Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Traffic is the same, I don't have image ads enabled and I can't be targeted by anybody - at least that's what I believe.
I'm tired of chasing up to see which irrelevant or badly worded ad(s) might be the culprit. I am tired. So tired of trying to keep track without the necessary tools - tools which would make the job easy, if only they were of the calibre of tool that you find in Adwords.
I'm just sick of the whole thing. I give up.
<end rant/>
[edited by: Scurramunga at 7:35 pm (utc) on Mar. 17, 2009]
Down 33% compared to yesterday which just so happened to be precisely the month's daily average EPC.
I guess now is the time to start researching alternatives.
Too late for many, I'm replacing Google ads with my own!
Too late for many, I'm replacing Google ads with my own!
...and hanging on that subject there for a minute. Does anyone have any good suggestions as to an alternative? I've tried a couple of the top contextual networks with very little success. Their targeting is worse than AdSense. How's Amazon doing just now for example?
I've been phasing Google out for a couple months now. It's nice getting back to doing what I do because I like to do it. Fortunately for me my income doesn't rely on the internet.
I'm sure Google will be reporting record profits at the end of the quarter- and that is great for their shareholders. Maybe the shareholders can publish ads too.
Did you guys really expect this to last forever?
What's so inevitable about its decline?
What's so inevitable about its decline?
What isn't? What all could be different from, say, two or three years ago?
Lessee, there's the economy, the number of advertisers, the number of publishers, the number of crap advertisers, the number of crap publishers, the number of competitors in any given niche...
EPC more or less steady over the last twelve months.
Possibly the economy but more likely ad blindness, I rarely look at AdSense on sites I visit so why would anyone else?
I rarely look at AdSense on sites I visit so why would anyone else?
Rarely. However on a couple of recent occasions whilst researching a couple of different products, I decided to give it a try.
I found that many of the ads took me to pages that did not adequately match the search at best. In many other cases the ads were misleading - Surprise, surprise.
These were experiences I encountered on the search network. So Imagine the rubbish which exists on the Content Network
I rarely look at AdSense on sites I visit so why would anyone else?
Let me answer a rhetorical question with a real-world number: $1.69 billion. That's the amount of revenue generated by AdSense ads in Q4 2008, which suggests that quite a few people are looking at (and clicking on) such ads.
If there are x amount of internet users out there exhibiting ad blindness, that number can only increase in the future as other internet users become familiar or wary of advertising pitches.
The whole point of contextual advertising is to deliver relevant sales pitches. It's like "endemic advertising" in trade and enthusiast magazines: People who are interested in the topic (and who may be researching purchases on the topic) often want to see ads. Indeed, market-research surveys have shown that some people subscribe to certain publications partly because of the ads.
"Ad blindness" may well be a problem on sites where visitors have no interest in making purchases or obtaining information about products and services. I know that I pay very little attention to ads when I'm reading a news story about AIG bonuses or Natasha Richardson's fatal ski accident. But if I'm reading a review of a Wi-Fi router and I see an ad for Wi-Fi Router City, there's a good chance that I'll be receptive to (or at least aware of) that ad.
Fact is, AdSense ads have been around since 2003, and they've been almost ubiquitous on the Web for much of that time. The fact that AdSense revenues have grown quarter after quarter after quarter suggests that the AdSense train is a long way from running out of steam.
Did you guys really expect this to last forever?
I think the point here is being missed. Not so much the failure of the system, just the individual publishers within it.
The attrition rate of publishers has got to be very low. As long as there's money there, there will be someone to take it. Now, the question is, how little will a publisher take? That's pretty easy to answer; Just diminish their return until some go away. If a few too many go away, there will be others to take their place.
Again- Did you really expect this to last forever?
Being lousy at math, I don't do much analysis but I decided after reading these posts to do something very simple -- check the CTR and EPC for our site during the first 19 days of March over the last three years.
Results: CTR is down almost 50% in that time period (we have added AdSense units during that time, which skews the results). But EPC is up markedly -- not quite double but close to it. Overall earnings are up but not -- naturally -- as much as they "should" be.
How do I feel? Well, I'm mad as hell about the declining CTR and somewhat miffed about the much higher EPC (hey, how come it hasn't gone up more?).
What makes me feel good about AdSense is looking at the absolutely abysmal results from the other ad networks that take up space on our pages.
Advertising has always been a roller-coaster business. You're only as good as you were today, as they used to say. Not much has changed except that AdSense has opened up the field to smaller advertisers and smaller publishers on a scale never before imagined.
Some people spend every day working on sites designed to serve a need, a serious niche, and they make serious money using AdSense. If you had a hobby site in the same niche where someone else has a serious business site, expect the business to keep chipping away until it's taking money away from the hobby site, assuming the hobby site was ever on the radar in the first place.
Basically, I'd suspect the serious sites are just out maneuvering the hobby sites, dominating the SERPs, and collecting all the best paying ads because they deliver the best ROI for advertisers while the hobby AdSense ads get the bottom of the barrel leftovers.
If AdSense isn't performing for you, and if you can't find better-paying alternatives, you need to ask yourself why you can't find better-paying alternatives. Your problems may be related to your topic, your type of content, your implementation of AdSense, and/or your audience. Web publishing is a competitive business, and it's getting more competitive all the time.
Regards...jmcc
I think the difference is that AS won't say anything, just let a publisher wither away and die on the vine.
Generally, it appears to me that something drastic is happening between AS and many of it's publishers. Maybe it's the economy and maybe not. But it appears to be the AS version of layoffs.
Don't forget, advertisers have a lot more control over ads than they did in the early days of AdSense. For example, they now have both CPM and CPC placement targeting, they have unlimited domain filters, and they can bid separately on the search and content networks. The network has come a long way from the "anybody can make money with AdSense" days of five or six years ago, when advertisers had to choose between accepting the lowest common denominator or avoiding the content network altogether.
Also, the number of Web publishers and pages displaying AdSense ads could easily be growing faster than the number of ads and clicks available. Take a relatively new site like Examiner.com: It already has something like 1.5 million pages and 15 million page views per month. Today, you aren't just competing with other moms and pops: You're competing with high-traffic news sites, massive sites like Examiner.com and Suite101.com that are one step up from "user-generated content" sites, social-networking sites, and a zillion other bloggers and small-time Web publishers. Think of an exponentially-growing rabbit population competing for the lettuce and carrots in Farmer Brown's field. Even if Farmer Brown increases his production by a few percentage points per quarter, he won't be able to keep all the rabbits from going hungry.
They best way to beat tumbling CTR and eCPM is to put the coffee on, turn up the Green Day and keep publishing!
I wish we could all be as optimistic as you :)
I wish we could all be as optimistic as you :)
I have to work hard on that too... but it helps not to worry about how many other fat rabbits there are, or how few carrots there are left in Farmer Brown's field. Not leaving the house and spending as little money as possible helps too. As for me... I'm a reformed adrenaline junkie so I've definitely got the stomach for this.
Even if Farmer Brown increases his production by a few percentage points per quarter, he won't be able to keep all the rabbits from going hungry.
Great analogy signor_john:-)
Since sites such as Examiner thrive on the volume traffic it makes even more sense to have a widget niche site wouldn't you say?
Since sites such as Examiner thrive on the volume traffic it makes even more sense to have a widget niche site wouldn't you say?
That's my attitude. The megasites go for breadth of content, and they seem pretty much geared to drive-by visitors who devour a 300-word article, are still hungry, and click on an ad. They're the Web equivalent of high-volume, low-margin businesses--a strategy that works for Wal-Mart but isn't practical for moms and pops.
They best way to beat tumbling CTR and eCPM is to put the coffee on, turn up the Green Day and keep publishing!
Yes, but in go in different directions, maybe horizontally.
For example if your site is about contemporary housing design, consider new site spinoffs such as building materials and building services, landscaping then somewhere down the line move on to energy efficient applications such as solar hot water electric generation appliances.
The new topics will most likely be equally affected by the downturn, however you would have effectively cast your net further. Who knows it might pay dividends when the economy eventually recovers and you find yourself established.
I am working on two new sites at the moment. Non of them will contain Adsense ads (for now anyway} but they will sell products that are remotely related to the products sold on my main site
