Forum Moderators: martinibuster
For me, epc has slid downhill rather continuously, while total earnings have progressively increased (this is only due to constant content creation and, at some point, adsense becomes not the most efficient way to monetize)
Anyone else? (this thread only provides useful information if a large number of people chime in)
The reason is pretty simple to deduce: My Google referrals took a 75% hit on March 23, possibly because of the www/non-www duplicate-results issue that has been discussed in the Google News forum. Many of my travel-planning pages (which produce the highest EPCs and CPMs) got hit harder than my image-library pages (which don't pay nearly as well). I'm actually surprised that my AdSense EPC and CPM aren't down more than 17%, given the fact that many of my high-traffic pages at the moment have always been lousy revenue producers.
If my Google referrals and traffic hadn't taken a hit in late March, my EPC and CPM would probably be unchanged or even better than before (a reasonable assumption for this time of year, when lots of people are planning spring and summer vacations).
To summarize, I have no complaints about AdSense EPC; my only beef is with Google Search. :-)
April 05 (approximate)
Pageviews 1.6x
Earnings 2.3x
June, July, August 2003 were fantastic in terms of EPC and EPM. But it was easy enough to predict that that would not last as the launch of Adsense represented a major shift in the market. September 2003 saw a steep decline.
September 2003 - April 2005
A steady but slowing decline with some bounce back periods. Overall down by about 30% on average.Happily traffic has doubled/tripled which means revenue has gone up. The good news is that it can't go down much further because I'm already scraping bottom in terms of EPC. But even with scraping bottom on EPC, Adsense pays a pretty penny.
Impressions down (due to AdSense being removed from low-performing pages).
CTR -- doubled
CPM -- up 40%
Total earnings -- up about 30%
EPC -- down about 30%
So far as I am concerned, the story is that I am back up to pre-smart pricing earnings. April 04 was down a good bit from March 04, and the slide continued into the fall, when I was earning less than half what I had been in March. By finding a better position for my ads, I improved CTR, and by taking AdSense off pages on which it didn't work, I freed up space for other programs, so earnings from AdSense are not up at the expense of other income.
Is this going to continue untiil it is no longer worth it to promote Adsense? I wish someone could hold Google accountable for this. It's no wonder they beat earnings expectations every quarter, all they have to do is keep adjusting their payout levels each month.
You also seem to be saying that Google is keeping a larger split of AdSense earnings to itself. They aren't reporting that in the financial information they release--they report the same split, just increased advertising revenue overall. If you think they are keeping a larger split while reporting otherwise, then you must believe that they are making fraudulent reports to their stockholders.
Don't jump to conclusions from limited personal experience.
Note that I haven't done much of anything to change AdSense on my sites. No change of colors, no major changes in placement. I did add a new site in January, but its stats track well with the other sites, so it's not responsible for the increase. The only real changes to all my sites is that traffic as a whole is way up for all sites.
--EPC down by as much as a half on one site.
--EPC essentially unchanged on another site.
Overall, a slight downturn in EPC.
oct. = x
nov. = 2x
dec. = 2x
jan. = 4x
feb. = 4x
mar. = 8x
apr. = 8x
I focus on getting traffic that I know will convert as opposed to just getting higher numbers in the logs, and I feel that has assisted with keeping a steady EPC while increasing traffic.
Hopefully May will bring 16x :-)
my effective CPM has declined from about $18 a year ago to about $10 last month
Is 10 CPM worth it?
That really depends on how well other affiliate programs convert. But in terms of straight up banner serving that's fantastic. Only a few select sites get more than a few dollars CPM these days. The truth is that 90% of sites get less than 50 cents CPM (when you factor in ad servers cut and defaults served) for banners and usually less than 75 cents CPM for skyscrapers.
Without overgeneralizing (because some sites really do convert well in the affiliate market), Adsense created a market for publishers that just did not exist. 10 CPM is a revitalization of the good ol' days. It only too bad that they let every tom, dick and scraper takes a piece of the action.
* EPC: 0.34
* pageviews: 3.0
* CTR: 4.5
* earnings: 4.5
No complaints here ;)
Revenues: 195% increase
CPM: 82% increase
CTR: increased 3x
EPC: 38% decrease
Overall, we're very pleased with the program. We take it as a given that we need to increase pages and add useful content if we want to maintain or increase our income. Of course it is great if you could just maintain the same number of pages and see the returns on those pages continuously increase. Alas, the reality of the Internet is different from the dream.
