introduction until recently when I asked to opt-out of the program.

After introduction, the eCPM for CPM ads was below average for PPC ads. While it may have been higher than the eCPM from PPC for those individual pages, the overall effect appeared to be negative (i.e. not the way Google has sold this to us). The percentage of CPM ads was so low that we actually did not care, though. We let the ads continue.

Then came a long period (about two years or so) where the eCPM was ABOVE the average CPM (from PPC) for the individual channels. So, during this period, the CPM program seemed to work just fine. During a short period we even noticed serious traffic for CPM ads, along with a good CPM rate. At that time we even had high hopes.

Since the beginning of 2008, the eCPM rate from CPM ads dropped again to below the average for PPC ads. Significantly. In fact, it dropped so much that we decided to opt out of the program. No need to spend time with the awful ad review tool. No need to support bottom feeders. No need to worry about unrelated ads. In short: lots of benefits for us.

You can check the performance by yourself. Go to the account panel, and check the reports page for individual ads (make sure to include separated stats for PPC and placement targeted ads). Get all historical data and save as CSV. Then write a small script to make that data useful and accessible, e.g. in a spreadsheet. This will let you compare CPM and PPC performance.

[Edge]

Zett,

Thanks for the information, but I don't see how I can view "separated stats for PPC and placement targeted ads" within my control panel. I other options?

[edited by: Edge at 5:31 pm (utc) on July 7, 2008]

[signor_john]

Are the proliferating CPM ads lowering my eCPM?

Low-paying CPM ads are a symptom, not the disease. The real culprit is a lack of higher-paying CPC ads for your pages or site.

[zett]

In the account panel, select "This month, by day" under the "Adsense for content". Then select "Individual Ad" under "Show data by...", and check the checkbox "Show data by targeting type - contextual or placement". Then hit "Display Report".

You'll get for every day the PPC and CPM figures separated.

[Edge]

Thanks zett, learned something new... Apparently, I need to study my control panel more.

My Contextual ads are showing approximately 95% of the time with a higher CTR, however the placement ads are paying twice to four times more based on eCPM.

So, killing the placement ads does not appear to be a good idea. I will continue to study the relationship between the two.

Again, thanks!