Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Smart pricing has dropped my site's income by 60% to 80%, and that's no exxageration.
Okay, for those of you who are still riding high, two months ago, I was you. My first impression when reading posts like this was, "Okay, another complainer. If you guys maintained excellence in your sites like me, you would not have to worry about smart pricing."
Well, my site is a niche, content site. The only difference between guys and gals like me and those who are still high fliers is the mysterious, unexplainable, seemingly uncorrectable smart pricing. It would be must easier to stomach if I knew what was wrong so I could fix it.
I've been adding Amazon and other affiliate programs and will be slowly phasing out AdSense but monitoring what I still have. CPC averages up and around .30 have dropped to under .10. I never wanted the $2.00, $10.00 or $20.00 clicks. I was completely happy with my little cost clicks. I can only wish I still had them.
Below are my problems with Smart Pricing...
1. The goal of a web site ad is to bring targeted traffic to an advertiser. Once the click is made, the site has done it's job, period.
2. Most who use AdWords never pick up a book on advertising or converting traffic to sales. It should not be the fault of the publisher that the advertiser doesn't convert.
3. When I use AdWords (of which I am also a good customer), if a specific term does not bring the desired result, I discontinue that campaign. I don't expect to be reimbursed or discounted for something I tried that didn't work.
4. Finally, in previous lives I ran other businesses. When I put an ad in an industry periodical, if it didn't work, I could not contact the publisher and ask for a refund.
It's been almost two months now, and I have made efforts. I created an eight-page section on a particular topic. It took me two weeks as it was filled with content. When I put it up, .05 and .07 clicks were the result. It is just so discouraging.
I will still use AdSense until I can optimize other things to bring in higher CPM, but I am just so sick. Two months ago I was almost 30% of the way to the UPS club and climbing each month.
Sorry to bring anyone down. I guess I just wanted to vent to my WW buddies.
[edited by: Buzliteyear at 9:57 pm (utc) on April 30, 2005]
ridiculous...I have tried a few ads from cj.com but it isn't converting at all in comparison.
Brandon
Is it possible that the ratio of supply to demand has changed because of fewer advertisers or more publishers in your niche?
Has there been any change in your search-referral patterns? (Different content types or topics may get different EPC and clickthough rates.)
Smart pricing could easily be contributing to your reduction in income, but other factors may be hurting you, too.
I was going to post a very similar comment but I knew a regular poster, would post quickly, saying it was your own fault.
Lifes to short!
dregs33
I use adwords and adsense, for my main keyword on adwords, the cost has stayed constant for two years. On my main website that displays ads, often about this word, my income from adsense has dropped 70%-90% since the beginning of the year, I also, like Buzliteyear, attribute this to smart pricing.
My site is not a scrapper site and has hundreds of business users and has unique content.
dregs33
What's so frustrating is the fact that affiliate programs like cj, amazon, azoogleads on my sites are doing better each month. So a decrease in epc, cpm, what have you, based on "smart pricing" just doesn't make any sense.
I've checked my sites regularly and the adsense ads have not changed much, in fact, it has gotten better each month. Traffic to my sites have been increasing about 5% each month.
kz
It is simply impossible to do valid statistical analysis on seriously incomplete data.
It is also impossible to extrapolate the "results" of ANY statistical analysis onto other sites (even in the same field) because the relative quality of the content among publisher sites varies so widely.
The smart pricing algorithm is really just making low quality guesstimates about the "liklihood" of a click on a particular page resulting in a conversion. Hence the seemingly random effects of smart pricing (both positive and negative from the publisher's point of view).
There is only one entity that can accurately determine the value of a click - the advertiser.
The evidence is clear - the smart pricing fiasco is costing Google big-time already, and it will only get worse when real competition arrives on the contextual advertising scene.
Does Smart Pricing strikes whole website(www.yourdomain.com) or some links(www.yourdomain.com/some_contents.html) of your website?
I'm not sure about this so asking you.
Just be strong, guys.
It should work out in some future.
There is only one entity that can accurately determine the value of a click - the advertiser.
And they've (G) adressed that by giving the advertisers the choice on where they want their ads to show.
I think this could be the first steps of the phazing out of smart pricing.
And they've (G) adressed that by giving the advertisers the choice on where they want their ads to show.
But only for CPM ads, at least for now. (That could change in the future, of course.)
I've been using Adsense for a month at <snip>, and I've seen the same thing the first poster described. eCPM has dropped by 60% since Google's "Smart Pricing" announcement. At first I thought it was something I had done (we moved from one ISP to another, and rebuilt all 1800 or so pages of the site) but based on what I'm hearing in here, that's not the case.
--Howard
<snip>
[edited by: Jenstar at 3:09 am (utc) on May 4, 2005]
[edit reason] No URLs or signatures as per TOS, please [/edit]
I am one that is going to run to Yahoo once they open up their publisher network.
When it happens to your own site it's not nice to watch, but luckily it only encourages me to go out and find more traffic, which is never a bad thing!
My site converts above average with cj ads so this tells me that it should also convert for adsense ads.
Maybe or maybe not, depending on the diversity of your site, how good (or bad) a job Google does of targeting ads to your pages, and whether users who click on AdSense ads are doing price or product comparisons between your AdSense advertisers and affiliate vendors.
I am one that is going to run to Yahoo once they open up their publisher network.
As the saying goes, "the grass always looks greener on the other side." But it's a bit early to count on Yahoo when they haven't yet revealed their acceptance requirements and other policies.
1. The goal of a web site ad is to bring targeted traffic to an advertiser. Once the click is made, the site has done it's job, period.
But why does that have to mean the advertiser has to pay the same premium for all kinds of traffic? As an advertiser you have very little control over where your ad appears.
2. Most who use AdWords never pick up a book on advertising or converting traffic to sales. It should not be the fault of the publisher that the advertiser doesn't convert.
Generalize carefully. This is different for every site in every industry. A smart publisher uses a mix of AdSense and traditional affiliate marketing. Personally, I use AdSense only when a traditional advertiser through CJ / LS doesn't convert well.
3. When I use AdWords (of which I am also a good customer), if a specific term does not bring the desired result, I discontinue that campaign. I don't expect to be reimbursed or discounted for something I tried that didn't work.
When a campaign fails across the board, there's something wrong with the campaign. When it only fails on a small percentage of sites, those sites simply aren't sending the quality clicks that their peers are. If you feel that your traffic is worth more than what AS is paying you, tear down the code, and get some affiliate links up.
4. Finally, in previous lives I ran other businesses. When I put an ad in an industry periodical, if it didn't work, I could not contact the publisher and ask for a refund.
I've never seen anybody get an AW refund for anything other than fraudulent clicks.
It's been almost two months now, and I have made efforts. I created an eight-page section on a particular topic. It took me two weeks as it was filled with content. When I put it up, .05 and .07 clicks were the result. It is just so discouraging.
It's the nature of the business! Too many people want to get paid more for doing less. You have to work hard to make AS work for you in the long run.
Started off BIG with AdSense at the very beginning. As soon as they created/enabled Smart Pricing, my revenue dropped 60%.
BUT... look at your site stats closely (per channel/URL). I have several sites using AdSense and the ones with higher CTR have higher earnings. It makes sense, though. Reward better performing (read: converting?) sites with a better cut of the revenue.
I believe Smart Pricing is based almost solely on CTR. I don't know what other criteria they could realistically monitor.
Anyone disagree?
Are you sure that smart pricing is the only reason for your drop in income?
Is it possible that the ratio of supply to demand has changed because of fewer advertisers or more publishers in your niche?Has there been any change in your search-referral patterns? (Different content types or topics may get different EPC and clickthough rates.)
Yeah, it's smart pricing.
There are no shortage of advertisers for my pages. It all happened in one day too.
In response to some of the other posts, of course it has to be about the advertiser. I have more banner customers than I can handle, and they are happy.
I just think that market value should dictate price and not the conversion rate as deemed by a third party (Google) entity.
If they don't want to eliminate smart pricing, they (G) should at least shed some light on how it works and what we can do to improve the performance they measure via smart pricing.
With the current system, we can only speculate how to improve our sites.
It's a bit discouraging to work on pages, upload them, watch revenue climb and then watch the whole thing systematically decline toward zero.
Maybe it's my niche, but, hey, it was up there for a few days, but then it just started to drop, drop, drop. The pages are still as relevant as ever, but I see the same ads over and over and over, and I think that's a real problem, especially if these same ads are subject to smart pricing, they will just end up going to zero.
As a former newspaper publisher, if an advertiser complained to me, I would move the ad to better location on a page (I've done that), to a different page, but most of all, CHANGE THE AD.
I don't believe G has such an interest in the long term viability of small niche sites that they would do anything to actually improve their CTR. So it goes...
Adsense, while the revenue can be good for a while, it is too inconsistent and there are too many unanswered questions, thus it is a major disappointment.
Once a site reaches a certain level of acceptance, one would expect it to stay roughly at that level, not decrease in significant ways.
...not counting last week when I thought I was being so clever by improving the visibility of AdSense ads in one area, and the CTR on those pages dropped in half. I changed it back and the CTR went back up.
