Google is no good-igle

[vahsi000]

like, i've been watching the stats of my clickthroughs with googles adsense and the ecpm keeps dropping. I was wondering what's the lowest ecpm they've got through goolge, like or we allowed to tell each other these kinds of things (i'm no big fan of reading TOS).

[Chris]

As your users get used to the ads the CTR can drop, and the longer you run it the CPM can drop from advertisers opting out of your site.

[Dan]

What about when your CTR stays stable but your eCPM is drastically and suddenly reduced?

[Kyle]

What about when your CTR stays stable but your eCPM is drastically and suddenly reduced?

Many reasons... high paying advertisers stopping their campaign, as Chris says opting out of your site..

The EPC drops can be drastic, it's hard to speculate why.

[Westech]

Or it could be the result of "smart pricing," meaning that as google collects more data on how ads on your site convert it reduces the cpc that advertisers must pay for ads on your site. More info here: http://www.jensense.com/archives/2005/10/one_poorly_conv.html

[KLB]

For me eCPM and CTR fluctuate throughout the year in a predictable pattern. During the middle of summer when my traffic is the lowest (kids out of school adults taking holidays) my eCPM and my CTR is always the highest. Come September my eCPM and CTR falls through October as my traffic levels peak out with all the various school calendars from the world overlapping in October. After January my eCPM and CTR slowly begins to climb until it peaks again in the summer.

The reasons for these fluctuations are:
1) Higher traffic levels increases supply of ad clicks compared to the demand for ad clicks.

2) Students aren't as likely to click on the ads my site gets.

3) Schools tend to block ads more frequently than other Internet access points.

[Dan]

Westech, yeah your right, this is what happened to my games site. But I think I've figured out how and why smart pricing occurs and I'm testing some things to see if I can reverse it. I read that article a few days ago, as soon as I did I dropped all the ads from my non main website. BTW hows CMG's going, looks like its going great, getting some nice branded game deals!

KLB, I didn't really see a fluctuation, more of a sudden drop in eCPM. My CTR stayed high around 12%, traffic didn't move either. Same traffic and CTR but earning dropped from $2XX a day to $20, then $5 within 3 days! Supply/demand ummm.


I think I've now got a better understanding of how the whole process works and my place in the process. I still think that Google should make Adsense more transparent so publishers can actually optimise rather than guessing and trial and error.

[KLB]

KLB, I didn't really see a fluctuation, more of a sudden drop in eCPM. My CTR stayed high around 12%, traffic didn't move either. Same traffic and CTR but earning dropped from $2XX a day to $20, then $5 within 3 days! Supply/demand ummm.
How long have you been running AdSense on the website in question? How long have you been using AdSense in general?

[Dan]

I've been using Adsense and Adwords basically since it came out. I ran Adsense on my main site very briefly a couple of years ago, but it didn't take so I was just using FastClick. Recently I tried Adsense again, ran it on my site and it worked really well for about 6 weeks (nice CPM) then in a single day dropped hugely.

Reading back my last post it sounds a bit stupid saying 'supply/demand umm'. What I was meaning was thats something I need to look into and consider to help my understanding of the whole system. Sorry If if sounded a little cynical. That wasn't my intention.

[KLB]

@Dan,

Without knowing exact facts, figures, trends and the nature of your site, I can only make guesses at the cause. Six weeks is a short period of time to be looking at, but my guess is that you were hit by one or more of the following causes (this is based on my best understanding of how things work):

1) Smart pricing - After AdSense has had time to run on a site long enough to evaluate the conversion rate of clicks into the desired action, the bid value for clicks on ads displayed on a site is adjusted. Normally this adjustment is not in the website's favor. On some sites this can result in a serious drop in eCPM.

2) You added another site that adversely affected your smart pricing calculation. Unfortunately smart pricing is determined on an AdSense account level NOT a site by site or channel by channel level. Adding AdSense to a really poorly performing site can have a negative impact on the eCPM of all sites under a single AdSense account.

3) A particularly bad advertiser with a very performing ad negatively impacted your entire smart pricing rating.

4) Seasonal supply and demand fluctuations had a negative impact on eCPM due to the greater supply of clicks. Remember that all web traffic in general increases around this time of year, so even if your traffic hasn't changed, overall there is still a greater supply of clicks.

5) You are in a specialized niche and you lost a big time spending advertiser. I've frequently seen a new inexperienced advertiser jump in and bid way too high for key phrases only to burn out four to six weeks later.

6) Google doesn't like you.

Sorry, that last reason was just to mess with any paranoia you might have. ;)

[Dan]

KBL, thanks for the reply, your spot on!

I think number one is most likely.

Number 2 also happened which is what I initailly though caused the issue. 3 could be right but I actually think the low conversion rate is comming from my end. Not sure about number 4, is 7th of September anything major in the U.S. ?
Nope not in a specialized niche. 6 is also true :-)

When I was analysing my Adsense data I though having a high CTR would keep my earning high, now I realise there is a mystical conversion ration on the Adwords Advertisers end that I never considered as a Adsense Publisher. Now I realise how important this conversion ratio is. I think I sacraficed the conversion ratio to get a high CTR.

[vahsi000]

wow, so many posts. Firstly i'd like to say it's mainly my games review/tips website that's getting all of the links and the thing is my users are more then 90% unique, so i have fewer people are returning (yes i know this is a problem i need to work on) and they are averaging 4-5 pages per unique so i believe the traffic is quiet targeted. My question is, am i in the wrong niche to be earning money, like sure i enjoy working in this niche but i do want to earn enough to pay for the hosting by the begining of next year. I'm currently averaging 20 uniques with 100 hits per day, now how much should i be expecting to get from this kind of niche and from this kind of traffic every month?