Is it true that sites targetted at US, UK etc earn more than others ?

[careerskk]

Hi, this is one doubt I am having.

Does a site targeted at US (and other developed countries) earn more than those targeted at users from India, China etc. One reason I could guess is that the advertisers from US and UK could pay more than those from India, China etc.

Can someone help me with insights ?

[dailypress]

Even as you say IF they dont have credit cards, the small percentage that do, beats the population here in the US.
...
Not sure where you heard that.... India annual credit card volume = $2 billion
U.S annual credit card volume = $1 trillion

I was talking about the small percentage of Indian and Chinese population.

[graeme_p]

Growth rates are higher in Asia because they're still under developed. This thread pertains to the current internet situation and internet shopping.

It is easier to get into a market early that after it has developed. If Amazon had waited until the US ecommerce market had developed to launch, no one would have heard of them.

You cannot shop with cash online.

My point is that the lower value of transactions may be because people use their cards less offline, rather than because they do not have cards. This means that they can still shop online, because they will use their cards when it is the only way to pay - since I move to Sri Lanka the value of my online purchases has risen (buying books and other things not available here), but the total value of my credit card expenditure is a fraction of what it was.

[graeme_p]

Growth rates are higher in Asia because they're still under developed. This thread pertains to the current internet situation and internet shopping.

It is easier to get into a market early that after it has developed. If Amazon had waited until the US ecommerce market had developed to launch, no one would have heard of them.

You cannot shop with cash online.

My point is that the lower value of transactions may be because people use their cards less offline, rather than because they do not have cards. This means that they can still shop online, because they will use their cards when it is the only way to pay - since I move to Sri Lanka the value of my online purchases has risen (buying books and other things not available here), but the total value of my credit card expenditure is a fraction of what it was.

[HuskyPup]

<disclaimer>

I know we seme to have strayed a bit off off the original topic however I feel this is an important topic to be discussed simply because different countries and markets are developing in totally different ways and not as some here would either expect or like them to.

<disclaimer:-)>

Does credit card spending on-line equate to a good economy? Hmmm...ok, I have some interesting stats from Euromonitor:

1. India has now become the third largest card market for Visa International in Asia-Pacific, after Japan and South Korea.

2. Overall consumer awareness of financial cards remains low. The use of point-of-sales terminals is also not as prevalent as in other markets. Total spending on cards accounts for only around 1% of the country’s personal consumption expenditure.

3. India remains primarily a debt-averse economy. The Indian middle classes tend to view credit cards as a potential debt trap, and increasing the acceptance of credit cards among the middle class population is a major task for financial cards companies in India.

It's strange how this thread has become focussed on India and not China.

Just ask why anyone in India or China woud buy any consumer product on-line from the USA when they are probably the ones who are actually producing it with the product available on their local market at much lower cost.

Have you ever seen a Nokia phone produced in India? Probably not however Nokia's highest volume factory is in India producing over 100 million units p.a. solely for Asia, second and third are their Chinese factories.

Stick one's head in the sand if one wants to, believe in horrendous consumer debt if one wants to, the reality is that some people/nationalities do not "feel the need" for western-style consumerism and to spend their way into unneccessary and undesirable debt misery.

On-line retail spending happens when the consumer market cannot find locally what is demanded. The USA and Canada with their vast distances and delivery costs between major population centres makes The Net an ideal example in a non-comparable world.

In Europe where the majority of its population are within ~1 hour of huge shopping centres, and even the UK has only just reached 10% of overall consumer spending on The Net which is far and away the highest within Europe, the fact is that people are still using The Net to research and compare and STILL try and shop locally armed with that knowledge.

If one wants to have an on-line "shop/AdSense/make money" and sell worldwide then one has to accept that not everyone will embrace YOUR ideals. What I may find acceptable, you may not, that is your CHOICE however do not berate any other people/country simply because they do not want to do business YOUR way, instead try and find out just why it is they do not want to.

Heck, I could go on and on...maybe this will get deleted?

[Leosghost]

A little relevant info
US personal consumer debt was 100% of GDP in two years ..1929 and 2007 ..spending what one doesnt have via credit cards etc results in crashes.

Indian and Chinese personal consumer debt ratio to GDP is around 10 to 12% ..and was also in 2007 ..

USA public debt was around 60% of GDP in 2007 ..and is now at 83% ..Indian public debt has not risen as a proportion of GDP in the same time by anything like the same amount ..it was at 58% in 2007..

Chinese public dept as a proportion of GDP was at 15% in 2007 ..it hasn't moved appreciably since ..

Most Asian countries show the same traits ..

Those in Asian countries who have "the plastic" ..tend to only spend what they can afford ..they know the financial perils of behaving like westerners ..Japan and South east Asia learnt this when their ( when they made the mistake of thinking like westerners ) property bubble burst in the last century ..

You can sell to Asian countries ..but as HuskyPup points out only by selling them what they dont already make ( and in most cases they are making and selling to the west most of what is bought in the west ) ..amongst the exceptions are luxury goods ..

The Asian market (taken as a whole) is now the largest market for french luxury goods manufacturers and the LVMH group in particular ..

In 2009 the Chinese became the highest spending nationality in the french tourist industry ( the worlds most visited tourist destination is France )..Chinese tourists spent more in total in France than US citizens did ..This year the figures are predicted to grow even further apart ..

Most affluent Chinese and Indians read English ..do you really want to shut out the future from your sites ?

[skweb]

My thoughts on having a website targeted primarily to Westerners. I am always shocked to receive visitors and emails from English speaking Asian countries because none of what I write makes sense to anyone who does not live in what I call the 'Western' world (US, Canada, Aus, NZ and English speaking Europeans). But none of my advertisers really care about non-US traffic and neither do I.

Yes, incomes in India and China have risen in recent years. I heard that some top level earners in India make USD 30-40K, most professionals make more like $5,000 a year, but if we look at the purchasing power parity, that is more like $20K. In other words, while for us here in the US, they are not desirable visitors, a very small percentage of Indian population (and apparently they are on the web) is no longer so poor. As far as this discussion is concerned it does not matter that 400 million Indians live on just about a dollar a day with no guarantee that they can have a decent meal every day or have access to clean drinking water or have any other comforts in life that we take for granted.

[netmeg]

None of my advertising clients SHIP to other parts of the world, so it makes no sense to advertise to other parts of the world. It's hard enough (and way too expensive) to ship to Canada (50 minutes away) as it is. So we, like many other advertisers, block out other countries, because there's no point paying for that traffic.

Other advertisers may advertise around the world, but if they look at their conversion rates and see other countries don't convert as handily, then they adjust their rates accordingly. Or, if they're not savvy enough, they don't.

But if the traffic doesn't historically do as well for the advertisers, it likely gets smart priced. I don't know of any types of PPC (be it advertising, domain parking, or anything else) nor any search engine that doesn't discriminate between sources of traffic. It's not necessarily that certain countries don't buy - it may be more that countries are more likely to buy in near proximity, rather from the other side of the planet.

[rajivatre]

I think the debate here is whether the sites targeted towards US UK markets get more advertising dollors.
I think being an indian I can look at it from Indian perspective.
Lets take example : Average Indian google Advertiser has option to put up his budget in Indian Rupees. So he can very well understand and manage his budget. Now if he has option of specifying less than US$ 0.05 per click or daily budget of 2-5 Dollors, why he would opt for more? (These figures are given to me by Google Sales Rep when I called up their toll free number in india.) So I am sure these are the figures google itself is promoting with average indian advertiser.
So you can easily see the difference in advertising spend by Indian Advertiser and US UK advertiser may be on per day basis.
Ofcourse I am not saying all the Indian Advertisers work on low budget or All US UK Advertiser work on higher budget but may be the average advertiser and what google sales reps telling in india, proves the point of OP.

Rajiv

[graeme_p]

Rajiv, I know of one Sri Lankan website that is directly selling ads at CPMs of tens of dollars.

Now if he has option of specifying less than US$ 0.05 per click or daily budget of 2-5 Dollors

The same as why a US advertiser spends more: you have spend eough for your ads to show.

Also, less money is worth more than none. Suppose I blocked Indian IPs, why would that make my UK or US page views more valuable to advertisers?

[rajivatre]

Rajiv, I know of one Sri Lankan website that is directly selling ads at CPMs of tens of dollars.

Ofcourse there will be exceptions but here we are talking about the general case and about adsense, not about the sites who sells ads directly.

Suppose I blocked Indian IPs, why would that make my UK or US page views more valuable to advertisers?

As far as I can understand I was not saying to block any visitors or anything, what I was simply saying that if Indian Advertiser has option to quote lower in india compare to their counterpart in US.
Also this is true only when the advertiser is advertising on sites which are india focussed.
If he tries to advertise on site with US focus may be he will have to compete against higher bids from US advertisers. So if I am indian advertiser, selling in india I will advertise on india centric sites. So eventually compete with other indian advertisers which are in the similar price bracket.
Now if I am advertiser trying to sell to US, UK market, I will have to compete with Advertisers there. So my bid may go up to match their bid.
This in IMHO gives more $$ to publishers.
Just my 2 cents.

Rajiv

[Sally Stitts]

OK.
It has been one week since I switched to target the US.
Before that, I left it blank for years.
Impressions = a few more (I added stuff)
Clicks = about the same
CTR = down 1/2%
eCPM = identical
Earnings = Up 6%

CONCLUSION - It certainly didn't hurt!
(CTR has been going down steadily for weeks, like everybody else says. It is now about 1/2 of what it used to be, while I have changed NOTHING! The only explanation I have is that we are being served less appropriate ads.)

[surfer67]

OK.
It has been one week since I switched to target the US.
Before that, I left it blank for years.
Impressions = a few more (I added stuff)
Clicks = about the same
CTR = down 1/2%
eCPM = identical
Earnings = Up 6%

So essentially what you're saying is that the foreign traffic wasn't earning you a dime. In fact, it was causing you to earn less.

[Sally Stitts]

. . the foreign traffic wasn't earning you a dime

I can't say this, because I don't know how much foreign traffic is reduced, by specifying "US" as the target.
It may be that there is no difference at all, as was stated somewhere above, and I simply had a better week, for different reasons (Google is constantly changing everything like crazy).

BUT, since there was an increase rather than a decrease, the "US targeting" stays. Youbetcha.

[graeme_p]

So essentially what you're saying is that the foreign traffic wasn't earning you a dime. In fact, it was causing you to earn less.

No, targeting would have given him less foreign traffic and more US traffic. That is very different from just losing the foreign traffic.

If you start with x US (or whatever your target/highest earning country is) and y foreign, there is a huge difference between going to:

1) y - d foreign traffic but still x US traffic (e.g. by blocking foreign traffic), and,
2) y - d foreign traffic and x + d US traffic.

I would definitely sacrifice foreign traffic to boost my UK traffic, but I would not kill off the foreign traffic just for the sake of it.

@rajive, depends on niche, in some there are also fewwer publishers. You can advertise on "US" sites that use Adsense with geo-targeting. A lot of Indian Adsense ads get shown on my .co.uk - they are probably paying less, but they only have to compete with other Indian (and global) advertisers.

[cgiscripts4u]

It has been one week since I switched to target the US.
Before that, I left it blank for years.
Impressions = a few more (I added stuff)
Clicks = about the same
CTR = down 1/2%
eCPM = identical
Earnings = Up 6%

Sorry but if eCPM is identical and clicks are about the same with a drop in CTR, how have the earnings increased?

Anyway, :

1. I dont't think a week is long enough to get a realistic view, I think it would be good if you ran for at least a month and maybe compare with same period last year.

2. Based on the way adsense can fluctuate I can't see how targeting has made any difference, heck my adsdense income this week is 20% higher than it was last week. Next week it could be down again.

[Sally Stitts]

. . how have the earnings increased?

What I stated is true. Sorry I can't put up the actual numbers. EPC was up substantially.
High EPC was offset by low CTR, resulting in eCPM being unchanged.

So, what do you think of this -
Yesterday - CTR at all time low (5 years)(used to be over twice as high)
Yesterday - Earnings very near all time high (5 years)

So, I am getting far less clicks, but they are paying far more. Was this caused by US targeting? Could it have been?

1. I dont't think a week is long enough to get a realistic view, I think it would be good if you ran for at least a month and maybe compare with same period last year.

I agree. That is exactly what I will do. But I need to start somewhere.

[rajivatre]

@Sally Stitts : good experiment, keep up posting so that long term result can be seen.

@graeme_p: yeah quite possible. I am not experienced in using adwords for audiance outside india. Most of the campaigns i handle are targeted to indian audiance and hence the competitors are also other indian advertisers.
But i can see the costs of advertisement campaign and daily budget goes up when you select different countries in adwords advertising campaign.

Rajiv

[graeme_p]

@Sally, eCPM is the same, so you traffic must have increased as a result of US targeting?

[cgiscripts4u]

What I stated is true. Sorry I can't put up the actual numbers. EPC was up substantially.

Sorry Sally but what is EPC?, I have not heard of it but I may be behind the times (very likely).

As Graeme_P stated your traffic must have been up by about the same 6% or more as your other figures are static or down and this could well be because, as you say, you have added stuff to your site.