Did Adsense change their payout percentage?

[rightliner]

This is NOT a question about the recent adwords/affiliate question. My question is this: Did Google lower the percentage of payout for Click-Thrus? I used to make about 50% higher on each click thru then I do now! Perhaps it's this adword change, but that really makes no sense to me, considering there's still tons of ads running for this catagorey/industry. Any thoughts?

[dvduval]

There are so many factors that can cause change. I think the key is to diversify (within adsense and to other advetising besides adsense).

Could be there are more people serving ads in your category just like you. Could be that competition for some big $$$ kewords abated.

[sailorjwd]

If your site acts like mine... I see EPC range from x to 2x. When I graph it the curve seems to cycle fairly regularly over a 16-18 day period. This has been pretty constant since late summer.

Of course, we all know that every site is different.

[rightliner]

That's interesting Sailor, I hadn't seen that, but could explain this a bit. Anybody have any suggestions of other good Adsense-type advertising services? Anything pay anywhere near as good per click? I'd love to try some other services....

thanks!

[europeforvisitors]

EPC on the same site can range from pennies to dollars, depending on the targeted keyphrase and who's bidding what on any given day.

This has nothing to do with Google's payout formula; it's the nature of an auction-based market.

[rightliner]

Ok, I hear you Europe: but to me it seems really weird that one of the biggest markets on the internet would have a massive drop in Earnings per click like this - considering it's been paying out at the same level for the last 3 months.

[sailorjwd]

efv, There's definitly a pattern in my data between x and 2x epc... things should be fairly smooth on my site because I have about 50 different topics with many hundreds of advertisers in total.

Could it be something like the period evaluation of click values based on the automatic feedback from the advertisers that causes the cyclic swing I see?

[maximillianos]

How long have you been seeing the lower payout? If you are seeing a decreasing trend month after month, it could be that you have a user base that is mostly return visitors, and they could grow tired of the same type of ads, or numb to them.

[europeforvisitors]

It could also be a "smart pricing" adjustment based on conversion tracking and other factors.

[Jenstar]

It would only take one or two of the highest paying advertisers in a niche to opt out of content and you would notice a difference in your earnings.

[howiejs]

I have given up on this level of detail. Now I just look at monthly trends - see what topics have an OK EPC - and I build more pages around them.

I used to spend hours trying to figure this stuff out - now I am just building

[Broadway]

I agree. There are just too many variables involved to be able to determine why EPC changes so radically. I would wager that the payout by AdSense is amazingly constant. I personally assume that the changes I see in EPC are related to big advertisers blowing through their budgets and or big advertisers opting out of content.

Changes with EPC concern me but AdSense really is a roll with the punches type of program. Variables affecting my income come and go but bottom line, the two most important factors I can control is ad style/placement and producing more content. I wish I was disciplined enough to spend half as much time producing new content for my site as I spend here on WW reading threads.

[MikeNoLastName]

Install channels for high trafficed pages and Check for "Traffic Suckers": Very Targeted to your page or keywords, made for adsense pages targeted to the highest related keywords, landing page full of google ads and other affiliate ads, sometimes deep in a domain with lots of other varies content. You can bet they're bidding bare minimum.
Solution: URL filter them.
Repeat daily.