My mini theory why 'my' revenue dropped...

The addition of About.com as a publisher

[irock]

Ok, I cannot represent everyone here... but I think I know why my revneue dropped substantially over the past few days. It's the Google partnership with About.com. I noticed that About.com PC hardware section starts to display the same ads that have been showing my site for the past few months. It's safe to say that advertisers' daily budget will be drained a lot faster with addition of such huge content partner. When these advertisers' daily budget drained, my guess is that the next lower CPC ads take over. The result is my average CPC forced to lower. Hence, my overall revenue dropped.

What do you think? Add your comments here.

[whizkiddo]

:( yes..cnet also shows them. it leads to decrease in no of ads getting displayed..consequently greater number of PSAs as a result of which less number of CTR.

[europeforvisitors]

That's certainly a reasonble hypothesis.

Still, let's look at the bright side: As more "brand name" publishers like THE WASHINGTON POST, CNET, and About.com/Primedia display AdSense ads, targeted text ads will be regarded as a safe choice by mainstream advertisers and media buyers. Those advertisers are the ones that ultimately will drive up bids and make AdSense a fixture in the advertising marketplace.

[alika]

it leads to decrease in no of ads getting displayed..consequently greater number of PSAs as a result of which less number of CTR.

I don't really buy this argument. Our revenues dropped even though targeted ads continued to show. No PSAs for us. I didn't see the draining of targeted ads in our case.

We are presently trying to reverse the trend. We realize that earnings per click are hard to influence: there's just too many unknown variables (no info on revenue sharing, no info on what keywords users are clicking on, and no info on how much the keywords are).

Instead, we're trying to improve CTR by changing ad formats and colors. We made major changes in our homepage last week, and to date, I've seen CTR improve by almost 60% -- and that is pushing up our revenues comparable to last month. Experiment and tinker with what you can control.

[novice]

I agree with alika.

I have been continuously using adwords for about a 1 1/2 years and AdSense from it's start.

Check out this example:

I have a daily budget of $100 per day and pay $1.00 per click that would get me 100 clicks at $1.00 each. After my daily budget is exhausted then my competitions' ads start at 50 cents per click. For that same $100 per day they get 200 clicks at 50 cents each.

Why would I continue to pay $1.00 per click when I know with all the AdSense publishers out there I am sure I would be able to still meet my daily budget and increase my traffic while reducing the amount I pay per click.

Furthermore Google displays AdWord ads in rotation so your daily budget is not exhausted early in the day.

Since Google does not give top listing for the highest paid click it leaves little incentive to be the highest paid.

Even if I figure the amount I spend on a monthly budget why would I want my budget to be exhausted, and pause AdWords, in the middle of the month instead of reducing the the amount I pay per click.

In conclusion I think that, in some industries, the large spending advertisers are lower the amount that they pay per click. This way with all the AdSense publishers they would get much more exposure and more clicks for their money.

[cyberprosper]

Good point, europeforvisitors!