OK - all my sites got hit hard with smart pricing... my bottom line decreased by 100 buck for September and October - despite the fact that I had increased clicks and over thousand more unique visitors per day. After a lot of reading of posts here and jensense blog... here is how I cured the Smart Pricing problem. I reviewed my stats over the last few months by day, by channel, by impressions, by clicks... and after that deleted adsense ads from all non performing articles... It was a huge gamble however... Within 24 hours... my CTR doubled and my CPM doubled... and if I am lucky as jensense suggests after a week I should see my bottom line increase to its previous tally... Also, I am no longer getting those pityfull one cent value clicks... Now I am not suggesting everyone do as I do... however, will keep you posted if indeed this solution does work long term... Fingers crossed. BTW I am doing very well with Chitika... on some day it does better than adsense Feedback from others would be lovely... like to know if anyone else has tired this ....
I removed the horrible performers and smart-pricing kicked it! I was already getting decent revenue, got too greedy, hope they come back in a few days.
How did you determine your "non performing articles"? Just because a page gets a bad CTR doesn't mean the conversions are going to be bad. Of course you CTR and eCPM are going to go up if you remove all the pages that were giving you bad CTR. Also remember, according to recent reports, it could take up to 37 days for Google to determine which pages should get smart pricing. There is a 30 day cookie that Google uses and then 7 days for the smart pricing to recalculate. Will you really be able to determine the effects of these changes over then 37 days and separate it out from the noise of usual ebbs and flows of AdSense earnings?
As I said... I looked over two months of stats... and determined the articles (channels) that had adsense ads but less than 5 clicks per month and also all the channels that were only offering 1 cent clicks... and deleted the ads from those articles... not the articles themselves... With over 300 articles one one site and 100 articles on my other site... it took me awhile to figure which were non-performing... Also, as jensense states... smart pricing is determined over your whole account not sites... so it stands to reason if you delete all non-performing ads from those pages... things should improve... Again, please this has worked for me... I'm seeing my CTR and CPM improve over the last 48 hours... better than it has been for the last two months.. However, fingers crossed... and will be only too pleased to offer an update
ElvisFan, My account has been hit by Smart Pricing since the biggining of October. But starting yesterday CTR is again at its usual level, and the CPM is improving too. Guess what? I did not change anything at all. Maybe yesterday was the Smart Pricing recalculation day and your site and mine did well for the last week. Who knows.
People are probably removing due to BOTH CTR and low CPC, who's stupid enough to remove a low CTR with a high CPC?
If the eCPM is low enough, maybe you prefer to serve other ads. But again: my channels that recently have low CTR and low CPC, yesterday started behaving "normal". We cannot know for sure what channels aren't converting well in a given moment.
How does one know if smart pricing kicks in? I'm relatively new to adsense and have no idea how to tell. I haven't even reached $20 yet in revenue I guess with my low performance smart pricing wouldn't even apply to me.
LikeMike - That's the problem right now. There is no way to tell if smart pricing kicks in. Some people see their CPC drop and assume its smart pricing, but it's really impossible to tell. It could be a huge variety of things that are affecting the proce. For me, trying to remove some pages on a hunch that they might result in poor conversions is a futile task.
To me smart pricing is when I start getting 3 to 6 cents clicks instead of usial 22 to 55 cents clicks. For example, yesterday the average click was valued at 33 cents. Today, it is 5 cents. What changed? Nothing with the site. I started a new AdWords campaign and I think that was the reason... I guess that is how Google is trying to kill (make their business not profitable) the MFA sites.
The question is .... are you earning more? Averages are just averages ... absolute earnings is what matters for me
I am not sure if you asked me this question. But I am going to reply anyway. No, I am not earning more. The AdWords campaign that I launched is not for the main site. It is for the page that is NOT linked to the main site and is hosted on a subdomain. There are NO AdSense ads on that page, just a pre-sell stuff for an affiliate product. So, with the same volume of traffic, I am now getting the 3 to 6 cents clicks. Obviously my earnings are much less than what I was getting with 22 to 55 cents clicks.
when comparing your stats, don't compare cpm. that doesn't determine anything... compare clicks, impressions, and revenue. Because, it's only natural that your ctr and cpm will increase if you remove ads, espcially to your lowest performing sites/channels...try determing the RPC. Revenue per click. clicks divide earnings = RPC then compare that to what you have now...did your RPC increase or stayed the same. compared earnings as well.
You think that your cpc went down due to and Adwords campaign you are running? I dont get it. Are you telling us you have an MFA site? Still, I am confused. Ok, more info. You began an Adwords campaign that is directed to a 'landing page' for an affiliate. That traffci would have nothing to do with your adsense revenue becuase if there are no ads on the page, then there are no impressions being registered. An easy way is to download the Adsense Notifier for Firefox. It gives you a breakdown, including revenue per click, in the lower right hand corner of your browser. @ baumann93: You just bumped a 9 month old thread, hence the red.
Wow, you are not very nice. Posted a lot of "cannot be true" did not help to answer the question, but took away reputation points for "bumping a nine months old thread" Are you saying that I should have created a new thread.... Wait... you would still have taken away some reputation points for posting something that has been discussed many times
Dude, I sure did help you! I helped you rule out the possibility that your adwords campaign had affected your earnings! I am sorry you did not feel that I contributed. As far as the red, now you learn the hard way, just like I did ps. I would not ever give a red for starting a new thread. I have started a million
Thanks for the education "the hard way" But, seriously. I have not changed anything and still the CPC went down from .2-.5 to .03-.06 cents. If it is not the AdWords campaign, then what? Nothing, absolutely nothing was done to the site.
Without knowing your niche, I can say from my experience that sometimes it just drops. My earnings dropped a few weeks ago, but I really think that it is due to the market, changing bids, etc. I mean the time of day and day of the week all have different patterns for each topic. For instance, on one of my sites, early in the week = higher revenues, earlier in the day also. maybe due to a full, undepleted budget at thise times? I dont know. To my knowledge, which is limited on this subject, not alot is known on smart pticing. Did the traffic to your site decrease when you directed your resources to the affiliate landing page?
I agree. This could easily be a case where there where two advertisers bidding and suddenly one of them dropped out. I guess everyone is quick to blame smart pricing since its such an unkown that it's easy to blame.