AdSense Don't Make Sense!

yo... check this stuff out...

[brownoatmeal]

I have a niche site working well... On overture I see people paying $0.65/max for bids for the best keywords that my site features...

And of course when I run AdSense, G make $.

Then why would it be that my avg. payout per click is $1.30, 100%+ more than what people pay max for on Overture.

I won't complain too much b/c I like the money they send me, but #*$!? I'd like to have some semblance of understanding about how the company that pays my mortgage works?!

Am I asking too much?

[ogletree]

Obviously people bid more on Google. AW and OV often don't sync. I have seen AW have bids that are 10 times more than OV. Also you have no idea what words the ads are bidding on. There may be some more obscure term that some people have bid up because there is not that much volume. The best you can do is know what area the bids are from.

[brownoatmeal]

Ogletree, as it pertains to what you say about people paying more just to be on Google, that makes zero ecomonic sense!

It's not as though the brand of Google is so much better that it would make financial sense to pay 10 times more for people to walk in your door.

I hear what your saying about keywords, but find it hard to believe that anyone with decent biz sense would pay 10x more just to be listed on google.

[elguapo]

But it is happening brownoatmeal. Attribute it to Google's power of their brand, perceived reach, but people can be bidding higher in G than O. It makes no sense? Nah ... it makes a lot of sense.

[LadyTi]

i think it relates a bit more to name recognition than biz sense. even the newest internet user knows the name 'google', i don't think the same can be said of the others. may just be that google's name is more 'consumer friendly' and can command the higher prices.

[Macro]

What makes you think that the click information that Adsense provides is accurate?

If Adsense is only showing you one click out of every four made on your site then your per click earning is only $0.325.

[rfung]

ASsuming the $1.30 is what you're actually getting paid for, then one word, competition?

I bid only on adwords, not on O, although I tried it. Others like me who run (more) campaigns on AW than O would raise the price to be listed.

[Sanenet]

Exactly - it's to do with local market competition. All it takes is one person on one competitive kw to start a bidding war.

In an ideal world, then the bid amount on the main PPC networks would always be the same, because if one got too high people would just switch over to another network. But since people tend to stay with their own network, you get the price variances.

[gmac17]

I think you are missing some of the beauty of adsense though. Adsense thinks you have a good site, so you get paid a lot per click. They probably pay other adsense people $.10 for clicks for the same exact term, so it all evens out in the end.

[loanuniverse]

I submit for your consideration that a publisher does not know exactly what keywords or combination of keywords are triggering the ads.

Throw that on top of using another network's prices as a guideline and the observation gets clouded.

[alika]

I agree with loanuniverse. I remember when G introduced the feature (but quickly pulled it out) when it put the keywords of the page besides Ads by Google, with the keywords clickable leading to G's SERPs. I remember thinking that the keyword for a page is "topic A" only to find that the keyword G is using for the page is "something about topic A", which does not have the same price as "topic A". It was always something different.

It is very possible that the keywords you think for a page of your site is not the EXACT keyword that G is using.