Prepare for an Adsense eCPM Drop

November 16th, 2007 by Chris

As per this post at the official Adsense blog Google has now significantly reduced the amount of space in an ad that is clickable. Now only the title and URL of an Adsense ad will be clickable. The reason they say is to reduce accidental clicks.

I do not like this change. The thing is, Google created this type of advertising, they have been the standard, and surfers are probably used to their ads to the point where now they know they don’t need to click on the title or URL, just on the ad itself. This would only then confuse surfers.

Oh I agree that maybe reducing accidental clicks will increase advertisers value and raise rates, but that is a very long process to deal with and it doesn’t tackle the real problem sucking down advertiser value, MFA sites. In the meantime we’ll all have to tighten our belts I think.

A reasonable compromise would be to make all the text of an ad clickable and merely leave the whitespace (which is currently clickable) non-functional. That way users can click on the title, the text under it, or the URL, and be taking to the advertiser’s website.

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Posted in: Ad Networks »  by: Chris

10 Responses to “Prepare for an Adsense eCPM Drop”

  1. Ken Barbalace  Says:
    November 16th, 2007 at 7:30 am

    This is the way AdSense ads should have behaved from the start. It will be interesting to see what impact, if any, it has on eCPM.

  2. Charlie  Says:
    November 16th, 2007 at 7:39 am

    I totally agree that all texts should be clickable. This does not “improve user experience” as they state, in any way shape or form.

    Most users are probably not even aware that they could click the white space as opposed to the text, but I see that Google have already implemented the change.

  3. Andrew Johnson  Says:
    November 16th, 2007 at 1:45 pm

    In theory advertisers should bump their bids up as a result of receiving fewer yet more targeted clicks. Publishers with “accidental click” layouts should see their earnings plummet (presuming the cost is not already smart-priced in) while other publishers see their earnings rise.

    Of course there is no guarantee Google will pass these increases along to publishers.

    All I know is that this can not result in a dramatic drop in Google’s earnings. Or, if it does, they are making up for it somewhere else.

  4. agua  Says:
    November 16th, 2007 at 4:18 pm

    I can’t believe there were that many accidental clicks to start with – I think there must be something else behind this (not sure what though)

  5. Chris  Says:
    November 18th, 2007 at 10:52 am

    Well so far I’ve definitely got a drop, I hope it is only temporary.

  6. Kyle  Says:
    November 18th, 2007 at 9:06 pm

    My earnings per click is up about 40%.. while the CTR is down a bit. Overall earnings are up.

  7. Chris  Says:
    November 19th, 2007 at 5:56 am

    Funnily enough Kyle the one site I’ve noticed a significant improvement on is my survival site. I theorize it has more to do with new ads (possibly running in conjunction with prime hunting season that it is right now).

  8. themer  Says:
    November 20th, 2007 at 2:02 am

    Our earnings have halved suddenly because of this. These earnings only just covered our hosting costs, so will now need to look at alternatives asap!

    Funnily enough click throughs have only dropped 20%…but eCPM has dropped 55%…am confused!

  9. Chris Bowyer  Says:
    November 28th, 2007 at 11:03 am

    I was definitely worried when I first heard of this, and saw a bit of a drop in CTR almost immediately afterward, but it rebounded a bit shortly after.

    I’ve had a significant increase in CPC, however, over last month’s average. Over the last 10 days, my CPC has been not terribly far from double what it averaged in October.

  10. Tom OKeefe  Says:
    June 17th, 2008 at 3:12 pm

    Adsense has lost a lot of its luster! Of all the startups/websites that use Google Adsense as their main revenue model (according to Bizak.com) their earnings per visitor (EPV) is just $0.06. That’s not what they earn per click but rather based on the number of visitors they have. In order to make $1,000/month they need over 16,000 monthly visitors – not an easy feat. Better to monetize with services ($1.67 EPV) and/or subscriptions ($1.02 EPV).

    Even with these poor earnings 22% of startups/websites rely on Adsense as their main revenue source. 17% services and 8% subscriptions. Source: Bizak.com

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