I have been fighting the battle of continually falling EPC. I have noticed than the higher I get my Click-Through-Rate, the less I get paid per click (EPC). Agree or disagree? Smart pricing is great for the advertiser. But the better a publisher performs, the less he is rewarded for each click. As my CTR rises into double-digits, my EPC drops into single digits. All those "over $1.00" clicks, only occur on low volume, low CTR pages. Agree or disagree?
Slightly related note: I have noticed (maybe it's my imagination?) that the more AdSense blocks I have per page, the less I usually get, per click. I have tried with having both 2 blocks per page and 3 blocks per page, and the clicked ads at the top of the content usually give ~10 cents more per click for me when there are only 2 blocks. Anyone else notice this?
If you want to change the subject, why don't you just start your own thread, instead of trying to derail this one? The subject here is - The Higher the CTR on a Page, the Less the EPC (The number of blocks is not the issue.) Here are some threads addressing YOUR question - http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=104728 http://www.memwg.com/fewer-adsense-ads/ http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/3261811.htm http://www.johntp.com/2007/06/20/make-more-money-with-less-adsense-ads/
Actually for years, but a whole lot more this year. Some people describe an "AdSense Cap" (search Google). This could be a description of something very similar. I have graphed my EPC since June 2004. It is very discouraging to see the goalposts ever rising. The better I do, the less (rate) I am rewarded. If I were receiving the same EPC I got in 2005 and 2006, I would be making big money. Impressions are WAY up, Clicks are WAY up, but I continue to net just about the same dollars. I am thinking about spending my time in other ways. The "more work = less reward" formula is wearing thin. I need to get out of this rut.
some people believe that the number of blocks is indeed a factor... and the theory might be somewhat validated by the fact that some google.com search results pages are showing fewer ads per page than they used to. you get major credit for being intelligent enough to understand the significance of epc... most people out here don't know the difference between cpc, epc, and fud, lol it's very interesting that your epc is being affected like that, in my case, it's the number of clicks that has decreased significantly over the last year or so, with only a slight decline in epc(?) the adsense program has changed so much in the last year that you can't use long-term data as a factor. when you talk about increasing the ctr, what methods are you using to do that? i'd expect to see the so-called "smart pricing" happen when mfa tactics are used, you know, things like pages with no links out except for the ads... but i don't see you doing that sort of thing.
1. agree on descending revenue but also CTR has reduced and as far as I can see some of the many earlier interesting ads disappeared. I count this toward the global economic crisis above all. many business are eitehr out of business or have to reduce their overall spending. If I would earn same eCPM as 15 months ago, I would have some 3k$ more / m the block factor however is a relevant factor with global decreasing bidding competition during economic crisis, some of the ad blocks are LESS than full, hence NO competition to BID AND thus to lift the prices per click resulting in minimum eCPM 2. teh 1-10+ $/click still occurs, more or less at same rate as before = daily. but as before those multi $ clicks seem to occur only during the FIRST hour of G-days each day. may be the very first pageview of a high paying page. after that all following clicks appear in average range. 3. much of above also may result from Google's more efficient geotargetting and better selective advertising opportunities by adword users. without geo targetting, most/all ads were global ads, thus competing on all pages against all world, thus increasing the number of competing advertisers on a particular page/keyword. with improved geo-targetting during past 1+ year, advertisers can more effectively target toward real potential customers, reducing their ads on global pages. with a site with visitors from 220+ countries I see huge difference in eCPM depending on day-time ( predominant traffic geo-zone ). probably this all boils to more overall efficiency and less loss by advedrtisers - thus making adwords more interesting to all businesses but also creating a challenge to publishers to be more productive to compensate for earlier system-insufficiencies. 4. during all high traffic days such as valentine, mothers day, christmas, etc - ALL is as usual - top CTR = top eCPM because the competition on ad space is HIGH and all ad blocks / slots full by high bidding ads.
Settle down my brotha. Lol Dude. The more ads you place on a page the less you'll earn per click. What I mean is this. The top ad on your page and the top link on that ad will earn the most money. The more ads you've got on your page the more likely your readers will click an advertisement of lesser value. Source: 8 months experience
I agree.. I play with this high/low CTR trend for 2 months and what I found is exactly like Surf_Dude said.. right now, I try to maintain my CTR at a relevant/optimum number...