Forum Moderators: martinibuster
AdSense is a very new medium, it will be a few months before it settles down but once it does I predict that the relative CPM will be a lot less than it currently is at the moment. It is all about results remember and advertisers will not have had a long enougth time scale to measure them yet.
Also, lower bidders will gain more exposure as more sites join the Adwords system and more ad space becomes available. That will likely create downward pressure on average EPC as well.
You just have to ride out the ups and downs as part of how the system works. Don't agonize about all the variables; just keep working on things that will build traffic to your site.
A few random thoughts:
1) When I have two or three extremely good days, they're usually followed by a day or two of lower revenues. I assume this is because advertisers who don't have daily limits have used up their budgets and haven't replenished their accounts.
2) I've seen more weekend sluggishness in August than I did earlier in the summer. That's probably because a lot of people--including advertisers--are at the beach, by the lake, or tending the barbecue on weekends at this time of year. Advertisers and bid managers have better ways to spend their August weekends than staring at a computer screen.
I disagree with bateman_ap's prediction that effective CPMs will drop as the medium matures. If anything, the opposite is likely to happen as the advertiser population expands to include long-established advertisers that find AdSense a bargain compared to more conventional means of advertising and distribution. (On my travel-related content site, I'm already seeing more AdSense ads for individual hotels, vacation apartments, etc. in addition to the usual affiliate sites and booking services. I also see a lot of ads for companies such as railpass vendors, European auto-rental firms, villa-rental companies, and river- and barge-cruise lines that almost certainly see a better ROI from AdSense than they do from ads in the back of THE NEW YORKER and other expensive print media.)
Dave.
Any short term trend is meaningless. If there are any trends in EPC, CTR, etc. it will be apparent after several more months, and probably apply only to certain sites.
John
bateman_ap said "...I believe that conversion rates from a AdSense click compared to a google SERP click will not be as high ..."
How did you come to that belief?
I know a lot of people are saying this, mainly on other discussion boards, but i have yet to see any evidence apart from poorly generated "assumptions". Our own modest tests have shown that conversion from Adsense sites is in most cases higher than from google or partner search sites and in other cases around the same. It depends on the campaign but i have yet to see anyone show me any evidence that disputes our own research enough to make a broad sweeping statement that Adsense clicks convert less well.
Same content, same demographic, I think they are pulling back the %.
[edited by: Visi at 5:27 pm (utc) on Aug. 25, 2003]
this has absolutely nothing to do with "power". I'm continually amazed at these sorts of comments. Do you complain when Mercedes sells you a car and they dont give you details on what it actually costs to make? Up to you.
Any company offering an internet service will set terms and conditions and benefits that are enough to attract the numbers and types they want, competitors or not. If Google found they were losing more publishers than they want because these publishers did not like not knowing the details of the commission structure (and it probably is not a simple percentage), then they will probably change it. Its a free market and adsense will attract or lose publishers for Adsense based on the total package. There ARE competitors if you look at the broad area of revenue generating methods for websites, and even in the narrower area of ad serving (sprinks, etc etc) and soon directly from overture on contextualized ads.
finally, what is the benefit to you of knowing the commission breakdown when you think about it? How would you use that information to make more commissions? OK maybe you can compare the commission payouts with say Tribal Fusion etc, but there are so many other factors - CPC, earnings per click, "fit with your site", payment terms, flexibility, and finally total revenue, which to me is far more important (along with revenue per impression). If there was a way you could use this info, I would love to know it...
You have the power to decide to keep using the service or use other ways to achieve revenue or sell/display advertising for your site.
Not sure who would work for someone without knowing what the pay will be but that's exactly what is happening here.
I suppose kudos should be given to Google for being able to pull it off ;-)
My key point however was that this is nothing to do with power and google somehow "misusing" that. It is simply a program that you may want to use, depending on the benefits that you see for yourself. There is no compulsion to use it, and if there was, you may have a good point!
Dave.
The big difference though between being able to figure out what you may make with other affiliate programs and Google is that they do have some idea what the revenue will be. I know that they were, and are probably still, running the ads on a cpm basis through the same networks they say you can't use. That itself is interesting. But anyway, that means they have some idea on the revenue potential or they would never pay the cpm because they aren't branding.
The least they could do is tell me what the potential might be since they know what ad is associated with my content and they know what the cpc will be when the ad is shown with my content when a click occurs. That should at least give me a ball park as to whether my content might be valuable or not. I'll gladly plug in my estimated numbers of clicks and views and such to play with the numbers and go from there.
You might not want to mention that you had some insight anymore though as it goes against the adsense TOC and you don't want the Google policebot to remove you from the program ;-)
I wouldn't worry too much about the fluctuation though. I really do think that this form of advertising is a good thing and will be around a while. I'm sure though that there will be many ups and downs. It's probably a relatively safe bet until the market is saturated and the so called 'banner blindness' sets in and such. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Like they say, don't get off a winning horse....until a faster, better one comes along ;-)
The obvious here is that people are familar with Google, that's why unlike others I think the "ads by google" branding helps us in our revenue generation. So try it, it either generates more revenue than others or it doesn't. Seems like a pretty obvious comparison to do.
In regards to the EPC discussion, I suggested earlier that you run a long term average for comparison. Stating that EPC is up or down on a certain day, or even a week, means nothing. As with any revenue generator, it must be evaluated over a period of time.
In reading other threads it is obvious that advertisers spend their budgets towards the end of a month, and other threads have pointed out the lower month end effects.
Re: possible competition. If Google widens its spread (its share of the ad $), that will open the door to competition, whether Google tells us the share percentages or not. For example, if a given adword is worth 10 cents, and Google pays us 9 cents, there's not much room for competition. But if Google pays out only 5 cents for that same adword, then Overture could come in, and offer us 7 cents.
I love the free market. :)
For example, if a given adword is worth 10 cents, and Google pays us 9 cents, there's not much room for competition. But if Google pays out only 5 cents for that same adword, then Overture could come in, and offer us 7 cents.
That's a perfect illustration of why Google would be foolish to disclose its payout formula. If Overture and other competitors knew how Google calculated its payouts, they could easily "cherry-pick" the most desirable sites by offering higher commissions to selected publishers (just as some affiliate programs do).
First of all, this was not meant as a slam to Google in any way. In my opinion, Google and Ebay are the leading companies in terms of understanding the web and leveraging its potential.
Secondly, I am not making the argument, that some have suggested I am, that Google disclose the exact payout percent.
However, I would be extremely surprised if webmasters around the world are not wondering, like I am, whether Google's payout percentage is going to remain the same, if it has already changed or if they are going to gradually lower it until they start losing sites. In my view, the fact that Google can almost overnight get thousands of AdSense partners without giving any direction in this matter makes Google a "powerful" company.
The amount paid per click has varied a lot on my site, from the beginning. Every page of a website has different content, which means different keywords at different prices.
I don't really understand all the fuss about doing AdSense or not doing it. If you don't want to, don't.
