It looks like some time or another you may end up mastering the CTR factor by replacing your ads, and changing the colors blends. Now the question is, can you control the eCPM in a similar way? You may answer you can do it by picking high paying keywords. That could be an answer, but as far as muy short experience is concerned, that is not quite true either. I will give a couple of examples: First, I have pages focused on same keywords with different eCPMs. Two, One day a specific page may have a lower eCPM than anther one, and the folowing day you can have the opposite happening. So, eCPM is a mistery in itself,on my opinion, Any different opionion about this? __________________ Guia de Cafeteras Express Sightseeing in Seville by GPS
eCPM is just the calculation of click-thru-rate times $ per click. You can increase your CTR thru placement and design. $ per click is a function of the topic and keywords on your page. The easiest way to increase eCPM is to optimize ad placement.
Toby you answered it well but missed a few points. People often relate earnings to CPC and CTR, but forget about relation between eCPM and conversion rates. Irrespective of the niche you are in, your conversion rates mainly drive your long term revenue potential on Adsense. If you have a Austin Texas DWI (whatever that MFA keyword is) blog and get a few clicks make about $50 but all those clicks are not genuine. People are clicking for fun, land up on advertisers website dont buy anything and close the browser. Do you think Advertisers is running a charity business? They are not, they report conversions to Adwords/Adsense, ultimately all advertisers will freak out on this stupid MFa site and Adsense would eventually smartprice you. On the other hand, a mediocre niche paying decent and you have a great website which matches the content and has great conversion rate for advertisers. Google will keep your at optimum eCPM rates since u r doing great for advertisers. Its like give and take. If you convert well, you get paid better, the moment u suck, your revenue would suck!
Why is google so secretive about everything relating to adsense? I love Google, but this aspect drives me nuts. -Methane
Likely the same reason as you're not supposed to reveal your stats (other than Gross earnings) If enough people get together with enough info amongst themselves and from Google, system gaming would get even worse.