Forum Moderators: martinibuster
This time last year we were receiving US$400-US$500 a day.
Now we are down to $60-$80 a day even though our site is as popular as ever.
We were promised this was only a short cycle thing last year. But it has only gotten worse.
If we are only one of many, it would seem Google may be experiencing a major advertiser downturn, or perhaps Smart Pricing has really kicked in (too far?). Or it might be due to the extremely large, high traffic portals now putting Adsense on their pages, thinning the inventory.
Can any other Premium Publishers throw in their experiences of the past 12 months?
[edited by: martinibuster at 1:17 am (utc) on Dec. 1, 2008]
[edit reason] OP request. [/edit]
I'd be curious to know what benefits a premium publisher has over say someone like me?
Does anyone know for sure what the criteria is for being a premium publisher?
In the past, Google's AdSense pitch has suggested that applicants may qualify for premium-publisher status if they're delivering 20,000,000 or more page views per month. But we know from previous threads that some publishers have qualified with less traffic than that, while others have been unable to qualify despite that level of traffic.
Also, being a "premium publisher" doesn't necessarily mean that you'll earn a lot per click. For example, a major newspaper site may have premium status, but I doubt if it's earning more than a few pennies per click from ads on stories about war, pestilence, or politics. It might be earning decent EPCs on pages about luxury goods, travel, or investing, but such pages represent a small part of a newspaper site's total traffic.
Getting back to the OP's dilemma, the drop in earnings could be the result of multiple factors hitting at oance (a "perfect storm," to use a phrase that I've seen in this forum). At a guess, such factors could include:
- Reduced consumer and advertiser demand because of the soft economy;
- Smart pricing, as a result of changes in Google's discounting formula over time;
- New tools available to advertisers (such as the unlimited blocking filter)
- More competition for ads as other sites churn out pages about Brangelina, Britney Spears, etc.
- Changes in Google's mechanism for allocating ads.
Individually, any one of these factors could impact earnings; put them together, and you could see a really big drop.
It's worth noting that, in the display-advertising world, newspapers (one category of general-interest sites) are now averaging CPMs of a dollar or less on everything but the home page, while certain categories of niche sites are attracting CPMs into the double digits through rep firms and vertical ad networks. Why? Because advertisers are becoming more selective about their audiences as the market tightens, and they have more targeting options than they did a few years ago.
It is also important to note that while you may think that 20% is not extremely high, those 20% would often be the first 1-2 ads slots in our ad spaces. Can you imagine how well you ads will perform if the the majority of your impressions are show non-relevant ads based solely on the fact that some spam product company (ie - weight loss!) wants to run ads all over your site "category".
I found that even if you don't allow site targeting in your channels, advertisers can target you via "category" and there is almost nothing you can do to stop it short of requesting it to be disabled through your Adsense rep/adviser.
Needless to say we had site targeting completely disabled on our account and our CTR went up immediately, along with revenues.
- More than 50 million page views per month, but not a premium publisher. When I asked to become one they told me they don't accept new premuim publishers anymore.
- Actually I have almost 100 million page views per month, but I have removed almost 50% of the ads. After removing almost 50% of the ads, the daily earnings remained exactly the same.
- One year ago my daily earnings were 700 usd per day. Now I get 250-300 usd per day with 3 times as much traffic...
Yes, I feel the pain too.
When you say you completely disabled site targeting do you mean by disabling it on your channels or by getting adsense to do it behind the scenes via email?
My stats are way off this month, 50% down on CTR and lower CPC. This is despite traffic being completely normal.
Needless to say we had site targeting completely disabled on our account and our CTR went up immediately, along with revenues.
Interesting. A number of months ago, I set up placement (site) targeting set up for a whole slew of channels, and my AdSense EPC has climbed to near-record levels: about 40 percent over the same time last year.
I suspect that the problem has less to do with site targeting than with the availability of high-paying CPC ads for the OP's site (whether because of supply and demand or Google's allocation algorithm). Why? Because, at least in theory, site-targeted ads are served only if Google thinks they'll earn more revenue than standard ads on the page.
Thanks for your comments appreciate it.
I think Google apply Premium Adsense Publisher status to publishers on a per country basis and in relation to how it is performing in each country - I am only guessing as I too thought it was 20 million page view society, which we are not quite in yet.
Thanks farmboy for your suggestion too.
[edited by: martinibuster at 4:36 am (utc) on Nov. 30, 2008]
[edit reason] See your sticky. [/edit]
Publishers using online advertising to drive traffic to pages showing Google ads must comply with the spirit of Google's Landing Page Quality Guidelines.
Before requesting this, be sure to review your site targeted stats in adsense to see even if they are the problem. Like others have said, some folks actually make more using site targeted ads. We were not, and even though G was only showing a fraction of our impressions to site targeted ads, those that were showing were always in the top 2 slots of my ad unit. And completely irrelevant to my pages.
If you need help figuring out how to run a site targeted report in adsense, search for a post by "Sockmoney" on the topic in Google. H explains it in detail.
I don't know if you read the thread started by SusanPilot, but have you checked to see if the decline in your revenue might be a result of others copying your content?
FarmBoy
decline in your revenue might be a result of others copying your content?
The total "filth" on this planet?
May they could die 1,000 un-natural deaths!
Hmmm I'm not joking...
I reasonably suspect the "trash" are monitoring these threads.
"Die, Baby, die"
