Adsense users are being peanalised by a system called Smartpricing, this system will effect our income and your payment per click and drive our income to nothing but a measily 0.02$ a click of which we may of made a good earning of 0.50$ for example.
This impact is substantualy a problem for honest and self-employed members of the adsense program, I was making a good earning of 800$ per day for many months in the past... but now I'm at a low 10-20$ per day because of Smartpricing which took into the account that my traffic was high, ctr was litrally below 0.20% and the quality based on your Conversions (or guess work by google if you have no conversion tracking) has indeed incorrectly given me a bad time.
All I can say for those of you who are advertisers that You are the winners, and adsense dooms us publishers.. just know that my dream of becoming a succesfuly rich publisher has hit the bottom of the sea, no longer do I see luxery cruises or rubber ducks in a bath tub of caviar.
"Life is pain" -southpark.
Google please destroy smartpricing it has no benefit to that of Adwords or adsense users.
Seems more like Google is charging advertisers more, giving publishers like yourself a smaller percentage of each clicks profit so you could say Google is the real "winner".
Something's got to pay for all those datacenters they want to bring online ...
Im not saying I shouldnt have been smartpriced as a publisher, but as an advertiser I still pay very high prices for clicks on spammy sites.
Googles recent changes in min CPC' for SEARCH should be having NO impact on minimum bid prices for the content network.
No but my "bad guy" filter which normally is 1/3 full is now full.
Soon the Arbitrage directories (bugs that eat my flesh) that were forced over by the QS update will be uncontrolable. I know of one long time publisher(not small) from WW that has already packed it in.
[edited by: Khensu at 3:02 pm (utc) on Aug. 24, 2006]
For now, more and more people are turning off content match or bidding it very low, because of quality and ROI. This force (us bidding lower) was something G created when they allowed separate bidding for content. They could have skipped that part... left it like it was before... but they created a situation where we advertisers can punish them financially if they don't get SmartPricing right. I like that about G - not afraid to put their money at risk in pursuit of quality.
If you're a publisher (I am one as well), you've got to have real traffic and good content (good content will match things better thru adsense) to make sure your site isn't SmartPriced into oblivion.
So the quality hammer is beating us all up. I say that's a good thing in the long run.
Your product, ad and keyword targeting must be very specific for content or your ROI will be junk. I almost pays to run a totally separate but parallel campaign on content and shut the search off on it. This way you can have the most control and your bid should be 20 to 25% of your search. Geotargeting, language and timeing are also heavy factors which you can control with the isolated campagin. Start small and build it out slowly is always the best method.
A lot of people don't start it right, they just check the box and run everything the same as search, bid too high and get burned. Then shut it off and don't come back, content takes more work but can yield good results if done properly. There is a lot of volatility in the content network, it's more like playing the stock market.
[edited by: Khensu at 1:51 pm (utc) on Aug. 25, 2006]
When AdSense/contextual ads started in 2003, Google was favoring the publishers too much. This is evident in hindsight, although they probably didn't think they were postioned incorrectly at the time. Google is learning as they go. They have adjusted things so as to move closer to the center. The deal for advertisers got better as they introduced Smart Pricing and separate bids for the content network.
I am still bitter from the introduction of the content network in 2003. Google sent e-mails telling us it would happen, but I didn't think anything of it - seemed like a way to get more traffic. In one campaign we pay $25 to $30 per click and the spending increased dramatically in 2003. When we figured out what was going on, it was all due to the content network, and many publishers were using arbitrage techniques or obvious click fraud to take our money. We turned off content match and I e-mailed other advertisers in the market, advising them to do the same. The price per click on Overture remained high and went even higher, causing publishers to believe the Google price was still high.
Nowadays I either keep the content network ads disabled or, for some campaigns, run them at a lower bid than the search network. The lower bid is typically one-third what I bid on the search network, resulting in about the same cost per action when I factor in conversion rates.
What surprises me about the OP, and may publishers, is that he seems to think that because he once got $0.50 per click he should always get $0.50 per click, or higher. And that if he's getting less it's because Google is out to torment him.
Another claim you currently see over at the AdSense forum is that "I know what keywords in this market go for". How do they know? By looking at the Overture price? In my experience across different industries, the top prices are often very different at Google and Overture. And keywords are NOT the same as commodities, where all market participants pay about the same. A bushel of corn, a barrel of oil - all buyers and sellers are at approximately the same price in those markets. Keywords are different. On Overture it is not uncommon to see bids like
1 - $8.00
2 - $7.80
3 - $6.50
4 - $2.00
5 - $1.50
6 - $0.80
7 - $0.75
8 - $0.70
9 - $0.50
10 - $0.40
Now a publisher might look at that and say: this word is worth $8! But that would be wrong. There are plenty of advertisers paying under $1. Their ads might be showing up on a publisher's site, not the top bidder's.
In any case, if you look at the AdSense forum, plenty of people there are making more money than ever.
I think Google should set-up direct advertiser>publisher CPC partner deals.
My average click is 20 cents, actually that is what I believe my site space is worth. I really don't want more because 2,000 clicks per day gives me a nice profit and I think that is an affordable number for my niche. I hope that the advertiser coverts well and is happy with the environment I provide for their ad. If the deal was brokered direct through Google, they would get their nickel for the transaction and the advertiser would have a set price of 25 cents.
Everyone would be happy and everyone would make money. (in a perfect world)
If you don't convert well get back to me through Google and drop your offer to 15/20 cents, I'll work with you to make the numbers.
[edited by: Khensu at 3:46 pm (utc) on Aug. 25, 2006]
