Forum Moderators: martinibuster
The bid price (and cost) for the prime keyword is now five times higher than it was two weeks ago (currently £9 / $16.5)
Yet my earnings on other sites, but of exactly the same topic, have stayed the same.
Anyone explain?
I guess G is taking a bigger chunk?
For some keywords, I never see the top bidders on my sites. I keep pretty fair record of exactly what advertisers are served to me so I can cross reference their particular bids. This way I have a truer picture of the percentage I'm receiving.
That may be part of what you're seeing. An advertiser who wants to stay at #1 has increased their bid, knowing that they'll only pay more if the #2 bid also goes up.
For instance, my highest bid is 36 cents, I think. I have contextual ads for this term turned off. I have another campaign where I have search turned off and contextual ad on. I pay 5 or 6 cents FOR THE SAME KEYWORD.
Interesting. I have never thought of setting up an adwords campaign that way. I'm going to have to try that out.
But, I think that this discussion is very relevant to AdSense earnings, including mine. Sooner or later, marketers will smarter up, and each Adsense click will yield 1/5 of the true search click.
Yeah, I've seen your strategy discussed by other people. I don't think it's widespread but the savvier AdWords users do seem to know about it.
Definitely another cause of declining earnings, and one that might get worse.
There are advertisers seeing greater returns on content pages than in search pages.
At this point, it's not crystal clear which is the exception to the rule.
While content may deliver a lower ROI for your industry, it may be delivering a higher ROI for another.
The companies are being served on the site, on a regular basis. In fact the top 7 companies are. They appear on search and contextual ad's.
hunderdown,
I know what the top price is and also the prices to get in the top 5.
If I bid £10.00, I can get top spot.
If I bid £8.75, I can get in 2nd place 90% of the time.
If I bid £8.50, I can get 3rd place most of the time.
Now that you've said that, there remain several possible reasons why you're aren't seeing more on your bottom line. What about the context/search differences that David D. talks about--or do you know what the five top bidders are doing in that area too? Since you know so much about the top five bidders, do you know if one of them has started to report conversions to AdSense, causing smart pricing discounts to possibly kick in? Do you know for sure that your traffic is essentially the same, and so converting at a similar rate?
Personally, I don't find this degree of analysis of my stats very useful, because there are so many factors that are not only out of my control but possibly even unknown to me.... I certainly don't worry about how much of a share of revenue Google is keeping, because I know I have no control over that. Look at what you can control or at least influence, and work on that.
Here is an example.
The term "PPC" costs about 5 bucks, just checked it with overture bidding tool. And it's probably worth it, when you are buying a search term. But AdSenses "PPC" insn't worth 5 bucks. No way!
This is a webmaster forum. Let's say AdSense ads were here. Here is the biggest problem with Google's AdSense and Google is actually is fixing it:
OK, here I go. This website has a target audience - webmasters.
Let's say we started talking about HTML. Ads about HTML would appear. HTML is worth about 20 cents (Overture). If we talked about AdSense, ads about AdSense would appear ("AdSense" is worth about 30 cents). If we talked about "web design" than related ads would be shown ("web design" tops at a buck). Finally, if we'd start a thread on "PPC" ads on PPC would be shown.
Now, my question is - do you see a BIG problem here? Because a lot of people don't, but the problem exists. The audience is the same and it's worth the same, but you'll be charged more based on a keyword.
For instance I can run an AdSense ad about "New PPC Optimization Tool". If I bid on "HTML", I'll pay 20 cents per click, if I bid on "PPC" I'll pay five bucks. Remember, we are not talking search here - just context. When a visitor clicks an ad, visitor does not care what the keyword was.
You'll be surprised, but I can run a context ad for PPC related product, bid on obscure terms related to webmasters, and for a number of them, I'll get a higher CTR than a context campaigh where I bid for "PPC". And if you look at ROI, you'll be amazed - you can bring people for 5 cents a piece instead of paying 5 bucks, and it'll be the same targeted audience, because your ad wording pre-qualifies them (it should, anyway).
This is why it's good that Google is going to go with banner ads - it's much more fair to bidders.
Don't forget though, that not all content sites are alike.
All advertisers aren't alike, either. They might incude:
- The no-name widget seller who's trying to generate immediate transactions;
- The affiliate who operates on razor-thin margins;
- The "AdSense arbitrageur" who subsists on the difference between PPC expenditures and what AdSense earnings;
- The established business that's looking for high-quality leads from contextual ads that can be developed into sales through traditional means.
Each advertiser has very different needs, which is why some advertisers claim that search works better for them while others report that contextual (content) ads have a better ROI.
I don't think we'll see a drop in AdSense rates across the board; rather, we're likely to witness a continuation of the trend toward advertisers paying what they think traffic is wortth in terms of ROI and/or cost in comparison to other media.
If I generate traffic for advertisers, but they cannot convert that traffic into sales, but their competitors can, then that creates the illusion to the company that cannot convert, that contextual sites do not convert well, where as, by doing non-contextual ads only, you are seeing a higher volume of eyeballs on your ads, so of course that would make the probability of conversions higher. It’s statistics.
Some companies are not so worried about seeing a return in the short term, but branding for the long-term returns.
To break the Japanese market in the early 80’s Motorola actually loss up to 25% per pager unit, but, taking that loss and breaking into the market, allowed them to profit before really bad management took over. And now that the bad management is gone, their stock has gained a lot again in the last few months.
But that is just what I am seeing.
It really did not cross my mind that advertisiers might run a seperate campaign for context away from search.
This may well explain it all.
Good ol' WW, always comes up with the answers.
