CPM drop with no reason

Same traffics, same ctr, but cost per click drop

[burntan]

Hi, I am having a small website which I promote using Adwords, the first few days I put up the site with Adsense, it is quite promising, I get an average profit per click is about 15 cents to 20 cents. However lately, with the same amount of traffic and CTR recorded in Adwords and Adsense traffice report, the value for each click is drop to 4.6 cents.

I didn't change anything at all to my website, same content, same ads placement and format.

What happen? Please help.

[petra]

Two Words, SMART PRICING, or is it just one?

[burntan]

what is that mean? can you kindly explain more?

[DingoNY]

My AS CPC has been cut to anywhere between 10-20% of what it once was.

I will be dropping the program. It is now a waste of valuable screen space.

[max_mm]

I will be dropping the program. It is now a waste of valuable screen space.

I've already dropped it off 98% of my pages. They can rap their 1, 2 and 3 cents in a plastic bag, write "smart pricing" in big capitol letters on it and s***** it up.......

There are better alternatives out there. G$ engineers....pay attention. The suckers parade is about to be over.

[lammert]

(smart pricing...) what is that mean? can you kindly explain more?

Smart pricing is an addition to the AdSense program that Google introduced about one year ago. It is an algorithm that determines the probability that a click on an ad results into a conversion (sale, lead etc.)

If according to the algorithm the chances are low that a click results in a conversion than the bid price is not paid, but only a fraction of that. Reports from other members on this boards have been that because of this CPM can drop 80% or 90%. Google introduced smart pricing to keep advertisers interested in advertising in the content network.

How the smart pricing algorithm works is a Google secret, but it could be calculated based on geographic location of advertiser and visitor, referring site where the visitor came from, number of pages the visitor read on your page before clicking the ad, etc.

[burntan]

So, you believe "smart pricing" is the cause of it?

Currently I pause my Adwords promotion for that site already, even I get a break even with my Adsense from that site, it is really no point to waste my site traffics.

I really don't understand, I use Adwords to promote my site, I only target US, Canada, UK, Australia & N.Z visitors, there are all genuine visitor with interest in my site content and related topics (Adsense ads), if not they won't click my Adwords to come in. I play no trick with my Adwords, I tell exactly what they expect to find in my site.