Forum Moderators: martinibuster
So I'm asking for advice from any other publishers out there who've had this problem in the past, where do you look and what steps do you take when your CTR takes a nose dive for no apparent reason whatsoever?
(And yes, I know how terrible that sounds). :)
Sometimes the ad targeting seems off, wondering if something's happened at big G with that. Section targeting tags seem to be making some headway on the worst pages. However, yesterday I got paid a fiver GBP for one click on a page - which is rather a lot I thought so I'll just plod on for now and work my other projects for now.
I simply caanot believe these incidences are normal visitor behaviour. 90% of my clicks are in the 90-110% daily range, a couple of times a month I may get an 80% or 120% day...but a 50% drop on my busiest day of the week smacks of a major glitch with their systems or algo.
It's no longer fun doing this. At one time it was possible to devlop new pages/sites and know that a return was possible, now it's like treading water.
I'm going to have a few weeks away from doing any updates just to see what happens.
For example, once a month I take all pages running AdSense with more than 100 impressions and a CPM of less than $.40 and replace AdSense with a competing ad product on those pages.
One thing that sticks out is the banner CTR has gone down, just a little but it's one of my main earners so the income is significant. Also the link units have a slightly higher CTR but eCPM has halved.
Back to the banner though, most of the irrelevant ads show up there, whereas the large boxes seem to have better ads.
Anyone else noticing similar results?
What I know is that right now Google seems to be doing a pretty big push on the AdWords side to drum up new advertiser business. They sent me twenty $100 vouchers to give to new clients who sign up for AdWords (I'm a GAP, they probably gave them to all the GAPs) They're only good to 12/31/2009 tho; if I added that many clients I'd keel over dead.
In addition, this week many of my clients received in the (snail) mail $100 vouchers if they signed up for AdWords - I got *two* myself, one for my company and one for me personally. Couldn't use 'em, cause they're for new accounts only.
So.. AdWords is going all out to bring in new business. Is it because they're suffering? Are advertisers slashing budgets, or dropping out? Mine aren't, but they have me to manage their accounts. Managing a successful AdWords account is not necessarily for the faint of heart (or for anyone who has other things to do - like run a business)
Then you throw into the mix that out of the blue they're going to start serving 3rd party ads from other networks.
Gun to my head, I'd say that some of the lowered CTR and less-than-targeted ads might well be due to reduced available ad inventory (and advertisers)
Remember, the key to what's going on with AdSense is always to be found in what's going on with AdWords. I firmly believe you have to learn how that works (and its current trends) before you can get a grip on AdSense.
Gun to my head, I'd say that some of the lowered CTR and less-than-targeted ads might well be due to reduced available ad inventory (and advertisers)
That's likely, given the state of the economy and the fact that summer (especially August) is traditionally the weakest time of the year for advertising expenditures.
Still, there could be other factors at work in any individual publisher's case. Let's not forget that AdWords/AdSense advertisers have more control over where their dollars are spent than they did even a year ago. If the ad buyer for National Megawidgets targets janes-widgets.com but opts out of johns-widgets.com, Jane is likely to have a better pool of available ads and clicks than John will.
This isn't for lack of inventory since on some pages I also have a skyscraper and that has the arrows, on some pages I have a 468 x 60 and that has the arrows and on my Coppermine gallery where there is only a leaderboard at the top and bottom of the page, the top one has no arrows and 90% of the time the bottom one has the same, very nice, widget trade graphic ad.
All my blog pages are created the same with a 468 x 60 at the top and middle and a 336 x 280 at the bottom, they ALL have navigation arrows.
I seem to be having an ads rotation issue more than anything and when page after page has the same ads on it in the leaderboard it's hardly surprising no one clicks.
Go on G, give that starter motor a hefty kick!
Still, there could be other factors at work in any individual publisher's case. Let's not forget that AdWords/AdSense advertisers have more control over where their dollars are spent than they did even a year ago. If the ad buyer for National Megawidgets targets janes-widgets.com but opts out of johns-widgets.com, Jane is likely to have a better pool of available ads and clicks than John will.
Well yea. I myself have not had a targeting problem at all; I've seen new advertisers and the old standbys. But CTR is still way way down (and of course, all I know is what *I* see, not what anyone else sees)
But I do notice that some of my regulars are only advertising in the morning (maybe they've reduced budget and run out by noon?) or on weekdays (a law firm doesn't want to run ads on weekend when they aren't around to answer the phone? maybe) and so on. So I think some advertiser patterns have definitely changed.
Yah, AdWords advertisers have more control than they used to. But I'd be willing to be a significant percentage of them (well over 50%) don't know it.
i think we all know that google discounts clicks if the user spends less than a second on the advertiser's site (or whatever the amount of time is)
maybe they've just upped it a bit, or are experimenting with discounting clicks if they don't go on to view the checkout page, or something like that.
if that's the way it's heading then it's going to be a killer.
I think very bad targeted ads are part of the equation. Lots of MFA 2.0 (sites with no content or stolen content showing ads promote the idea of low quality adsense image) and I must say, very bad experience with the interest based ads. And low inventory... I was getting dup ads too.
I'm seeing lower CTR but much higher average EPC in the last few weeks. No clue why really.
I'm not complaining though because the higher average EPC is more than off setting the lower CTR.
If I had to guess, I think it might be that the ads I see (who knows what others see) are not only very well targeted but also more "specific" in their text, like they are really targeting a narrower customer range.
Buy blue widget parts
vs
Buy small blue widget replacement blobs.
(those widget blobs are hard to find)
Two of my sites have exhibited awful CTR over the past few weeks...
CTR aside, how are the earnings holding up?
However, hos is 160-600 doing?
The word on the street is that 300-250 has the best CTR.However, how is 160-600 doing?
I didn't notice any change (for better or worse) when I switched from 160 x 600 to 300 x 250.
Even if 300 x 250 performed better than 160 x 600 in an "all other things being equal" scenario, all other things usually aren't equal. For example:
- In my case, I switched from 160 x 600 to 300 x 250 because I wanted to place a 300 x 250 display ad at the top of the right column. This moved the AdSense ad unit "below the fold," so any gain that I (hypothetically) might have enjoyed from switching from 160 x 600 to 300 x 250 was offset by the less visible position of the new AdSense ad unit.
- On pages with lots of text below the fold (e.g., a forum like this one), a 160 x 600 ad might have better overall visibility than an above-the-fold 300 x 250 ad because it remains visible for a longer time as readers scroll down the page.
Testing is the only way to know what works best on your pages, and even then, the test results may not be definitive. Also, you've got to look at the overall picture: In my case, for example, switching from 160 x 600 to 300 x 250 made it possible to place a display ad above the fold that wouldn't have been there otherwise. The additional revenue from the display ad was more than enough to offset any possible loss of revenue from the change in my AdSense ad unit.
The word on the street is that 300-250 has the best CTR.Make that 336x280.
Can advertisers opt out from particular sizes? If yes, I am wondering if they will give preference to one size over the other.
For image ads, they can choose to only upload certain size ads into their campaigns.
This *may* also explain the falling CTR....too many pay per impression ads.
Try disabling advertisers that directly target your site (ad review center). They mostly pay by impression (crappy ecpm) and compete with good CTR paying ads.
We had this problem last year. We started seeing all these un-related (kind of spammy) ads showing up all over our site. They would just take up 1-2 spots (out of 4 in a rectangle ad). But it affected our CTR big time.
We found out they were from companies targeting the category our site fell into, and not our site directly... So we could not disable it using any mechanism Adsense provided.
We had to contact our Adsense rep and request it get turned off on their end... Which they complied. The next day our ads went back to normal.
Google will tell you the CPM targeted ads don't make up much of your overall percentage, but what they don't realize is that those ads were often taking over the primary real estate spot (slots 1-2) on a 4-5 ad banner. So will they may only make up 20% of your overall ad impressions, they were affecting our CTR by a much greater percentage due to their high placement within the ad blocks.
Long story short, you can verify if this is the case by checking your stats.
But again, remember that even if the report shows a small percentage, it may still be affecting you more than you realize.
[edited by: martinibuster at 2:11 am (utc) on Sep. 15, 2009]
[edit reason] See TOS re URL. [/edit]
