Click Arbitrage is Killing Adsense and Other Ad Networks.

Ever wondered why you are getting paid so low per click?

Well its not that you are being smart priced or that you are getting foreing traffic....

Its fu***n click arbitrage!

Yep this is what is killing Internet advertising...

Just look at the urls in adsense, visit each site and you will see that most of them are parked domains, mfas etc.

This really sucks, if a merchant would be paying you for advertising you would be making more than .25 cents a click for american traffic, but since all of this webmasters are simply trying to resell Internet traffic all you get paid is .00, .01 or .02, nothing more than that.

At least a few years ago I would get paid .10 or more per click on almost any niche site because webmasters promoting affiliate offers tend to pay more but now its all about click arbitrage.

This really sucks, this is happening with almost ALL ad networks. I have a few sites running Kontera and its the same thing, crappy parked pages paying me .02 cents.

Guys its time we do something about this.

1. Email Google about this (Quality score is supposed to be stopping this - Well its not).
2. Block them (Include eBay)
3. Sell your traffic directly to other webmasters or merchants, figure out a way to setup your own tracking software and charge them .05 (at least) per click and get paid via paypal.
4. Replace your adsense with Affiliate links (might not work on every niche).
5. Try more than 1 ad network.

This is ridiculous, I have been building high quality sites for a long time and my earnings keep on decreasing, so I am going to start selling my ad space directly to webmasters instead of Adsense, I am sure that I will at least double my earnings in a few days.

Its time to stop click arbitrage, its bad for the webmaster, the user (keeps going to crap mfa sites every time they click on something) and even for merchants becase they can not promote their products on the Internet.

 

thats the best option usually anyways, adsense always makes cents affiliate programs makes real cash.... There is affiliate programs for allmost every niche now a days, just think what kind of peoples your visitors are and what they are really looking for and you will find an converting affiliate program.

 

Well said in OP

I think Google has always done its bit to kill this business model
But those get rich quick guys find a new way to scam

 

netmaster123, thanks for the eye opening post.... +rep added....

 

Scammers and spammers will leave 4ever(( I'm not happy about it but that is a great incentive to improve and be careful

 

I agree this is probably the best option but finding advertisers directly can even be more profitable.

 

I wish one day google will make a human selection of each site before they put the ads on their crap sites

 

Well I think this will never happend, how ever they need to figure out how to stop this via an algorithm, I know that their quality score works sometimes but I still see revenue drops every day.

 

The minimum bid for Adsense is 5 cents. We don't know the exact percentage of Google paying to the publishers. But it should not be too much below 50%. As a matter of fact, I see more 3 cents per click than any other rate. I assume it comes from minimum 5 cents ads. Google pays us 50% of it. It rounds to 3 cents. Big players like Ebay or parked domain hosting companies may get bulk ad rate from ad networks such as Adsnese. But how do the small MFA site owners pay such a low rate? What about 1 cent pay per click? What kind of advertisers can get such a insane low rate? It is about 2 cents per click for an advertiser if Google gets 50% cut.

 

no, the minimum bid on the content network is more like 1 cent, while cpm is 25 cents per thou.

this issue with whored-out adwords pricing has been around for a couple of years, at least... google makes a killing off of arbitrage, that's why they lowered the minimum bid a couple of years ago.

 

You can do Adsense arbitrage with no problems as long as the clicks convert.

 

Can you explain to me how you think arbitrage is lowering the value of the clicks?

If you get rid of all the arbitragers, there will be less competition for keyword. Less competition means lower bids per click. If the arbitragers are bidding 2 cents per click, they would never be able to compete in a niche where the average bid was 50 cents per click.

 

agree!

if all the arbitragers will be removed then there will be very less compitition and you will get even lesser .. more compition + high bids = more earning

 

it's not that simple, for a number of reasons.

for one thing, your 50 cent cpc can vary drastically these days, because adwords advertisers have options for things like time-of-day bidding, site targeting, and even bidding by demographics... so the cpc can vary widely throughout the day.

and of course google stupidly takes into account the likelyhood that the ad will be clicked on, so it's not all about the cpc... the pond scum that plays in the 2 cent range will lie through their teeth about what they are advertising, in order to get the cheap traffic.

 

But if they are getting higher CTR on their ads, you are still making more money on your site by displaying them.

 

Well basically the goal of any click arbitrager is to get ads listed for the lowest amount possible and then resell the traffic to other networks and get a bit more, so for example if a persom finds a way to get traffic for .01 and then resells the same traffic to another ad network for .03 then that person makes money but the Publisher is getting screwed.

In the other hand, if a REAL company would try to sell their products and they advertise in your site you would be getting twenty times more money, so you would make more money.

Basically the goal is to REMOVE all people trying to game the system and leave the REAL advertisers, this would be great for Publishers, Advertisers and Internet Surfers.

Who Wants To Keep Getting Paid .01 Cents Per click?, Advertisers Want To Promote REAL Products and Services but They Can Not Because Webmasters are Gaming The System and finally What Internet User Wants To Click on an Ad and then Go To Another Page With Even More Ads!

 

thats a legitimate beef netmaster!!!

 

It's the goal of every advertiser to get their ads listed for the lowest amount possible.

How is the publisher being screwed? They got paid for the click.

If there were advertisers paying twenty more times more money, then the arbitrager would not be able to get their ads displayed.

Again, the more people who are bidding for ads, the more money you will make. I don't buy the argument that arbitragers bid low so they screw the publisher.

Now if your argument was that the arbitragers have crappy sites and you don't want to subject your visitors to these sites, I wouldn't argue with you. I just don't see how you think that you are getting paid less because of arbitragers.

 

Can someone clarify exactly what is Arbitrage ???

 

From Wolf Howl: